October, the Month of the Rosary

By Mattie (www.catholicmarriageprep.com)
This month Holy Mother Church teaches us the importance of Mary mediatrix through the beautiful prayer of the Holy Rosary.

The Virgin Mary with Apple Tree by Bradi Barth

The Holy Rosary was given to St Dominic by Our Lady herself in 1206, while he was combating the Albigensian Heresy in Southern France. She gave him this "mighty weapon" and explained to him its uses and efficacy. Since then it has been one of our Faith most treasured sacramental (a sacramental is an action or object of ecclesiastical origin that serves to express or increase devotion).

Actually when we ask our engaged couples what is a sacred sign in their life, a great majority says that it is a rosary given by their Grandmother. So when I become a Grandmother I need to remember to stock up on rosaries to give to my grand kids :)

If you are not in the habit of saying a daily rosary now is a great time to get started! Yes, it is hard but look through your day, it only takes 20 minutes. Maybe during your commute? Or before turning on the TV?

As a family we have been saying it right after lunch, while we are all in "limbo", done with lunch but have not started our afternoon yet. It works wonderfully! I actually don't fall asleep! It's great!

How to keep the little ones reverent during the rosary? Well, that's a tough one, if you have a fail proof answer let me know please :)

First they have to be involved, let them lead the decades, have a rosary book for them to look at (we use this one. It works great, it also has a poster that goes with it and I bought 2 of them, one to make matching cards for the children to put on each mystery as we pray that decade.

Now what great friends are we going to celebrate with this month?

- October 1st: St. Therese of Lisieux

Since St. Therese promised to spend her time in Heaven sending shower of roses on earth we take her to her word. Every year on her feast day we write her a letter with our petitions to be presented to her Divine Spouse. You will be amazed at the answers when you re-read your letter next year! She is an amazing intercessor! Very efficient if you are having a hard time conceiving or know people who are struggling with infertility ;)

A St. Therese "Shower of Roses" Tea Party.

- October 2nd: Guardian Angels

The best present you can give your Guardian Angels is to receive Holy Communion in their name on their feast day.

How about some Angel Food Cake? My second sister, Marion, is turning 29 on that day!:)

St. Francis of Assisi

- October 4th: St. Francis of Assisi

Many parishes hold a pet blessing on the feast of this special friend of animals, check out your parish's website.

- October 5th: St. Faustina Kowalska

Pray a Divine Mercy chaplet a 3:00pm today.

- October 11th: my baby sister turns 18!
 and Moses and I are interviewed live on Life On The Rock, 8:00 pm (MTN time), at EWTN for CatholicMarriagePrep.com 
Also on October 11, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI will open the Year of Faith. During this Year of Faith every Catholic is invited to a deepening in faith through prayer, study of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and renewed participation in the sacramental life of the Church.

- October 15th: St. Teresa of Avila

Another wonderful Carmelite. In her honor we love to have ice cream with caramel (if I'm on top of my game I will even make some homemade caramel, which is truly best if made with slated butter.)

- October 16th: St. Marguerite Marie Alacoque

Great time to renew your consecration to the Sacred Heart

- October 18th: St. Luke 

- October 19th: St. Isaac Jogues, St. Jean de Brebeuf, and Companions

- October 21st: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha! The lily of the Mohawk will be canonized this year on this day! The first Native American saint!

Throw a party! A real pow-wow is needed for this one!

Kateri Tekakwitha

Busy, busy month! In so many very happy ways!

God bless all of you!

Childhood Unfinished Business (Healing in the Sacrament, part 4)

By Christine, www.catholicmarriageprep.com

My aunt from Montpellier died last night. Without her, I would never have visited this tapestry exhibition on November 27^th, 1974, and Christian and I would never have met.

After our first meeting on November 27^th, our relationship developed pretty quickly. After a few more chance meetings, we were together for good. 

What attracted me to him was his obvious self-confidence; the impression he gave of inner satisfaction. I was very insecure myself. I didn’t think I could ever be loved. My self-esteem was pretty low.

