2007 Parish Life Conference

The Eastern Dioceses of the Antiochian Archdiocese held a fantastic Parish Life Conference 4-8 July 2007. I volunteered to help and was assigned to work with registration. As far as I am concerned, I did almost nothing.

Friday, as usually, we started with the Divine Liturgy. How wonderful it is to start every day with the Eucharist whee we all become the Body of Christ and receive the Body of Christ! We also have the Church around its bishop, although the bishop did not preside during the week.

After Liturgy and breakfast, we had the oratorical contest. The young people who participated were great. The theme was unity. This really hit home to me especially when the young people raised the ethnic issue. This reminds me of a Greek Archdiocese Young Adult League convention in New York and the one thing that I heard over and over from the young people is "I don't want to marry Greek. I want to marry Orthodox." One of the judges of this contest was our own Fr. Matthew Street from the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation. It was a very pleasant surprise for me to see him here. But then it was really good to see several of us from other jurisdictions, including Fr. Daniel Byantoro from ROCOR and Fr. Gregory Safchuk from the OCA.

I also attended a couple of workshops. One was on church school and I will be sharing the information with the church school of my parish. The other workshop was on healing and forgiving. This was especially appropriate for me after whast happened at work a few weeks earlier. Yes, I can say "Thank you, Pat, for being rude and unprofessional" and I can mean it with love. Had she not been rude and unprofessional, I would still be there and dealing with the tension every day. Now I am free and I have been able to attend conferences that otherwise I would not had attended. I also realize that I do not need to earn as much money as I thought in order to enjoy life.

In the evening we had a Wesatrn Rite Vespers. I enjoyed it since in my former life I started out as a Western Rite Catholic and later discovered the Byzantine Rite. After Vespers new members were introducted into the Order of St. Ignatius. When I do find a job, I hope to join.

The day ended with a missions banquet. Fr. Daniel was one of the speakers and we were also entertained by a choir. One of the singers was our own Irene Forssen.

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