Appreciating Our Parish Nurses

Thursday night some of our parish nurses gathered as CHI Health thanked the 50 + local churches involved in the parish nursing program.

During the evening Barb Kenney and Gretchen Reid were among those honored for going through the training 10 years ago. Barb and Gretchen were the ones who brought this program to St. Columbkille.

There is an understanding that true healing - of body, mind and spirit; healing of relationships, communities and societies; healing that brings about justice - this true healing is the vision of their health ministries. Such tranformative healing occurs when there is, as Pope Francis describes, a culture of encounter wherein, "heart speaks to heart."

Thank you to Barb and Gretchen for 10 years of Heart to Heart ministry!

St. Mary's in Joplin

This was how St. Mary's Catholic Church

in Joplin, Missouri looked a week ago.

This is how it looked after the tornado.

The following is a quote from the News-Leader.com based in Springfield, Missouri :

The Rev. Justin D. Monaghan is the priest for the parish, which serves nearly 650 families. Monaghan, who lives in the church rectory next door, sought safety in a bathtub when the tornado hit.

The residence was severely damaged, a spokeswoman for the Catholic diocese said, but parishioners came and helped dig their priest out. Monaghan was not injured and spent the night with a church family ...

One week before our Tornado Recovery Collection raised $3,924. That same day, in their bulletin ...

... they suggested that every family ought to have an emergency plan and an emergency kit. That way, if anything ever happened, they would be prepared.

At St Columbkille, Gretchen Reid has been suggesting that the parish ought to have a disaster plan in place so we can hep the community in case of an emergency. If you are interested in helping with that effort, contact the parish office and we'll put you in touch with Gretchen.