Strangely enough, I can see now, looking back, that he was sending me clues that he was emotionally unavailable, just like my father who had been so preoccupied by his job, and my mother who didn’t want me to pity myself.

As Harville Hendrix, Ph. D. puts it in his book Getting the Love You Want, Christian’s emotional distance triggered my primary drive, “which was to make a person who was distant and unavailable become close and dependable.” Meeting Christian “crystallized all of my childhood unfinished business.”

This didn’t make our relationship any easier, of course. Christian and his brothers were a kind of clan. They would make plans to live together, have a farm, leave France, etc. They didn’t like the French, and I was French. I didn’t belong. I felt left out whenever they talked about Morocco and their friends. I was discovering an entirely new world! I had the impression also, that women were, for them, only accessories to be used for fun and pleasure. What I couldn't realize at that time is that they were uprooted, they had no place they could call home anymore. They were grieving for their mother, the one who held the family together, and this was their way to make up for all they had lost.

Christian would often tell me that I shouldn’t get too attached to him because he liked to change. For him, at this time, sex was just a casual way of getting to know someone, not a big deal! He had told me about his previous girlfriend, and I thought that I was just a replacement for the one he couldn’t have. Since he couldn’t share his feelings, I didn’t know that he didn’t really love her. For me, since she was from Morocco, she belonged where I didn’t, and I thought he would never love me as much as he’d loved her. This idea got a grip within me and it stuck to me for years.
When we meet someone, we do not realize that this person has been wounded and suffers. We only see things from our limited selfish perspective.

I was desperate to become close to him, I wanted so badly for him to open up to me, to love me! I had an insatiable need for closeness, craving physical affection and reassurance! I'm sure I was very clingy.

Each time I tried to start a conversation, he would either grumble, “don’t bug me!” or crack a joke and it was over.

We were so different! He was more the kind that kept people at a distance in his desire to have the freedom to come and go as he pleased, not wanting to be pinned down to a single relationship. At the same time, he was fun, smart, resourceful, carefree, and attentive! With him, nothing seemed serious, and I envied his detachment and freedom.

The pain in our relationship was sometimes intense for me, but even so, he attracted me so strongly!

Isn’t it funny how God writes with our crooked lines?

Behind Every Abortion There is a Dad (Healing in the Sacrament, part 3)

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By Christian

 It’s not rocket science; behind every abortion there is a Dad.
My girlfriend and I had been dating on and off since we were 16. We left for college in two different cities in France. She was in Paris, and I was in Montpellier, about 500 miles south of Paris. I wouldn’t have called it a stable relationship. There was no marriage on the horizon, and we weren’t even really in love.
That summer of 1973 was a very difficult one for me; my Mom had come to Montpellier in February with terminal cancer, and she had passed away on May 17th. My girlfriend had joined me at her funeral in Alsace, my Mom’s birthplace. She had then gone back to Paris for her finals.
After my own finals in June, I went home to Morocco, to be with my Dad. I was 21. 

My family home in Meknès, Morocco

My Dad wasn’t doing too well, and I worked long hours supervising the harvest at an apple farm.
My girlfriend was vacationing in Spain with her family and one day she dropped by for a surprise visit, out of the blue, just for 24 hours.
We went to a nightclub with a group of friends, but we were not “together” at that time. Still, we ended up at my place for the night. She left in the morning, back to Spain and then Paris.

I was still working on the farm when she called from Paris to tell me that she was pregnant. She wouldn’t keep the baby. I suggested, not very strongly it is true, that we could get married, but for her it was out of the question. She needed money to go to England where abortion was legal. We had a few short phone conversations, mainly to talk about money and flights arrangements. We never mentioned the baby. One day she called and simply told me she was leaving for London. Then there was a last phone call, just to say, “It’s done.”
I felt completely numb. I was still grieving my mother’s death, and this only added to it.
College started again. I visited her in Paris in the fall, then again at the beginning of 1974. She told me everything about the abortion in a detached way. She didn’t seem to feel anything about it. Eventually, we got back together, but it didn’t last.
Awhile later, I learned by chance that she had gotten married at the end of the school year.

