Weekend Refreshment

We are thrilled to have John's youngest sister Julia visiting this week. Her sweet little baby Lillian is sleeping in our office which prevents us from updating our blogs these days. Since Lillian has finished her nap, I will jot a quick note about the amazing weekend retreat we had. We spent the night at St. Mary's on the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. It is a beautiful place to get away, rest and pray. John's body is giving him all kinds of messages about what he should and should not eat these days. For some reason sushi sounds appealing quite often. Sushi is not high on my list, but I am willing to go there.... some. We spent close to two hours driving around Mundelein looking for sushi on Friday night. It was like trying to find sushi at a Cubs game. Actually, there were several sushi restaurants in the area, we just couldn't find them! The wonderful part of our weekend, though, was on Saturday. We decided to go across the hall from our room into the chapel to receive the Reserved Sacrament we had brought with us. We noticed there was a Roman Catholic service going on in which we recognized the praise music being played on the guitar. We decided to go in and sit on the last row to join the worship. There were 15 other worshippers so we couldn't exactly sneak in. We were blessed to be able to sing and worship the Lord with others. Then Father Brad from Stubenville began to teach. He taught a short homily from the readings and then launched into an hour long Power-Point teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. He taught from the scriptures about things that get in the way of the Spirit, things that open us to the work of the Spirit. He encouraged all of us to confess our sin and to ask the Lord for more of his work in our lives. We could not believe our ears. We kept looking at each other in disbelief of the precious gift we were being given. Father Brad invited everyone to come up for prayer after the Holy Communion. He anointed us and prayed for us. He gave us instructions on how to pray each day for physical healing and exhorted us to look into eating highly oxygenated foods. We loved it and left with our hearts overflowing with gratitude to the Lord. I said to John, "I hope you leave this weekend feeling LOVED by God because this was tailor made for you." Every good and perfect gift is from above. Amen.