Working, Praying, and Living in the Spirit of Vincent DePaul

December 2008

 

 

In October, the new Gateway Vincentian Volunteers attended their first retreat. The volunteers were encouraged to take the two and one-half days away from work to reflect on their Vincentian service to those in poverty. The retreat included time for prayer, quiet reflection, sharing, rest, and some fun!

The retreat theme was Building the Kingdom of God. In the weeks before, volunteers read and reflected on parables about the Kingdom.

During the retreat, the volunteers thought about and shared how they are building the Kingdom as individuals and as a community.

We were blessed to be joined by Fr. Jeff Vomund, pastor of St. Elizabeth Parish in St. Louis, and Sr. Mary Patrice Murray, a Daughter of Charity and member of the GVV Board. Fr. Jeff spoke with the volunteers about prayer and the Kingdom of God. Sr. Patrice shared her wisdom and insight on community.

The volunteers left the retreat renewed for service in the spirit of St. Vincent.

GVVs with Fr. Jeff Vomund

 

The Covenant of the GVVs of 2008-2009
Each year the Gateway Vincentian Volunteers enter into a covenant with one another. They create a written document that describes how they intend to live in community and in service to people in poverty. Their covenant is due on September 27th, the feast of St. Vincent DePaul.  This year’s volunteers chose to write their covenant in the form of a prayer. On the opposite page, you will see their covenant, a very creative representation of their hopes for the year. We have included the text below.

Be Joyful
God, help us to be your joy and You to be our joy. Help us to keep balance in our lives and to accept both the joys and the struggles since You gave us both.

Pray and Grow in Faith
God, help our prayer be from our spirits, so that we may truly trust, and our faith in You is complete. Let us always grow together, Lord, so that we may glorify you as the center of our lives.

Grow and Stretch Our Boundaries
God, help us to see, think, and JUMP outside the box.

Work
God, help us to be your hands. Let us do your work through the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brows.

Live Simply
God, help us resist the pull of society towards materialism and to know the difference between our wants and our needs. Help us to rely on You for all our needs.

Respect
God, help us learn respect for each others’ differing gifts and needs. You made variety; help us embrace it. Remind us that our differences will strengthen our community.

Love
God, help us to love, love, love each other, the people we serve, those with whom we work, baked goods, community night, the YMCA, moments waiting for Mike, faith...every moment of every day,
and You!

 

With Grateful Hearts, We Thank Our Donors!

The names listed below are those generous people who made donations after
our Matching Gifts Appeal concluded in March. Thank you for your help!
YOU help make the Gateway Vincentian Volunteers Program possible.

Gwendolyn Alvarez
An Anonymous Vincentian
Mr. & Mrs. Barbaglia
Delbert & Agnes Bohnert
Dennis and Susan Cuddihee
Lucille Curtin
Rev. Jerome Fortenberry, C.M.
Bob & Lorene Grimes
Heather G’Sell (GVV 06-07)
Don & Pat Hagen
Gerry Hartel
Paul Heidemann
Rev. Jay Jung, C.M.
Robert & Emily LaBarge
Martha Lane
Teresa & Lee Manna
Mary Lou & Bill Schicker
Br. Matthew Teel, C.M.
Rev. Ray Van Dorpe, C.M.
Gerald & Joan Wentzel
Grace Whalen
Rev. Robert Zimney, C.M.

Tributes in Honor of:

Carrie Tucker (GVV 07-08)
from her mother and stepfather, Linda & Mike Backs
Pat Kloster
from Audrey & Mary Kadlec

Leigh Manalang
from Joyce and Vern Knobbe

Mary Frances Mayfield
from Elaine Pinar

Martha Lane’s birthday
from Sue and Tony Tumminia

Katie Theoktisto (GVV 08-09)
from her grandfather,
George Maccollom

Tributes in Memory of:

Luke R. Abkemeier
from Marilyn Abkemeier

Mike and Louise Cucco
from Larry & Amelia Berra

David and Agnes Joseph
from Br. Paul Joseph, C.M.