It was only years later that I realized how terribly it had affected me.
First, a very strong attachment had been created between the two of us through this abortion. We were “parents” and parents don’t have a baby without this strong attachment. It’s incredibly strong because it is nature’s way of keeping parents together; to make them fight together for their child for the rest of their lives. The baby may not have been born, but he was real and had created a psychological attachment between us.
Second, the abortion, on top of the fact that my girlfriend had left me without closure, had killed something inside me. I was lost. It seemed like all feelings had deserted me, as well as any desire for connection. I was avoiding anything that could start a lasting and serious relationship. I wanted the fun, but no strings attached. I was empty.

This was the state of mind I was in when I met Christine.

The sad thing is that this first abortion opened the way to another one.
There is not a day that I don’t think about these babies, not one day!

Christine and I participated in a Rachel’s Vineyard's retreat about ten years ago in Denver. I had to unearth all the pain I had buried deep within me, and all the pain I had inflicted to others. During the retreat I was granted an amazing gift. I had the vision of these two beautiful little guys, all dressed in white, playing peacefully together under a very large cedar, in a vast prairie. We have given them names, Philippe and Emmanuel. Christine has adopted Philippe. It’s a consolation but it doesn’t erase the pain.

http://janetpantryart.blogspot.com/2010/07/busy-busy-andmore-tea-vicar.html

Fourteen Stars: Finding Faith with The Fallen

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By: Matthew Talafuse
(Note from Christine: today we will take a break in our story to listen to Matthew's testimonial. Matthew and Lindsey took our marriage prep course. They got married August 8th this year).

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

The day you first speak to God is a day that you will never forget.  Some have this conversation at an early age, others never will. As for me, I thought I knew him. I had been baptized, gone through confirmation in my church, and sang in the praise band on Sunday’s. I was under the impression that this meant I had a relationship with God. I was wrong.  I didn’t have a true conversation with him until I was standing inside the morgue at the Balad Combat Hospital in Iraq. It was within these makeshift plywood walls that I discovered what it truly meant to “know” God.

It was August of 2006 and I was on my way to Iraq with the Colorado Army National Guard. I was 19 years old, and had no idea what the next 12 months would have in store for me. I was a Black Hawk Helicopter Mechanic, and would be deploying with a Medical Evacuation (Medevac) unit to LSA Anaconda (Balad Air Base), Iraq.  Once in country, our operational tempo was high. The flight crews and mechanics worked 12-16 hour days in order to keep our helicopters up and running. The surge was beginning, and American troops were being injured constantly. Our helicopters flew multiple times a day, picking the wounded up off the battlefield and delivering them to the combat hospital on base. 

Black Hawk Helicopter (USARMY.com)

A few months in to the deployment I found out that the combat hospital on base was in need of volunteers.   I’m not sure why I was so eager to go over and help, but soon it became a daily routine. I would Work 12 hours at the hangar, and then head to the hospital to help in any way possible.  I started working on the helicopter pad, running out to the Black Hawks as they came in, unloading the wounded, and rushing them in to the Emergency Room (which was actually just a large tent).  Often times, these men and women were in rough shape, and we made the 100 yard dash while doing chest compressions or holding pressure on large wounds. Statistically, if you made it through the doorway of that emergency tent alive, you had a 96% chance of surviving. It would be the 4% of those who did not survive their injuries that would introduce me to God.

While working in the ER, I became one of the “go-to” guys when a soldier died. As the soldier’s life slowly ended, I would stand by their side, holding their hand as they took their last breaths. Once they had perished, and the doctor pronounced them dead, the painful process would begin.  I would take their body in to the makeshift morgue, clean it the best I could, place their limbs in the proper location if necessary, and then tag one hand and the opposite foot if possible. We would search for dog tags or military ID’s to identify the person, remove any personal belongings from their pockets, and finally place them in a body bag. We would then unfold an American Flag and tuck it around them. Then the entire hospital staff would come to the position of attention and salute our fallen brother as we rolled the stretcher outside to be taken over to mortuary affairs. I did this 14 times. 

