Stained Glass - El Salvador Mission Book

In case you haven't noticed, my blog site is titled "Live to Give," which I think is an oppropriate title for the upcoming holiday.  Why live to give?  Because I believe the only way a person truly experiences life is though giving.  When we give, our spirit is awakened and our soul truly comes alive, because in some strange way humans are not really human without giving.  The holiday Thanksgiving is usually associated with giving thanks, but I ask you to study this word more carefully, it's spelled, "thanks" "giving".  I don't think it is written that way by accident either.  Yes, it is a time to be thankful.  Yes, it is also a time for giving thanks.  But just as import, it is a time to be giving!  We always emphasize the thankfulness of the day and rarely remember the giving significance.  This year I ask each of you to remember that the word Thanksgiving is a combination word where both parts are equal.  How many t...

Today I am writing about something a little closer to home for me, but farther in distance, poverty.  For years I have been in love with the idea of helping God's children who are financially less fortunate than I.  My journey has taken me to many different places.  I starting my ministry several years ago when I began helping a priest build a transitional home for orphans who were too old to live in the children's orphanage in Bolivia.  I sent him money to support these older students and in turn the students gave back by helping at the children's orphanage.  He would send me letters (hand written via regular mail) and update me on how the kids were adjusting.  When my own parish priest went to El Salvador to serve the poor there I was privileged to participate in his ministry by at first sending women to college and then later in many other ways.  When God asks me to do something I certainly don't want to let Him down so I gave that ministry all th...

Dear Readers, I have many friends who struggle to see God working within their life.  They ask, even beg for signs, run from one prayer group to another seeking the miraculous.  Sometimes I sit back and just watch the frustration.  Still, for me I see miracles...actual miracles everyday right before my eyes!  I know these miracles are not for me alone and that others can see them too if they just stopped to look.  I would like to share one that happened to me a few years ago and then another that happened just the other day.  About 5 years ago a good friend of mine yelled at me enough to convince me to go and get an annual mammogram (I had never had one before that).  So a few days after my 40th birthday I went in for a routine exam, exept it wasn't routine.  They asked me to wait a while and then they took more intense x-rays and asked me to sit and wait again.  I started to get suspicious when they told me to get d...