The Return of the Blogger

+JMJ+
After a long hiatus, I am back to blogging!  Hopefully regularly.

So what has happened since the last time I posted?  SO MUCH!  Here's a few highlights:

• I have moved again!!!  And am now in a "permanent" home for the next two and a half months.  Woohoo!!  I really cannot believe that I am living here.  I step out my front door, look to the left, and I see the colonnades of St. Peter's.  It is such a grace and a blessing!  Really though, everyday, it is so hard to believe.  All I can do is thank God and just be in awe.

  

  Mama mia!

• The students from the USA arrived on Friday!!! YAY!  There are sixteen of us all together now. We are quickly becoming one big, happy, American family.  We live in a building with two apartments upstairs and two downstairs.

  

  The common room...we are working on coming up with a more appropriate name for the room  where we take our meals and transform into a cafe style hang out place.  This was a little banquet we held to celebrate a long day of successful scavenger hunting.

• Also on Friday, I took my Italian test!  Some things I knew, some things I didn't.  On Monday, we got our tests back and went over them.  By the grace of God, somehow I did not fail!!!  But really, I am pretty sure the Holy Spirit basically did the prepositions section of the test.  I am so bad at prepositions.  I guessed on almost all of them and only missed one.  Here, the Lord had another (there have been so many) opportunity to close the door to the possibility of me studying at Santa Croce; again, He kept the the door wide open.  So, on Monday I will attend the school Mass to open the academic year, and on Tuesday I will start my classes at Santa Croce.  Thanks and glory be to God!!!
• Also on Monday, we had a party at school to celebrate the end of the Italian course.  You really cannot imagine what this was like.  Seriously, I could not believe that this happened.  Basically, everyone came into the biggest classroom and groups of priests (there were a few lay people too) would come up and sing a song, always reflecting the culture of their home country.  Some of them even danced or played guitar.  AND everyone loved it!!  They all had their cameras out, videoing the groups.  People participated like it was a completely normal thing.  It was so funny and so awesome!!

  

  See this?  Yep, not even joking.

• Here a few giant blessings the Lord has sprinkled throughout the past two weeks:
• Mass said by some of my classmates on the altar over the tomb of St. Peter
• Mass said by Cardinal Burke on the tomb of Blessed John Paul II.  On the same morning, we ran into a Polish Cardinal we knew and his secretary, an awesome Polish priest we met last semester.
• North American College deaconate ordinations in St. Peter's, followed by a beautiful reception at the NAC where we got to greet the newly ordained deacons and where I ran into quite a few people I knew

  

  The deaconate ordinations of 41 men studying to be priests to serve the Lord in the USA!!  Get ready for an awesome gift, homeland!!

• I ran into Fr. Hasser, an awesome priest from my home diocese, HERE in Rome, TWICE, UNPLANNED!!!  That made me so so happy.
• I have been so very happy.  Thanks be to God!  So much grace...can't even handle it.  But really, I definitely couldn't handle anything without the grace of God.  I hope the Lord is planning to inundate me with even MORE graces as my classes start on Tuesday!  I will need it!!