While preparing these 14 men, I often questioned my faith, and would get angry with God. I questioned his existence. “Why did these young men have to die?” or “How could a loving God do this to a family?” And soon, he began to respond. At first, I simply felt his presence. I knew that he was with me. Often times I would spend hours in the room with these men, tears running down my face as I removed their wedding bands, pictures of children from their pockets etc. Many times, it felt as though a hand was resting on my shoulder; comforting me as I worked and wept.  Soon I began to pray, as I asked questions or said prayers, I could hear a response. Although it was in my conscience, I knew where it was truly coming from.  As I asked the next question, a response was immediate. “Why did this young man have to lose his life, God?” and then…”I have a reason for everything. Know that he is in a better place.” Although the answers were vague, they were real.

Inside that plywood morgue, my life was changed forever. I still see these men’s faces, and I know all of their names. I have spoken with some of their families, and passed along my condolences.  In that hospital, I saw things that I would not wish upon anyone’s eyes; horror in the rawest form. I would not want anyone to experience that portion of war, but wish everyone could experience the relationship I found with God. I often wonder why my life has turned out the way it has and I think back to what I was told…Everything happens for a reason. 

I knocked, and the door was opened.

This is the tattoo I have on my left calf dedicated to those 14 men. It reminds me to live life to the fullest and appreciate each day. You never know when your time will be up, but when it is, you hope you have positively changed the life of someone left here on earth. They forever changed mine!

Healing in the Sacrament, Part 2

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Before we go further, it is important to give a bit of our backgrounds.

Christian
I was born and raised as a French citizen in a Muslim country, Morocco. The end of the colonial era was surreal in the sixties and seventies. With my two brothers, as teenagers males, we had a lot of freedom; we also knew we had no future in our native country. We would graduate from high school in Morocco, then go to college in France. We were French citizens but didn’t know much about France. We didn’t think we could live there. 

My home town: Meknes, Morocco

We were a Catholic family. I used to help my mom prepare baskets for the elderly as a child. My faith was strong. I wanted to become a religious and my brothers would make fun of me and call me “ the little priest.” We were going to mass every Sunday until I turned 14 and started to skip it until gradually, I stopped altogether.
We lived our lives on a daily basis. We had seen and heard of atrocities, massacres of entire families by Moroccans. Phone lines were tapped; we couldn’t trust the people who were working in our house, even after many years. 

Three brothers and the nannies

I never opened up too much about who I was because who could I trust? I didn’t express my feelings; hey, it was a macho country! I didn’t look for deep conversations since our world could disappear in a moment. I didn’t even speak too loud to avoid eavesdroppers. We lived in a constant state of insecurity. We always had to be careful about what we was said on the phone, in our own house. Anybody could have been arrested just for laughing in a movie theater during the news if the King was on the screen. The police in the theater could think, and even swear, that you were making fun of the King. Of course everything could also be settled for a small amount of money.
We knew we would never take over my Dad’s land surveying company because it could be nationalized at any moment, for no reason. We could also have to pack and leave everything behind at any time without prior notice. It happened to many in Algeria, our neighbor in the East.
The end of such an era was full of mixed feelings. Besides all these insecurities, if you just lived in the moment, life was good and fun; we had a feeling of complete freedom. In this macho country, girls were there to please the men and we loved it. The real guys were those who had as many girls as possible!

Hunting and chasing!

Christine
My hometown, Le Creusot, had nothing to do with sunny Morocco! It was a gloomy workers town in South Burgundy, France. The Schneider family built the town in the 19^th century around their big factory. They made cannons, locomotives and armor plates. They had also built churches, hospitals, schools, and owned about everything in town. Everybody was working for them! It wasn’t really a fun town. There wasn’t much to do. People had a strong accent that rolled the r’s, and that was it. Nothing to boast about.

