Where have we been? What have we been doing?

Well in answer to the blog post title we have been plenty of places and doing plenty of things - except updating our blog!  Oops, sorry about that.  Now we shall fix that and bring you up to speed with all our goings on.  Hopefully over the next week we will get you all updated and back on track. 

Before Christmas we had our Advent Mission, the Open House Christmas Dinner, some community days out and a bit of fun.  We were off for 2 weeks over Christmas, much needed time for rest and relaxation.  We came back after Christmas refreshed and ready to go again - which is good since we haven't stopped since!!

Since Christmas we have had our Parish Christmas dinner, cookathon, our second assignment, and now a retreat.  Busy busy.  In the next few posts we will update about some of these events with some pictures also.

Our Relaxing Retreat

The lovely Chapel at the
Vocations Centre

Recently we returned to the Southwark Vocations Centre in Whitstable for a short retreat. Once again Fr. Stephen made us all very welcome. The main theme of the retreat was to prepare us for this time of Advent we are just about to begin, particularly with our upcoming Advent Mission!!

Since our last visit the centre has come along well, new sofas downstairs, new and improved pillows on the beds, but still the odd armchair in the downstairs toilet.

Keeping watch out at the beach

The retreat itself was great, we had plenty of time for recollection, to look back on our first couple of months together and to see how we are going to approach the rest of the time here. We had plenty of prayer and meditation led by Fr. Stephen, providing us with some great talks on Advent, Mass and other such things.

A bit of piano to entertain us

We also had the pleasure of being joined by two Australian seminarians, Marcus and Trevor, who are staying at St Patrick's through ‘till just after Christmas, so they provided plenty of hymns and chants for our prayer, as well as chocolate cake to accompany regular tea sessions.

The singing nuns
that have a 'habit'
of moving around the place

We are all back now, refreshed and excited to begin the Advent mission. (More info to come)