SEEK 2013 Promotion Week

The first week of October, our FOCUS team put into action our SEEK2013 marketing plan. SEEK2013 is the FOCUS national conference that will be happening in Orlando, Florida from January 2-6. The purpose of the conference is to help college students answer the most important questions in life, such as "Does God exist? Does truth exist?" Through this experience we hope they will encounter the love of Jesus Christ and desire to grow in a personal relationship with Jesus while coming back to Loras and sharing their joy for the faith with others!

We had a detailed and extensive marketing plan, including renting Mickey and Minnie Mouse costumes to highlight the fact that the conference will be in Orlando at the Swan and Dolphin Resort in Walt Disney World. Here are just a few of the things our week consisted of:

Stacey and Aly were in charge of the walkway. It looked awesome and helped spread the word on campus!

We spent over an hour on Sunday night chalking all over campus "SEEK What Moves You."

In the main building on campus we one whole wall to put up our materials.

Maria was in charge of making the small posters and did an excellent job!

Aly designed t-shirts for the missionaries and the student leaders and we wore them all week long.

Then comes Mickey and Minnie....this was quite the adventure! All the missionaries took turns wearing the costumes and we had a detailed schedule for when and where Mickey and Minnie would appear on campus.

Tyler had to try on the head right when they arrived!

Mickey and Minnie walking around the track on campus (photo by KWWL news who was there to cover Paul Ryan)

Mickey and Minnie dancing (We will never forget this moment...we were dancing to our wedding mix using Tyler's computer!)

Mickey and Minnie checking out the pub and cafeteria.

Mickey with some student leaders and missionaries

Lots of students wanted pictures with the characters!

We ended the week by tabling on Thursday and Friday, letting students know what SEEK2013 is all about, and giving them information on how to sign up for the conference.

The following week we had two info nights where we gave more information to the students and provided them materials to help with fundraising for the cost of the conference. 

I think all the missionaries were ready for the week to be over. We put a ton of effort and time into promoting SEEK2013 and pray that many students will answer God's call and come! Check out the website at seek2013.com for videos and more information!

And to finish it all off...check out these videos of Mickey and guess who it is:)

Chopped Champions!

Have you ever seen the show "Chopped" on the Food Network? It's quite a favorite in the Rosser household. A few weeks ago Tyler, being the sweet and thoughtful husband that he is, had a brilliant idea! He went to Hy-Vee, picked up four mystery ingredients, and I competed (against myself) in my first ever Chopped experience!  (And yes, we even put the ingredients in a basket and opened them when the time started! If you haven't watched the show, you should check it out. It's intense!)

My mystery ingredients were celery, cheese curds, Asian noodles, and chicken wings. In the real show, the contestants get 20 minutes to prepare an appetizer. I got 30 minutes and used every second!

I ended up making beer battered chicken wings (good idea, but batter didn't stick) with poppy seed Asian noodle stir-fry (tasted interesting) and cheese curds in celery (which Tyler called juvenile....) He was quite the judge...which made me excited when it came around to his turn a week later!

I really enjoyed walking around Hy-Vee and picking the mystery ingredients. I knew I wanted to get shrimp, and when I was in the organic section found salted pumpkin seeds. I also picked up a pineapple (wanted to use mango, but knew neither of us know much about that fruit...and I didn't want to make it too hard on my darling husband. But it turns out he had never cut into a pineapple before so that was an adventure!) and the last ingredient was buttermilk biscuits.

I was very impressed with Tyler's creativity. He also got 30 minutes and finished right on time getting everything onto the plate. He boiled the shrimp and then breaded them with a mixture of pineapple, pumpkin seeds, and oil. That was my favorite part of the dish and it tasted great! Everything else, as you can see, made it on the plate but didn't really get transformed...but I wasn't as tough of a judge as he was!

So we decided that we are BOTH Chopped Champions! And we are excited for the next adventure of making a main course sometime in the future...

Salsa

My parents joined us in Dubuque over Labor Day and we went to the Farmer's Market where we found a salsa basket for $4! Mom and I enjoyed making the salsa and figuring out what everything was in the basket, while the guys enjoyed watching football and eating the salsa! (Tyler did make his delicious guacamole!)