Le Creusot's famous hammer

My childhood was what any outsider would have called “happy.” No major trauma besides my mother’s accident, when I was about 5. She was driving a scooter and ran into a huge moving truck. She landed on the other side of the truck, and was in a coma with a concussion for 3 days. I remember seeing my older sister cry, my Dad awfully worried, but I didn’t really understand what was going on.
Besides this event, it seems like there isn’t much to say. When you look at my childhood pictures, though, you can see that I didn’t smile very often. I had a crabby look most of the time. 

Yes, I'm the one on the right!

Truth be told, my two older brothers weren’t particularly kind and I had no one to defend me. I remember being tied to a tree most of an afternoon, for example. They would also call me names, tell me I was fat and had a big nose... so much for my self-esteem. I would complain to my Mom, but she didn’t want us to pity ourselves, so she would just send me away, saying that they were just “teasing” me. My Dad was completely absorbed in his job and didn’t have any time for us.
I was a very anxious child, probably absorbing my father’s chronic anxiety.
I was also very straightforward and always spoke my mind, which embarrassed my parents more than once!
We were also a practicing Catholic family, going to mass every Sunday. My faith was strong as a child. I was greatly inspired by the stories of the saints and missionaries. When I was six, I wanted to become a nun, a dancing nun actually (I wonder why no one took me seriously?) and I wanted my religious name to be “sister Daffodil,” because they were my favorite flowers (still are!). Then I turned 13 and the Church became liberal in France. That’s when I started to find mass boring.
I brought my insecurity into our relationship, as I had never felt understood. I craved attention, love and protection…  (to be continued)

Healing in the Sacrament, Part 1

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By Christine

Sacramental marriage is losing ground. 

Tying the knot

In the last 35 years, the amount of people getting married in a church has dropped 70%, and continues to decline by 5% each year. More and more young couples prefer cohabitation to a church wedding. It seems like marriage is only attractive to homosexuals now!

In our own family, most of our nephews and nieces, and even one of our daughters, have settled for cohabitation. What is their motive? Fear of the life-commitment? Rejection of the Church and institutions in general? Fear of divorce? They can’t even say they want to be different because everybody cohabitates! The ones who are different are the ones who marry.

I want to scream at them that what they reject is exactly what could make them happy; happy beyond anything they could imagine! What they reject is precisely what they long for. They have preconceived ideas about marriage, clichés that are conveyed by our culture. If they only knew what the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony represents. They’re all enthusiastic about superhero movies, special effects defying all natural laws, magic, and the extraordinary, but they don’t know that the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony beats them all!

Avengers: http://picsmixer.blogspot.com/2012/05/blog-post_08.html

I feel compelled to write about it, to yell on the rooftops that Christ’s grace is incredibly powerful, efficient in very concrete ways, and the best thing that can ever happen to anyone! I can affirm it because Christian and I experience it daily in our marriage! I want everyone to know that marriage rocks!

Of course, we didn’t know much about marriage either when we said yes on July 2^nd, 1977. We didn’t receive any marriage preparation and had been cohabiting for almost three years. Still, we didn’t think cohabiting could be a permanent solution, and we wanted to seal our love in marriage. We wanted to have children, and we instinctively knew that only a Catholic marriage would give our family the solid foundations it would need.

July 2nd, 1977

Now, 35 years later, we are in awe at what Christ accomplished in our relationship.

We wrote about the day we met on November 27^th, 1974. What we haven’t told you yet, is how broken and wounded we both were, and how we added to our brokenness through our three years of cohabiting. 

Christian and his mother

Me as a girl scout

Christian had lost his mother to cancer just the year before; his girlfriend had aborted their baby without even giving him a choice, a few months later. For me, I was craving to be loved. My year as an exchange student in Indiana had messed my moral and spiritual compass up. Everything I had believed in before Indiana was shaken. 

I had dreamt of giving myself only to the one who would be my husband. I had dreamt of strong Catholic values, and even though the dreams were still deep inside me, my actions had twisted everything upside down. This is who we were when we met: two hurt and lost kids! (to be continued).  

