Project Gabriel

My friend, Maria, is the new Gabriel Project coordinator at my parish and she has been hungrily searching for more volunteers and doing a great job! She has me signed up. :)

I am called to help those who are in crisis pregnancies because I feel that I can be as pro-life as I like but until I help those out there who are willing to go through the struggle of adding a pregnancy to their already complicated lives then I am just a bystander. I know Matthew will be willing to help me and be involved. I haven't been trained yet and I will go to a training session next weekend. I know that I will encounter frustrations and distress but I am going into this not seeking rewards or even believing in seeing the fruits of my efforts. I hope this will lead us to more fervent prayer and less restlessness.

I want to do as my friends, Sharon and Adam, do. They live their faith. They live a Christ-life life and set an example to their children. I wish I could have found a faith-filled life sooner. Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, so ancient and so new. Late have I loved Thee. ~Saint Augustine.

I know my parents have volunteered in the past. My mother and her friend cleaned the church every week when I was small. I recall smelling the pledge and other cleaning solution as they wiped down the pews and polished the brass. But when we moved to Kentucky she no longer did that. I am grateful to have those faint but surfacing memories of crawling around the pews quietly in the sanctuary and talking to Christ with my child-like prayers. She has been the one who cleans and irons the purificators for Mass for longer than I can remember and that is a beautiful way to serve the Lord. I think they are scared to do anything more outside of their comfort zone and thus gave me a sheltered life. There are many blessings in that so I do not complain (too much).

It is very easy to get me to do something at church. It is where I want to be.