My First Communion :)

The above picture is of my first communion class. I stole it from my friend's blog. I am the fifth kid from the right in the front row.

Looking at this picture really makes me realize that God will place people into your life at the best times. My really good friend, whom I stole this photo from, ended up receiving three of the sacraments together; First Communion, First Reconciliation, and Confirmation. Funny thing about this is the fact that we did not know each other at all throughout those years. I mean I remember seeing him around during Confirmation classes, but not at all from the other two sacraments. It was not until we were both in college that we met on a retreat and really got to know each other. I just find it a bit interesting to think about, myself. :)

"Prayer For Teachers"

Prayer for Teachers

From A Catholic Prayer Book

Heavenly Father, who promised that all those who instruct others in the ways of holiness will shine as stars for all eternity, fill our hearts and minds with true knowledge and the art of teaching. Give us patience and understanding, justice and prudence, humility and fear of the Lord. Grant us wisdom and charity so that with a pure and holy love of God we ourselves may enjoy all these gifts and impart them to our pupils. Teach our children to be obedient to your laws and docile to your inspirations. Let them be instruments of your peace in their homes, in our land, and in the family of nations as becomes children of the sons of God in the Mystical Body of Christ. May the blessings of your sevenfold Gifts be in all who teach and in all who learn through the Holy Spirit who is the Love of the Father and the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I Am A Girl of Many Passions

The other night a few of my friends and I talked about how in college it seems as though there is push from all sides telling us that it is the time for us to choose and focus on only one of our things that we are extremely passionate about... It is hard to figure out what that thing is for some of us. In some ways I think it is sad letting some things you are passionate about get let go. To me it's like a little piece of what makes you you kind of die in a way. That is why even though I am passionate about teaching, and that is my main focus, I refuse to let the things that make me happy go to waist.... Thinking about this topic made me really identify what my passions are. There are some things I remember thinking I wanted to keep doing when I was younger and as I grew up those things shifted a bit, or changed all together... Still there are a few things that I have never stopped enjoying from each of the different stages I have gone through. There are some that I have just recently been made aware of in the past few years as well.

Music is one of my passions that I have kept since I can remember. My mom said that I would play around on my older sister's keyboard for hours when I was little, and when I say little I mean back in my toddler aged days. She said I would just sit there and be perfectly content hitting the different notes and listening to the different sounds they made while trying to play songs. My parents did not have that much money to start me on piano lessons really until I was around the age of nine. I remember how excited I was to finally take them. I became really good at it, and thought that I could be famous, but as I grew older I stopped really playing the piano for other people so much (mainly because I get major stage fright...sad excuse, but true nonetheless), and started playing it for me. I would play it for Mass sometimes, but would freak-out and mess up SO much that I figured it would be better for all involved to just let someone who enjoys that kind of thing to play. Even now though I play it when I am home alone or when I need to let some of my pent-up emotions out.

Another passion of mine, obviously is teaching. I love to teach, mostly younger kids, because between you and me, they are still shorter than me and so I feel tall and more in control. Really though, I love teaching that age because their brains are like sponges. They want to learn. They LOVE to learn. They understand what they learn SO much faster than even the children in the upper elementary grades do. Not to mention they are a joy to be around. These kids brighten up my day with the quarky little comments they make or questions they have. I wouldn't trade my job for anything. Not only do I love my teaching job, but I LOVE my faith, and I love to teach it and that is why I enjoy teaching both ccd classes and Confirmation classes. I helped teach ccd classes since I was in high school, and if my schedule worked for me this year I would have done it again. I still teach Confirmation though, and I am enjoying the challenge. These kids have helped me search and learn way more about my faith than I knew, and I thought I knew quite a bit. Boy, was I fooled.

Retreats... helping lead them more specifically or chaperoning them... I love it. I am known as a "retreat junkie." I can't have enough of them. I get to use my creativity and outgoing crazy personality to help bring some of the kids out of their shells. As much as I get stage fright with playing my piano, I still have when I stand-up to do a talk, but doing talks in a way is different for me. I am a talker, and so I can cover up much better when I miss something I meant to cover in a talk than when I play the piano. I did not really realize my love of helping the youth in this way until I started my sophomore year of college.

Those are just a few of the things I am passionate about and I fully intend to not let anyone of these go as I grow older. There are some others, but with the way I wrote about these I have a feeling my post would be extremely long, so I will end with those.