Instructors Interview: How Did You Meet?

Ryan and Sarah, part II

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Shrimping off the coast of Biloxi

Ryan:  After a summer of falling in love, our future was uncertain as we faced a 2,000-mile-wide, long-distance relationship.  As we said our goodbyes on campus, I didn't have a good feeling.  Something was off.  Maybe she didn't feel the same way I did?  I headed to Illinois, where my friends and family had planned a going-away party.  I walked in to an awkward silence and very strange stares.  I eventually saw the reason.  I was shocked to see Sarah standing there!  She had gone to great lengths to surprise me!  This explained our awkward “goodbye,” and looking back at that snapshot in time when I saw her standing there, I can say this was the moment I knew I would marry her.  God had revealed my real dream job (teaching), but also threw in my dream girl while He was at it.

A quick side story:  On my journey to Los Angeles I stopped in Denver to meet Sarah's sister and brother-in-law.  We met at Coors Field for a Rockies game, after which I was to drive toward my next stop in Phoenix.  Plans changed.  After the game, I discovered that my guardian angel fell asleep on the job.  My car – packed with everything I owned – had been stolen!  I ended up staying with Sarah's family for a week.  When Sarah called after her first day of school, she was surprised to find out that I was not in Phoenix, but sitting on her sister's porch in Denver.  She was even more confused when informed that I was also wearing her brother-in-law's underwear!  There was no turning back now; I was officially part of the family!

In September, we both flew back to South Bend for a football game.

It was sitting at small table at O'Hare International Airport, waiting for our return flights, when Sarah looked at me with this quirky half-grin and said, “I think we are going to get married some day.”  The chills I get thinking about that moment are just as real now as they were then.

Sarah:  At one point, Ryan asked what kind of ring I liked.  So I gave him a not-so-subtle hint:  a picture torn from a magazine!  We planned to get engaged by early March of 2006, before “Basilica Monday.”  The first Monday in March, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus at Notre Dame opens up wedding reservations for the following calendar year.  I was sure a proposal would come at Christmas, since we had no plans to see each other again before March.  While finishing Christmas shopping at the mall, much to my dismay, Ryan suggested we go look at rings.  What?!  He hasn't even looked at rings yet?!  What happened to our plan? 

Ryan:  I was playing dumb.  I already had the ring, and the plans for proposal were in place.   I wanted to surprise her when she least expected it, as she had done for me.  On Christmas, I asked for her dad's blessing and told him of my plans for a surprise visit to Mississippi in late January.  I enlisted the help of a friend who travels a lot for work to get Sarah to the airport.  She  “had a layover  in Gulfport” and asked Sarah to meet her there for a cup of coffee.  Sarah's plans to show up wavered on and off several times, causing me much anxiety.  That week, her car broke down, and there were no rental cars available thanks to Hurricane Katrina.  Her parents and I encouraged her to borrow a house mate's car, but she “felt bad” doing so.  Through gritted teeth I said, “I don't think they'll mind.”  The night before, she told me how jealous she was that her roommate's boyfriend was coming to visit that weekend.  Little did she know, I was packing my bag as we spoke.  I flew overnight with a layover in Texas.  In the morning, Sarah expected our friend Meg to walk out, but was shocked to see me instead.  The look on her face was priceless!  I pulled out the ring – custom-made to match the picture (I wasn't taking any chances) – and dropped to one knee right there.  Thank the Lord for airports (and cell phones) during our long-distance relationship.  In the middle of one airport she had told me we would get married; in the middle of another, I made her prediction come true.

Sarah:  The night before our wedding, Ryan had one more surprise up his sleeve.  At our rehearsal dinner we exchanged presents.  Mine was large and flat.  I opened it up, a beautifully framed photo of the two of us – that I had never seen before.  It was from the moment of his proposal! Ryan had hired a “sniper” photographer to be at the airport and take (over 50) photos of our engagement.  He kept it secret for 18 months!  This was a surprise that would be hard to top!

Here is a link, which includes a video of me opening this surprise present.

