A thousand welcomes 🙌 🇺🇦 🇮🇪

‘Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

 (Marlyn Vos Savant)

This morning, on my way to Holy Mass, I offered Tanya and her young son Mischa my prayer. I had no idea who they were as is oftentimes the case when I am sharing my prayer. Turns out, Tanya and Mischa have only just arrived in our town having fled the horrors of war in their Ukraine homeland. They accompanied me to Holy Mass and afterwards we talked and talked over hot coffee and doughnuts.

What a tale is theirs and still they could smile and laugh as they candidly shared with me their outrageous odyssey. No trace of doom and gloom even though their hearts are shattered right now. Grateful to God to be here and safe, hopeful for the future they display no trace of self pity. I felt honoured and privileged to be in their company, deeply humbled too. 

Father God, may Your extraordinary Love flow through me in ordinary ways. Amen 

‘Sadness is looking at ourselves. Happiness is looking towards God’. (Blessed Carlo Acutis)

   ‘All we have left is our knowledge, our love, and our bare hands’. (Paul Takashi Nagai)

‘Jesus asks all of us, who would be His disciples, to embrace the role of servant, emptying ourselves of our own needs and wants and self-importance for the sake of others, realising the profound truth that we receive only in giving, that greatness is found only in humility and service, that resurrection is possible only in suffering and death’. (Jay Cormier)

                                                                        Mother and son.❤️

                                                            Bank’s ice cream 🇮🇪 Ukraine 🇺🇦 

                                                     Mischa’s 17th Birthday- July 20th.🥳🎁🇺🇦