I Am Proud To Be A "Catholic Dork"

Today was a fun day for me. It started off with going to the youth Mass at noon. It was catechetical Sunday so all of us catechists went up to receive a blessing from Father. I forgot just how many teachers there are teaching the faith in our parish until I saw the group that went up. There are a lot of us. I hope that we are all teaching the faith in the way we are supposed to...

After youth Mass I spent some time downstairs with some friends. While together, one of the guys in the group began talking about a church in Spencer, St Jude's, and how there is a priest there that he has never seen. None of us at the table had actually ever been to this parish... sadly, I am pretty sure I had never heard of this parish before today, so I became very curious about it. I jokingly said we should all take a road trip some day soon to find this church, and a large number of people at the table ended up wanting to go find it right then. So, we left the church in search of St. Jude's. We kind of got lost and past a street we were supposed to turn onto. We went aways longer on the high way then we should have, when I finally decided to turn around. We stopped at Dairy Queen where we got some ice cream and the directions to St. Jude's. When we finally found it at first we thought it was in a house... but the house was actually the parish center. We did not get to go inside and see it because they locked the little church up, and when I say little, I do mean it. It was a tiny building. The one nice thing about the area was the pretty statue they had of St. Jude.

I am very grateful to be surrounded by the friends that I am. I have realized that I am in a crowd of "Catholic Dorks," and honestly, I wouldn't want to hang out with any other people as much as them. I am proud to be one too. It is nice to have that kind of support around when the rest of the world tries to put you down for living against what society considers as "normal" behavior. It's like a nice place to land when I am around these people. The people that know exactly why I believe what I believe and love it just as much as I do. That kind of support is not always easy to find, and I am lucky to have it!!!!

I'm in the home stretch!

This week has gone by so fast. It's amazing how time seems to go by when you are having fun. I feel as though I've been going like the energizer bunny all week long between teaching c.c.d. classes all week and working with my 2 yr. old kids in the afternoon, and then going home and planning the next day's work for classes... I am very pleased with the way my week has gone by. I am more amazed with just how intelligent the third graders that I am working with are. I feel as though I need to challenge them more than hold off on the lessons, and they seem to be having fun for the most part too. Today we talked all about how we are made in God's image and then I had them make a collage of different people on big poster boards to show how we all are different, but we are all very much the same when it comes to our faith. We also talked about our heritages and where our families have come from. I had the kids read and act out the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 people. The kids had a lot of fun with that. Some other major topics we happened to talk about were abortion and euthanasia and how life is to be kept and cherished from the moment they are in the mother's womb until death. We then read and acted out the parable of the Good Samaritan and talked about how everyone should be treated respectfully, whether the children get along with someone or not. I think my favorite part of the day, though, was when I had the kids sit in a circle and did a mini-affirmation activity.... I had them pull a name out of a box and asked them to say at least three things they liked and appreciated about the person who they ended up picking out of the box... It was nice to see the third graders take that activity seriously. I could tell they really liked it from the smiles on their faces. Even though I have been going non-stop this week, I am also some-what sad to see it end. Oh well.... life goes on.

My Battery is Running on Empty...

After only a few hours of sleep last night, my energy level is now pretty much spent.

Day one out of five for my third grade religious education classes is over with. I think we had a lot of fun. We spent the day trying to "understand the need for God based on revelation and faith..." We worked on memorizing the Apostles' Creed and then spent a lot of time in the morning over the creation story. The children took turns reading the story from the Bible, and then I let them use their creativity to make props for our own creation play. They had a lot of fun putting that together. After which we used the Bible as our script for the play. I remember when I said that would be our script a few of the kids said in unison, "That's so cool..." We also spent some time in Eucharistic Adoration which I think the children did really well with. They were all separated from one another so that the distraction level was really low and I think they got a lot more out of it that way. We also talked about today's saint's feast day, St. Justin, which was fun. I had the children color pictures of their three very favorite people ever and then had them explain who they were and why they were so important to them. The very last "big" project I had them do was write their own thank-you letter to God. It was interesting to watch how serious the girls were about that project versus the boys. The girls letters, from what I could see, looked like they could have been turned into books while the boys were very short and not quite as serious. I had fun teaching them and tomorrow looks like it will be eventful too.
Since today's feast day is St. Justin's I decided to put a prayer to him on my bog, so that is why I put the picture on here.

Now I am off to get ready for bed because I am exhausted.