Instructors Interview: How Did You Meet?

by Ryan and Sarah, 1st part

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Ryan:  It was March 12, 2004 – my birthday.  I ran to the mailbox expecting a thick envelope from Notre Dame accepting me into their Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program.  Nothing.  Disappointed, I went into my apartment, hit play on my answering machine, and half listened to a series of birthday wishes.  The last one grabbed my attention:  “Happy Birthday, Ryan!  This is the principal at St. Marianne School.  Just calling to wish you a happy birthday and tell you how excited we are to welcome you to the City of Angels this fall.”  So I was accepted after all!  I would be quitting (what I once considered) my “dream job” as an internal auditor at the University of Notre Dame in order to answer God's call to the vocation of teaching.  After taking summer classes, my guardian angel would accompany me to the “City of Angels,” where 32 fourth graders awaited my arrival.  “This is big,” I thought.  But little did I know, God was orchestrating something even bigger.

4th grade in L.A. after soccer practice

Sarah:  I was preparing to graduate from college with a degree in education but felt the call to service.  Notre Dame's ACE program seemed to be a perfect fit.   

It would allow me to serve in an under-resourced Catholic school while still beginning my teaching career and, as an added bonus, I would be earning my Master's degree as well.  I had applied and interviewed and was simply waiting for notice.  Because I was not the typical candidate (I would already have a degree in education), I was a little concerned about my chances.  Spring break arrived.  I played on my university's tennis team and we were leaving for a trip to Hilton Head Island for a week of matches.  Just as I started to get in the shower, one of my roommates yelled that the mail had arrived and I had a packet.  I only had about 30 minutes to make the team van but I raced downstairs to see what awaited me.  I was accepted to the program and felt so grateful for the chance to fulfill my heart's desire of teaching and service.  What I didn't know was that letter would also be the start of another “call” from God. 

Ryan:  In late April, ACE hosted a weekend retreat for the new class and their principals.  After a weekend full of meetings and social events, I was sure I had met everyone.  The final event was a Sunday brunch in the North Dining Hall.  I got up from my table to head toward the buffet, when I spotted her.  She was sitting alone, waiting for the rest of her table to return with their food.  I thought, “Wait!  Who is that?!  Why haven't I met her?”  She was beautiful and had a mature, poised presence about her.  She seemed older than the other “ACErs”.  (Keep in mind, I was the “old guy”.  Most were right out of undergrad, while I had been out for 6 years.)  But that was the end of the weekend, and I would have to wait another month to find out the identity of this mystery girl.  The first day of classes, I made it a priority to figure it out.  Her name was Sarah, and she would be teaching in Biloxi, Mississippi.  Perfect!  My randomly assigned summer roomate was also headed to the Biloxi community.  There's my in!

Our whole "carpool" group

Sarah:  ACE Summer began and it was a full load.  As “first years” (it was a two year program) we not only had to take plenty of classes but also complete student teaching.  Besides having every single class together, Ryan and I were assigned the same school for our student teaching.  There were a total of five of us at the school and we would take turns driving each day so we could all carpool.  Naturally, when you spend required teaching and class time with people, you also start eating meals and socializing with them.  Meals would end and everyone would be outside the dining hall talking and suddenly Ryan and I would find ourselves alone, still chatting on the steps.  Ryan wanted to see how he matched up with a Division I tennis player and challenged me to a match (he lost and still does every time we play!).  I was also an avid runner.  He pretended to enjoy jogging as well and actually went with me one day (8 years later, that is still the ONLY time he has jogged with me!).  One night I had to go pick up my car from my parents house.  I asked Ryan to give me a ride half way there.  Halfway turned into having dinner at my parents house, meeting them for the first time, and a movie – our first date!  Surprisingly, after taking him to my parents house on our first date, Ryan asked me to “go out” again.  Eventually, we found ourselves spending some time near the gorgeous Our Lady of Lourdes replica grotto on campus.  It was here, under the watchful eye of our Blessed Mother, where we had our first kiss. (to be continued...)

Our first photo