Sarah Ward
from Bill Phillips

Ann Layton
from Elaine Pinar

Jack and Sylvia Long

 

We also sincerely thank our donors who have asked to remain anonymous.  If we have inadvertently omitted your name from our donor list, please accept our sincere apology AND let us know so that we can correct the error in our next newsletter.

 

Matching Gifts Appeal Coming Soon!
A very generous group of donors, the Gatekeepers, along with the Sisters of Mercy Health Ministry, will match all gifts to the GVV program up to a total of $10,000. The appeal will begin at the end of January with a special mailing. Gifts received from that time until the end of March 2009 will be matched.

 

SAVE THE DATE!

6th Annual GVV Golf Tournament
Monday, June 1, 2009
Normandie Golf Club
Four-person Scramble, Lunch at 11:00, Tee-off at Noon
More details to come!

 

Showered with Rubies
by Mary McBride

Give one year to change lives, starting with your own.  (from GVV promotional material)

As a 2008-2009 Gateway Vincentian Volunteer, I have the privilege of doing my service at Community Alternatives, an agency that strives to provide recovery for those suffering from mental illnesses. Several different teams work at Community Alternatives; one team works with immigrants and refugees who have survived torture; another works with clients who are battling both mental illness and HIV/AIDS; another, with juvenile offenders in the St. Louis City court system; and another works to find persons in the community who would benefit from services.

I have the pleasure of working on one of the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams. ACT is a client-centered therapy in which those suffering from any combination of mental illness, substance abuse disorders, low socio-economic status, HIV/AIDS, or any other compounding factor propose goals for their own recovery. These goals vary widely, from mental and physical health stability, to safe housing, steady employment, and independent daily living. To accommodate this wide variety of goals, the ACT team is comprised of professionals from many fields: nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, employment specialists, pharmacists, psychiatrists.

I have to admit that I had no idea what I was getting myself into with ACT. Being a social worker on an ACT team has been the most fun, exhausting, exhilarating, scary, challenging adventure of my life—and I’m only about three months into my year of service!

One of my good friends, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, once posted a story on his blog about finding precious rubies in unexpected places. In summary, a man walked into a mom-and-pop nature store and began to dig around in a bucket full of rocks, some covered in dirt. The man found one that he liked, took it to the owner, and asked, “How much?” The owner looked at the rock, gave a laugh of pity, and said, “$2.50.” The man paid and left and the owner didn’t give it a second thought until about a week later, when he opened the local newspaper and screamed at the headline: “MAN FINDS RUBY IN LOCAL STORE WORTH $250 MIL.”

It occurred to me that I have been digging pretty deep in a lot of “dirt” lately—the pain in our clients’ lives. The clients have been digging around in that dirt too—much longer than I have! From the woman who told me she was considering suicide to the woman who struggles to keep herself and her six children clothed and fed to the man who was thrown in jail for his failure to pay child support—all have so many serious challenges. Despite the dirt—the pain—in their lives, many clients have had joys and successes that never would have come about had they never been in the dirt. The woman who told me she wanted to die has new leads on employment and even some hope for the future. The woman with six children recently moved into a new house—thanks to the housing program at Community Alternatives, her rent is paid. While the man who is in jail on child support charges is still there, a program that encourages and assists fathers in paying child support may be able to help. If it hadn’t been for all of that dirt, these little victories—the  rubies worth so much—would not have been possible.
Other rubies of remarkable beauty are the relationships formed among the clients and staff members. The clients I know have enriched my life so much. While I am serving them, I think I have received much more than the clients have—beautiful lessons on love and life. If the staff members had not been willing to dig in the dirt of clients’ lives, we would have never known each other and become so close.
The family atmosphere at Community Alternatives is amazing, and I am so blessed to know each and every one of the staff members. Finally, if I had not been in the dirt, I never could have found yet another ruby—gifts and talents and strengths within myself that I never knew were there.
I believe that God has used this experience to make me a much more sensitive, considerate, kind, and grateful person. When I started my year of service, I had no clue if I could be the person that the clients needed me to be. Now, I can see so clearly the hand of God giving me what I need and developing strengths within me to answer the needs of our clients.
Promotional material for the GVV program states: Give one year to change lives, starting with your own. I saw this sentence before I began the program and was skeptical about just how or if I would change. Not anymore! My life has changed in just three months. I have been showered with so many beautiful rubies.

