Candidacy - day 25 - Evening prayer

Our evening schedule is usually dinner at 6:00 PM followed by evening prayer. Tonight, Carol is in bed with a terrible cold. So, it's just Meg and me. It's interesting that Anglican and Episcopalian churches do Vespers (evening prayer), Compline (night prayer), and morning prayer as part of regularly scheduled liturgies. We have lost that tradition in the Catholic Church.

Meg leading evening prayer tonight.

In the above picture, behind Meg, is one of three tabernacles that Margaret Bannan, who was then provincial, brought back from Indonesia. What is significant in the picture is its location -- the dining room. So, in order to make room for me in the house. Carol and Meg moved their chapel. It landed in the dining room where we do evening prayer every day.

Oh, what is a "provincial"? Well, in the United States, the congregation has three regional areas called provinces.  There's one each on the East coast, in the Mid-West, and on the West coast. This province on the West coast is the St. Francis province. The provincial minister heads up the province, Or, as freedictionary.com defines provincial: "the head of a major territorial subdivision of a religious order"

Candidacy - Day 24 @ Nesta's

This was my Saturday. The day started at the gym. I watched TV while walking on the treadmill.

After working out, I drove to San Francisco to pick up my Domincan friend, Dolorice, who will be celebrating her 85th birthday on January 1st (for the second time, we found out one day when we did the math). We arrived at Nesta's house and helped put up Christmas decorations. This is Dolorice watching Janice (my St. Elizabeth's high school buddy as well as my former principal when I taught) put up Christmas lights on the balcony.

Then, Janice (who was Maid of Honor at our wedding before she joined the Domicans) and Dolorice worked on decorations.

After the decorations were up, we couldn't play Christmas music. Nesta, Janice's mom, was a bit dismayed that the CD player wouldn't work. We ended up going to Fry's to get a new CD player which, when we got it home, didn't work either. We gave up on the CDs and played MP3s.

Nesta, who proclaimed me her first adopted daughter when I was a teenager, makes Burmese style chicken curry.

Driving to evening Mass at St. Clement's Church in Hayward.

Arriving home after Mass with the Christmas lights on at the house.

The end of a curry chicken meal with Nesta's neighbors, Ian and Patty, and Dolorice with empty plates. What's missing is a picture of the plate of cream puffs Patty, a superlative baker, made. They were gone quickly. We ate them.

That was my delightful Saturday. I drove Dolorice home to San Francisco and then myself back home to Redwood City. So, Saturdays while living with Meg and Carol are "free days." Oh, for Janice's 25th jubilee in 2003, she was given a week of a time-share in Hawaii. If you want to see a picture of us at a luau, look at the April 23, 2012 blog posting.