Annunciation of the Lord - Men's Breakfast May 28, 2005

We are excited to be sharing the news of our next Annunciation of the Lord men's breakfast scheduled for May 28, 2005. We are honoured to have as our next speaker His Excellency Archbishop Luigi Ventura. Archbishop Ventura is the Apostolic Nuncio of Canada( the Vatican's ambassador to Canada). He will be giving us a talk about the legacy of Pope John Paul 11.

The breakfast itself will run from 8:30 - 10:30 and music will be lead again by the youth choir from the 6:00 pm Life Teen mass.

We fully expect this event to be a SOLD OUT event.  We will have limited seating but encourage you to invite a guest, and we encourage you to register in well in advance to avoid disappointment.  Tickets will be scarce and unfortunately we cannot guarantee tickets to be available at the door due to the planning required for preparing breakfast etc.

You will however be able to pay at the door once you have sent your RSVP.

Attendees will also be given preferential registration privileges for the next breakfast event. Please act today to respond to this email in order to register, or phone me at one of the numbers below.

Yours in Christ,

Jim Meuse

Chair -Organizing Committee

Work number - 225-7969 x 224
Home Number - 744-3026
Cell Number - 795-4424

Addendum to “Great news on the election front”

Pierre Lemieux has won the Conservative Party nomination in

Glengarry-Prescott-Russell!

Please keep Pierre in your prayers as this is only the first victory in a long battle.  Pierre is a pro-life and pro-family person who believes in the sanctity of marriage.  He is a practicing Catholic and is a regular participant in the St. Margaret Mary Adoration chapel.  He has been married for 20 years and is the father of 5 children. He has served in the military for 20 years and retired at the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.  He has worked in high tech and has now started his own company.  He has been very involved in charitable organizations such as St Joseph's Workers for Life and Family and his parish Finance Council. I am told that Pierre was acclaimed as the Conservative candidate due to over 300 supporters showing up from his rural riding; a great turn out! Pierre potentially will be another pro-life MP on the hill in the not to distant future as an election looms.

Congratulations Pierre, God be with you on your political journey.  Your

"yes" inspires all of us and gives us hope in Canada's future.

Greetings to all VM Friends of Maryvale Academy

Cyril Dowling and the Boards of Directors of Maryvale Academy are pleased to announce our first faculty member.  Effective May 16, 2005, Mr. Gerald

(Gerry) Kupferschmidt will assume the role of Academy Director.  Gerry comes to us with a Bachelor degree in Law and Political Science and many years of management and administrative skills both with people and projects. With his unwavering love for and full practicing of the Catholic faith, coupled with his aggressive enthusiasm to be involved in Catholic education of our young, including his own children, Gerry will comfortably fulfill the mandate the board has given him as Director.   Please join myself and the Board of Directors of Maryvale Academy in congratulation and welcoming Gerry into our school family. 

For more information about Maryvale Academy, please visit our website;

www.holyfamilyinstitute.ca 

or contact;

Gerry Kupferschmidt:

Email:  gerryk@holyfamilyinstitute.ca

Phone: (613) 558-5398

Praise God for the wonderful gift of people, advisors, benefactors, students, parents, and Gerry who are passionate for the need of independent Catholic education in the city of Ottawa and are willing to sacrifice much to see it happen.

Please read Joshua 1, 4-9; our opening year scripture verse.

If you listen to CHRI 99.1FM , you may have heard the ads for “Love Ottawa”.

“Love Ottawa” - 23 days - May 21st to June 12th, 2005 –

Outbursts of love and good deeds, and it's even more!  

“Love Ottawa” is part of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada's Celebration 2005. It is an initiative of Mission Ottawa/Outaouais, a local interdenominational ministry committed to church unity and city transformation.

For more information, go to www.loveottawa.ca

A man's daughter had asked the local minister to come and pray with her father.

When the minister arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows.

An empty chair sat beside his bed.

The minister assumed that the old fellow had been informed of his visit.

"I guess you were expecting me, he said.

'No, who are you?"  said the father.

The minister told him his name and then remarked, "I saw the empty chair and I figured you knew I was going to show up,"

"Oh yeah, the chair,"  said the bedridden man.

"Would you mind closing the door?"

Puzzled, the minister shut the door.

"I have never told anyone this, not even my daughter,"  said the man.  "But all of my life I have never known how to pray.  At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it went right over my head."  I abandoned any attempt at prayer,"  the old man continued,  "until one day four years ago, my best friend said to me,

"Johnny, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus.

Here is what I suggest."  "Sit down in a chair;  place an empty chair in front of you,  and in faith see Jesus on the chair.

It's not spooky because he promised, 'I will be with you always'.

"Then just speak to him in the same way you're doing with me right now."

"So, I tried it and I've liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day.

I'm careful though  If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair,  she'd either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm."
 

The minister was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the old man to continue on the journey
 

Then he prayed with him, anointed him  with oil,  and returned to the church.
 

Two nights later the daughter called to tell the minister that her daddy had died that afternoon.
 

“Did he die in peace?" he asked.  “Yes, when I left the house about two o'clock, he called me over to his bedside, told me he loved me and kissed me on the cheek.
 

When I got back from the store an hour later, I found him dead.
 

But there was something strange about his death.
 

Apparently, just before Daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head  on the chair beside the bed.
 

What do you make of that?"
 

The minister wiped a tear from his eye and said,
 

"I wish we could all go like that."

 

I asked God for water, He gave me an ocean.
I asked God for a flower, He gave me a garden.
I asked God for a friend, He gave me all of YOU...
 

If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.
 

Happy moments, praise God.
Difficult moments, seek God.
Quiet moments, worship God.
Painful moments, trust God.
Every moment, thank God.

Just a reminder

For those of you interested in sending submissions to Virtual Ministry for inclusion in an upcoming issue, I ask that you have them to me by Wednesday morning each week. I know that is early, but Todd and I are working to have VM ready for reading by Friday morning. That way the work does not eat into our weekends.

Please think about your audience before sending submissions. They should be of particular interest to the Ottawa Catholic/Christian community, faithful to the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and in good taste. If you wish to send a long document that you have obtained elsewhere on the internet, please provide the link, as there is not space to include pages and pages of text from one source. Please do not be
offended if your submission is not included. It may be that it isn't suitable or that the issue was just getting too big. I will only reply to emails that request it, as there can be a lot of emails in any given week.

If you are sending a forwarded email, please cut and paste for ease of editing.

Please send your submissions to VMsubmissions@virtualministry.com