 

Ingredients: 20 small tomatoes, 2 small onions, 2 tomatillos, 8 cloves of garlic, different kinds of chili peppers, lime, and cilantro 

Wash everything

Cut up tomatoes and tomatillos

Roast peppers in oven until blackened (about 15-20 minutes on broil)

Put peppers in bowl and cover with plastic wrap for about 20 minutes (helps to remove skins)

Wearing gloves, take off the skins and the seeds of the peppers

Mince onions, garlic, and cilantro

Combine tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, garlic, onion, and cilantro; mix to desired texture

Stir in juice of one lime

 We were surprised at how much better this salsa was than the kind from the store! It was a lot of work, but definitely a fun adventure!

Dubuque in the Fall

We've been enjoying a beautiful, although chilly, fall here in Dubuque!

The Mississippi riverwalk

This is one of our favorite places

The view from our apartment

Loras Campus

Trees around Dubuque

Duhawk FOCUS

We are well into our second year with FOCUS and are really thankful to be back at Loras College. What a blessing it is to already know students and be picking up with friendships we started last year!

We'd like to introduce you to our team for this year! We believe God has amazing things in store this year because he has given us a team of eight!

(From left to right)
Stacey is returning with us this year and is also in her second year with FOCUS. Aly is a first year Varsity Catholic missionary and it's such a blessing to have her reach out to the female athletes! Courtney is a Campus Intern and will graduate from Loras in December and then will be placed on a FOCUS campus in the Spring. Craig is a first year missionary and is joined by his wife, Maria, who along with Dene', is taking on a new role on campus as Affiliate Missionaries. I am the Team Director and am privileged to step into this leadership role. Not pictured is our second Campus Intern, Meagan, who is doing an internship in Davenport, IA and joins us about once a night on campus.

Being a FOCUS Missionary is unlike any other job in the world. We are investing in college students, some who are on fire for their faith, others who label themselves as Catholic and that is as far as they go, and some who have hurts and questions about the Church and aren't ready to take the leap yet. That is what makes our calling so beautiful. We meet them where they are at, and then invite them into a relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church.

Every day we start out in St. Joseph's Chapel to pray for an hour. We have all found this to be vital in our efforts to be centered on Christ and to follow His call each day. So many times we feel burdened by the amount of emails, meetings, or things on our to-do lists. This is where the Main Thing comes in handy! Recalling what we are here to do helps us keep focused and have our eye on the prize.

The Main Thing

Inviting college students into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church.
Inspiring and equipping them for a lifetime of Christ-centered evangelization,
discipleship, and friendship in which they lead others to do the same.
_________________

Mission Statement

To know Christ Jesus, and to fulfill His great commission by first living and then
communicating the fullness of life within the family of God, the Church.

After prayer we are filled with God's love and grace and ready to go share that with others! No one day is the same in the life of a FOCUS Missionary! Mondays we meet for two hours in the afternoon to work on fundraising; Tuesdays we have a meeting with our Chaplain, Fr. Gross; Wednesdays we have a tactical team meeting for an hour in the morning; and Fridays we join the Campus Ministry staff for a two hour meeting. But what we all really love to do is to be with students. Our weeks are centered around Bible studies, one-on-one discipleships, and Impact Studies, which are advanced Bible studies with our 29 student leaders.

We are all called to share Christ with others, and we are blessed to be called to do this full-time at Loras College. Thank you all for your support and prayers! We definitely feel your prayers and couldn't do this without you. We are all a team and are praying for you and your intentions daily!

"Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord."
Romans 12:11

Reflections on the Rosary

Tyler gave me this Rosary the night he proposed

Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, a feast that I discovered for the first time last year when we were in Rome and Deacon Victor (now Father Victor!) celebrated his first Mass as a Deacon in a beautiful church with a picture of Mary up above the altar. Someone mentioned it was the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and we all prayed a Rosary together after Mass.

My first memories of the Rosary are praying it as a family in the van on our way to St. John's in Lincoln. This is when we lived in Waverly and it was about a 20 minute drive, which was perfect timing to say the Rosary!

