General Info and Playing Catch Up

Exciting news is that we’ve gotten our schedule for the rest of our training. We do sessions on spiritual topics once or twice a day with the Sisters and the rest the time we do our work, studying, and a little bit of relaxing.

Lately instead of sweeping as our morning work, we’ve been repacking donations from medicine companies to be shipped on a container load to Togo, Africa. To be put to use for the Sister’s there. We heard that at a recent wedding the bride and groom asked people not to bring them presents, but to bring items that could be used by the Sisters in Africa. So that’s how we ended up with a ton of glasses and lenses, clothes and lots of other stuff. So cool! But anyway, this week (including this morning) we’ve been preparing the medicine for shipping and our Saturday will be spent loading the boxes into the giant container for its journey. Pray that the medicines get there safely and are able to be used efficiently.

But back to the good news about the schedule:

- We have lots of cool things planned to talk about and experience during our formation sessions

- We’ll be keeping up with the twice weekly Tetum lessons (and lots of homework and memorizing vocabulary)

- We each have to give two 30-45 minute presentations on a topic of our choosing to the group to practice teaching (all of us will be needed to teach at least some in the schools the Sisters run in East Timor). Those will be interesting, but it’s not like school. It’s just talking to people about anything you’re passionate about or know a lot about. So we’ll get to learn a lot about each other and interesting topics through those.

- Friday evening’s we will serve in the soup kitchen, Caritas

- The Sisters’ have planned a four day trip with us to Verona, Italy, to meet up with some other volunteers and have a bit of a retreat! There is also time in the schedule for us to travel a little bit if we want – four days in November. Brendan and I are hoping to visit some relatives in Ireland if it works out!

- And finally we’ll get to continue exploring Rome on Sundays, our wonderful free day!

Exploring Rome will be fun for the rest of the time because we have a native Roman who has joined our volunteer group. Her name is Francesca and the past few days she’s volunteered to cook us authentic Italian food for lunch and it has been delicious! Currently she works as a journalist for a non profit organization, but she wants to go on another mission so she’s doing formation with us during the mornings and works during the afternoons.

She’s said she would like to show us around to make sure we see the famous stuff and get the local flavor as well. This Sunday we’re hoping to go to the beach(southwest of Rome) and she’s going to help us find a public beach so we don’t have to pay to swim (if it’s warm enough).

We’ll keep you updated on the exploring. We’ve been working very hard lately so there hasn’t been much time, but hopefully with Francesca’s help we’ll find things that are interesting, cheap, and close to our part of Rome so we can visit more places more often.

And for a quick review, last week we fit in a lot of formation and we did a lot of cool things. We…

…Saw Pope Benedict XVI again. Yay!

People behind us cheering wildly at the weekly papal audience.

Brendan and I went on a gelato date to celebrate being married for four months! We walked through St. Peter’s Square at night to get to the best gelato spot in Rome (secret location courtesy of past volunteers). It was gorgeous, as you can see!

We also spend a good amount of our free time playing soccer and ping pong in front of the volunteer house. It’s always a great time and the volunteers who didn’t play soccer before have picked it up quickly : )

Here Brendan is kicking the ball in mid air. He’s been learning some new soccer moves and then using them on us during the games. He’s pretty much unstoppable, but it makes for a good challenge.

The other day we played boys vs. girls – 2 vs. 3. And we won (thanks to the boys letting us have a goal about 20 feet long compared to their 4 foot goal. But the boys have challenged us to a rematch because “they went easy on us” so we’ll let you know how that goes.

Oh yes, and I’ve gotten a hair cut!

Here Alex and Sali pose with the scissors before cutting off half of my hair – it’s now about seven inches shorter!

Alex did all the cutting. She was practically a professional with lots of experience from living in a girls’ boarding school in England for many years and giving a lot of hair cuts. I felt perfectly relaxed with my hair in her hands : )

After the final cut, we were very content with the result.

So everything is going well! We miss you all and wish you all God’s best, especially during this time of financial trouble in the U.S. We’ve been praying that people will to look to Jesus in these hard times.

Much love,
Rachel and Brendan

P.S. Super interesting Bible fact I just learned today… Did you know that the Bible didn’t originally have chapter and verse divisions?

Around the year 1226, Cardinal Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, developed the chapter divisions. Two men in the 16^th century made the verse divisions: Fr. Santes Pagnino, a Dominican priest, and Robert Stephanus, a printer.

I had honestly never thought about it before. But it’s great to know that the Holy Spirit helped guide the choices as the books that would be part of the Bible were determined and divisions were made (probably so it would be easier to find or refer to specific parts of each book). Anyway, it was really interesting so I had to share.