 

1 Corinthians 13:13
by Calli Grimes

So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.  
Some of the most stunning aspects of faith and love are the different faces and moments that are held within its existence. 
These moments can be sparse, and often fleeting, but nevertheless, they are the energy of hope. Faith, hope, and love, mixed and mashed together, one beautifully chaotic concoction is what we are left with; as that is often what we are left with in scripture, in our relationships with the people around us, and in our own spiritual journey.
Six months ago I was engrossed in my final studies at Butler University in Indianapolis. I was probably stressed out about the upcoming final exams, papers, and presentations. Today, I am exhausted by a much more vulnerable and dynamic source: middle school girls. 
The journey from a drafty classroom of late night cramming in Indianapolis, to the library, classrooms, and hallways of Marian Middle School, has in many ways just begun, but has still been a long, trying, and absolutely amazing journey of growth. The girls at Marian have so much life, vibrancy, attitude, and yes…energy.
 Although the transition from college life to a life consumed with middle school girls has been in every sense a jungle of challenges, they have taught me so much about faith, hope, and love. I feel their faith every Wednesday at Chapel when they generously pray for those who don’t have much in their lives, even though they themselves come from low-income families. I feel their love when they try and braid my hair in between classes, or ask me how I am, and I even feel it when they throw a fit, and grow, and learn. I feel their hope in their beautiful writing, poetry, spirit of conversation, personality, love for one another, music, and the way they think and talk about the world.
Faith, hope, and love were not the first words that came to my mind when I began my service at Marian. Now, they are forming for me, as the girls are growing and learning. I, like the girls, will make mistakes. Our faith will often be tested and even waiver. Our hope may be hidden in moments of challenge. Despite these moments of weakness, their love is astounding. It is a part of them. It is who they are in all of their vibrancy and youth, even if they don’t know it yet. That’s okay with me. After all, the greatest of these, is love.

Calli with members of the Marian Middle School Student Council

 

St. Catherine Laboure Parish Welcomes GVVs


On Sunday, September 28th, the GVVs of 2008-2009 were commissioned at the 10:30 A.M. Celebration of the Eucharist. The parish was  commemorating the Feast of St. Vincent DePaul, and many Vincentians concelebrated at  the Eucharist.

Fr. Jim Swift, C.M., Provincial, presided, and Fr. Jim Cormack, C.M., Pastor, conducted the commissioning ceremony. Fr. Jim anointed the hands of the volunteers with sacred oil for their work with people who are poor. Fr. Jim, along with other Vincentians, work site supervisors, former GVV volunteers, and members of the congregation of St. Catherine’s blessed the volunteers.

We thank St. Catherine Laboure Parish and all those who attended for your support and prayers for these young adults engaged in a year of Vincentian service!

 

The Gateway Vincentian Volunteers
 Program Board of Directors

Fr. Ed Murphy, C.M., President
Rich LaPlume, Vice-President
Tricia Thiel, Treasurer
John Capellupo
Fr. Jim Cormack, C.M.
Janel Esker
Ted Fiedler
Martha Lane
Tim Mohan
Sr. Mary Patrice Murray, D.C.
Fr. David Nations, C.M.
Sr. Kathy Overman, D.C.
Nichole Purvis
Fr. Joe Williams, C.M.
Jim and Geri Ryan, Directors

 


 

 

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Gateway Vincentian Volunteers
2912 Arsenal Street
St. Louis, MO 63118
(314) - 771-1474
Toll free: (888)-771-7220
Fax: (314) - 771-2410
email: gatevol@aol.com