I am thankful for my parents who helped Ashley and I come to know about this devotion.

Another memory of the Rosary is from my mission trips to Gallup, New Mexico when I was in high school and college. I remember the Missionaries of Charity, who always had a Rosary with them, would say a part of the Rosary, or a decade, throughout the day. I would be driving the 10 passenger SUV through the outskirts of town, going to pick up children for the Vacation Bible School, and the two sisters would start a decade when they got into the SUV, and then when they finished would sing a few songs. I would drop off those sisters, pick up other sisters, and again they would start a decade of the Rosary. Looking back, God was cultivating in my heart a love for Mary and these prayers and now I am in the habit of saying a decade here or there throughout the day.

I remember when Tyler and I were dating, while he was at Ave Maria, FL and I was in Lincoln, when we got to talk throughout the day, Tyler would say he was praying for me. Sometimes he would text me randomly and say, "I just said a decade for you." Now being married, what a joy it is to say the Rosary together!

I am afraid that the Rosary is not always understood, or that people, me included, don't comprehend the full beauty behind this prayer!

In The Secret of the Rosary, by St. Louis de Montfort, he describes the origin of this devotion. It was the year 1214 and the Blessed Virgin Mary gave this prayer to St. Dominic who then spread the devotion throughout the world. St. Louis de Montfort writes that the Rosary is made up of  mental prayer and vocal prayer; mental prayer by meditating on the life, death, and glory of Jesus Christ and of His Blessed Mother, and vocal prayer by saying the Hail Mary while meditating on and contemplating the fifteen principle virtues which Jesus and Mary practised in the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. (p.17)

In the book Rome Sweet Home by Scott and Kimberly Hahn, they talk about their hesitancy with the Rosary before they became Catholic. They were afraid it was vain repetition to repeat the prayers over and over, let alone pray to Mary. Then they came to realize that the more a child says to their mother, "I love you," the more the child honors and loves her mother. Same with us when we say the Hail Mary over and over, we are telling Jesus and Mary that we love them.

In regards to praying to Mary, what really stands out to me is how Jesus told us to honor our father and mother, and we know that Mary is the Mother of Jesus, therefore the Mother of God. So when we pray to Mary, we are honoring Jesus. (Another way to think of it is an artist loves when someone admires his masterpiece, because he created it and receive the praise. Mary is God's masterpiece, so when we honor her we are honoring her Creator, who is God.)

I have a deep love for the Rosary, and I know this is a grace from God and that it has grown throughout my life, especially in the past two years when I have been more faithful and devout in praying the Rosary. I want to leave you with a few last thoughts about this devotion, which come from Jeff Cavins's chapter in Catholic for a Reason II: Scripture and the Mystery of the Mother of God:

• "That is why I like to think of each bead as the heartbeat of Jesus, and my goal is that my heart would beat in unison with His." 
• "Mary brings the mundane things of our lives into the radius of Christ's mission and power!...She voluntarily steps into the middle between Christ and us and says, 'These are the needs they have.'"
• "And so Mary lives out not a role or duty but a love: she delightedly acts like the Mother she is because God in His power and omniscience delights to have it so."

And finally, St. Louis de Montfort gives us a beautiful image to think about while praying the Hail Mary and the Our Father. 

 "Our Lady has shown her thorough approval of the name Rosary (which means 'Crown of Roses'): she has revealed to several people that each time they say a Hail Mary they are giving her a beautiful rose and that each complete Rosary makes her a crown of roses." (p. 26)

 

"Every time people say the Rosary devoutly they place a crown of red and white roses upon the heads of Jesus and Mary. Being heavenly flowers these roses will never fade or lose their exquisite beauty." (p. 26)

Paul Ryan at Loras

Last Monday, Loras hosted a political rally for Paul Ryan. He is from Wisconsin, about two hours from Dubuque, and was starting a bus tour around the state of Iowa.

The Loras College Republicans club was active in supporting this event, as well as getting the word out on campus. We usually have team dinners on Monday night, so instead we went to this as a team after Mass.

