Last Friday was the start of a fairly relaxing and social weekend. Molly and I met up with a few folk group members to plan some liturgies for the upcoming months and afterwards we had our folk group rehearsal where we also practiced some music for the Vocaré concert this Friday night! (which is at 7:30 pm in the main church and tickets are 12 euro and include a wine and cheese reception!) When we got home Friday night a few friends from the parish had stopped by to give their condolences to Emily and ended up staying for the evening. It is really wonderful to see how supportive and caring people in this community are. Being away from our home and family is hard, but it’s so comforting to know that the people here realize this and will go out of their way to make us feel at home.
After a late Friday night, we all had a bit of a lie-in Saturday morning. Luckily we didn’t have anything on until our 6:00 pm Youth Mass. We have a youth choir that joins in with our Vigil Choir and sings at one Mass each month and this was the week. It’s always so uplifting to hear the youth sing and to see them encouraged and appreciated by the congregation after the Mass. They’ve really grown in confidence this year and I’m hoping that they’ll be joined by many others next year! Since Confirmations are happening this week, we will be inviting the newly confirmed 6th class students to join us for the next two months!
After the Vigil Mass we ate a bunch of raw fish! Our friend Patrik, who played Jesus in the Passion Play, and his mother invited us over to have sushi after Mass. I love to eat just about anything that swims, and sushi is one of my favorites! Some of the house members are less enthusiastic about eating raw fish, but it was great fun. We shared memories and favorite youtube videos and even got to do some faith-sharing.
At the beginning of our time here, we were told several times that the most important part of our ministry is presence and relationship building. And now that we are less busy we have more time to do this. And it’s wonderful, especially when we get to have conversations about our faith! We’ve all had such different experiences and journeys of faith and it’s nice to be able to share those with each other.
So if anyone in the area wants to do some socializing, let us know! But be forewarned that we will talk about Jesus!
