Friday, May 29, 2015

5 reasons I love being a priest - in pictures

Dear Family and Friends,

I sure love being a priest. Here are five reasons why in pictures:

1. Little Prayer Partners - Whenever I'm praying in the chapel and the students come into pray on their own, I get little prayer partners!


2. Altar Servers' Rules - Numbers 10 and 11 are my favorites!


3. Preschoolers - Nothing is quite as much fun as visiting the preschool - here we just compared their plush toy mass kit to the things I use at mass!


4. Catfish! - The other day at a family picnic about 8 little boys and girls helped me land this 3 pound catfish!


5. The Mass - Catching catfish may be plenty fun, but nothing beats getting to celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass every day. Nothing.



God bless you all,
Father Kevin

Monday, May 18, 2015

smashing mailboxes

Dear Family and Friends,

If you were to make a list of ways to become friends with people, smashing into their mailbox would probably not be on it.

But that’s exactly what I did the other day, as I was pulling out of the driveway. It was rainy and I had just put a bike rack on the car I use, when from behind I heard a sickening crunch. The bike rack had slammed into one of our neighbors mailboxes, leaving it in pretty bad shape. Gulp!

No one answered when I knocked on the neighbors door, so I left a note. “Yes, a priest has just vandalized our mailbox” – Imagine them trying to figure out that one!

It was only a week later that we were finally able to talk and I could apologize. We struck up a conversation, and it turns out we know all kinds of people in common. The wife had gone to the prom with my dentist back in High School. They are heading to Italy soon, so I was able to give them some advice on how to spend their time. One of the other priests I live with joined in, he told them about his home country of Spain, and we had a grand old time. We ended up chatting for about an hour and a half.

And became friends! And it all started with that horrible, terrible, no-good rotten rainy day when I slammed into their mailbox!

Sometimes it’s hard to understand why God lets bad things happen. It’s because we’re free (He’s not the one who crashed the car into the mailbox, I am) and because He loves to bring good out of what we think can only be bad.

Maybe it’s also part of his sense of humor!

You are in my prayers,

Father Kevin