Holy Cross Decorations follow-up

Sorry for the delay in posting this picture of the completed decorations of Holy Cross. There were a number of mishaps during the setup but somehow it still managed to pull itself together. The picture is not the best but it was the only one I could find.

Je vais en France

Well, it's official. I have my ticket and I am departing for France in only a few weeks. I will be living and working with a catholic family in a suburb of Paris. During my stay I will make the Chartres Pilgrimage (map) which many of my dear friends have tread before me (including several of the monks prior to their entrance to the monastery).

There are several reason for my upcoming voyage – for one I will fulfill my dream to live and travel at leisure in Europe instead of madly rushing around in attempt to see everything in typical tourist fashion. I will learn one of the beautiful romance languages. It is important that the situation be safe and since my friend has already worked with the family I have a fairly good idea of what to expect. I will spend most of the week helping the family (I imagine they will need to help me a bit with my French) and during my free time on the weekends see myself spending quite a bit of time at the Louvre art museum.

It is rather funny - this image is below is one that I have had framed on my wall every since our move to Oklahoma several years ago. All these years it has been only a distant dream to imagine myself as the girl in the picture - and now it seems that it is about to become a reality.

Some of the places I hope to visit include : Rome, Assisi, Fatima, Ireland, England, Germany, Austria, Lisieux, Lourdes .... the list goes on. We will see how many I actually get to. Once in Europe I will get a better idea of the travel situation and see what is realistically possible with schedule and finances.

I will come back to the states for a short time at the beginning of August - two very special weddings and a big family reunion. After what I am sure will be a very busy few weeks I will return to France to complete my year abroad. I am still working out all the logistics but so far I have mostly been sitting back a watching God take care of everything. The situation literally "fell in my lap" when my friend came back and told me about her time as an au pair, and all the paperwork for the visa has been going much more smoothly than I could ever have expected.

Please keep me in your prayers during my time abroad. And I would imagine I will have quite a bit to blog about this next year (lol)

Getting ready to decorate for Easter

This a quick sketch of my plan to decorate our parish church for easter - I know it is probably hard to visualize it from my messy scribble (click on the image to enlarge). I am posting this just for fun and more pictures will follow once the decorations are up so that you can compare the sketch to what happens in real life. I spent a good part of today intalling light bulbs in the lower part of the fans you can see in the picture below ... I don't think the light fixtures had ever been used before. I had wanted to use these lights for Christmas but never got around to getting way up there on a ladder. Below is a picture I found on the internet of the church.

See decorations from last Christmas

My brother the builder

My brother has been helping to build a log home for some friends of ours the next property over. Here are some pictures of their progress. It is going to be beautiful!

He is very careful about his measurements ;-)

Schedule for Holy Week

Clear Creek Monastery Holy Week Schedule '09

Chartres Pilgrimage - 2009

This is so cool and I am hoping to go myself if I can work it out.

From the official pilgrimage site :

The Association “Notre-Dame de Chrétienté” organizes every year at Pentecost a pilgrimage from Notre-Dame de Paris to Notre-Dame de Chartres (France): three days to live and build the Christianity of the third millennium. Covering within three days a distance of approximately 65 miles, the pilgrims walk in chapters. The pilgrimage has about 150 chapters each comprising around fifty pilgrims from all over France and even abroad (USA, Great Britain, Poland, Canada, Spain, etc. ...). Each year, approximately 8,000 to 10,000 pilgrims, walk to the Marian shrine of Chartres, expressing the condition of Christian life which is to be a long pilgrimage and a long walk to paradise...

Check out this photo gallery from the 2008 pilgrimage.

And for fun here is a short video one of the pilgrims put together.

After walking across the United States with Crossroads I would be so excited to get to do this walk in France! God's will be done.