Our Teammate Courtney 

The doors opened at 4:30pm and we got there after Mass ended at 6pm, so not surprisingly we weren't able to get into the Field House where Ryan was speaking since they were already at capacity. So we gathered with the other hundreds of people outside the Field House and waited. (Thankfully this was before the weather started to pretend it was winter so it wasn't unbearably cold!)

It was very interesting to hear Ryan speak. He is a dynamic speaker and told a few jokes making the crowd laugh! His grandfather went to Loras and even added in his speech several times, "Go Duhawks!" (which is the mascot at Loras, a Dubuque Hawk...)

His wife and three children were with him and afterwards came out to speak to us for a minute. Random thought: have you ever wondered about the wife of the vice-president? I hadn't before I saw Mrs. Ryan. We looked it up, and she is called the Second Lady. Since 1974, there has been a house designated for the Vice President and his family, located on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory. Kind of interesting...

The New Evangelization

Today is the start of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization. Having been to Rome a year ago this week (and going again two weeks from today!!) AND being FOCUS Missionaries where our job is to evangelize...this hits right at home!

This is the 25th Synod of Bishops and is dedicated to "The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith." Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of Christ the Redeemer), "the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples." Who knew that the successor of John Paul II would make the New Evangelization the focal point of his pontificate!

The Synod is meeting in Rome from October 7-28. What is a Synod of Bishops? The term "synod" means "going forward together." As Ralph Martin of Renewal Ministries stated, "The Synod will include about 200 bishops and cardinals from around the world, some elected by their national bishops' conferences, some appointed by the Pope." In addition to the Bishops there are about 40 "experts" and 40 "auditors" who don't vote but are involved in the small group discussions and have a chance to speak.

We can see that the Holy Spirit has been at work and is continuing to work, because FOCUS started 15 years ago and is all about evangelization! Not only that...our founder, Curtis Martin, was appointed by Pope Benedict to be one of the experts or auditors and will be with the Bishops in Rome!

Okay...it gets even more exciting! Curtis Martin extended the invitation to leaders in FOCUS to join him in Rome at the end of the council for a leadership training! That means we are going, along with our teammate Stacey, to join over 50 other FOCUS Missionaries from Oct. 21-28. What a privilege it will be to be in Rome for the last week of the synod, to be fasting and praying for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit! And of course we'll take tons of pictures and blog about everything! Check out this website to read more about this amazing opportunity!

What is the New Evangelization? Evangelization refers to missionary outreach. According to John Allen Jr, who writes for the National Catholic Reporter, he quoted Croatian Archbishop Nikola Eterović, the secretary of the Synod of Bishops, who defined new evangelization by distinguishing three different kinds of missionary effort:

• evangelization as a regular activity of the church, directed at practicing Catholics;
• the mission ad gentes, meaning the first proclamation of Christ to non-Christian persons and peoples;
• "new evangelization," meaning outreach to baptized Catholics who have become distant from the faith.

 (To read more from this article, check out his link here.)

Pope Paul VI first stated "The Church exists to evangelize." In today's homily from the opening of the Synod, Pope Benedict XVI repeated those words and added, "In every time and place, evangelization always has as its starting and finishing points Jesus Christ, the Son of God." He went on to say, "The Synodal Assembly which opens today is dedicated to this new evangelization, to help these people encounter the Lord, who alone fills our existence with deep meaning and peace; and to favour the rediscovery of the faith, that source of grace which brings joy and hope to personal, family and social life."

He ended with this, which I believe is a beautiful prayer and I invite you to keep Pope Benedict, the Bishops, and all the people gathered in Rome for these three weeks in your prayers!

"Dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust the work of the Synod meeting to God, sustained by the communion of saints, invoking in particular the intercession of great evangelizers, among whom, with much affection, we ought to number Blessed Pope John Paul II, whose long pontificate was an example of the new evangelization. Let us place ourselves under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the New Evangelization. With her let us invoke a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that from on high he may illumine the Synodal assembly and make it fruitful for the Church’s journey today, in our time. Amen." (To read the full text of Pope Benedict's homily, click here.)