Host: Larkins
Attendees: Larkins, Pedroza (Frank), Burchett (Ken), Hales, Penns, Bells
Opened with a prayer for Engaged Encounter
O' Mary our Mother, with your motherly care, please pray with us now for all the couples and families who serve in Catholic Engaged Encounter around the world. Give your maternal protection to all the team couples, priests, and helpers who make Engaged Encounter possible. Together we pray:
Heavenly Father, please protect all who serve you in this apostolate. Guide us in everything we do and give us the wisdom and commitment needed to glorify you and to build Your Kingdom and your Church.
O' Jesus, our brother, we offer you our service in Engaged Encounter in gratitude for your love poured out on the cross on Good Friday. Please help us, so that all we do will be just as you want it to be. May we truly serve engaged couples with your love and joy; and so, enrich their future marriages and families.
Amen
Agenda:
- 2010 Dates - Dates are set and posted online. Pedrozas are working on getting the registration forms updated and sent out to the parishes. Next year we should start the date setting process earlier.
- 2010 Team Schedule - There are holes in the presenting team schedule for 2010. See the schedule here. I'm not sure when we need to become concerned about this issue. If there are weekends currently scheduled for other team couples that would work, please consider reaching out and arranging a switch.
- Hotel News - La Quinta raised our rates for 2010 from $56 to $58.50 for the rooms. They originally asked for $62, but we countered with $58.50. I believe the increase was due to lower 2009 numbers than we had told them. At the same time, increasing rates in this economy is hard to understand/justify. Had we started the date process earlier, maybe we could have done more looking around before agreeing to the increase. Pedrozas did visit the Best Western ($49 per night) in Midvale per a contact Veola suggested, but the space wouldn't really work for us for various reasons. Do we want to put more effort into finding other hotel alternatives? We are under no contractual obligations with La Quinta. Janice (our contact there) said we could cancel a weekend given enough notice without any issues. Last thing about the hotel is that Janice mentioned the possibility of setting up the other conference space (assuming it's not being used) for our meals. Pedrozas will follow up with this possibility and confirm that there would be no additional cost.
- Retreat Center - BIG ISSUE OF DISCUSSION was the Episcopal retreat center. Pedrozas and Karen Penn toured the site last month and were extremely impressed (Pedrozas will try to visit again and get some photos). It would be great if we could make it work (logistically and financially). The cost seems prohibitive and space is limited to 10 engaged couples, but the possibility of a retreat center was identified (at the Pedroza LC discernment in Mar 09) as our community's #2 goal. Our community's #1 goal was exploring a 2 day weekend. There would be A LOT of stuff to work out and tweak to make the 2 day weekend at the retreat center work, but it was decided by the meeting attendees to set a goal of having two weekends at the retreat center (Sep & Nov 2010). Pedrozas to confirm with retreat center contact to see if the dates are available, and what flexibility we would have if we needed to stay with the hotel. It was decided that we would give ourselves until July 2010 to determine if these weekends will take place at the retreat center. Obviously, the presenting teams (currently Painters and Larkins; no senior couples signed up yet) for those weekends need to be aware of this possible change. Clearly, this is an issue that require further discussion and continued preparation. Maybe we should start a separate email chain or something to continue the discussion? This will for sure be on each meeting agenda until a final decision is made by the community.
- Hosting - Pedrozas reiterated the value in having a host couple for each weekend (despite their recent attempts to go without) and brought up the idea of having the presenting teams help arrange the hosting for the following weekend (i.e. if Pedrozas did Aug weekend, they would help find a host for the Sep weekend). The hope here is that what if we could get a couple from the weekend to host the following weekend as a baby step into the community. I think we each have some level of connection with at least one couple from each weekend we present and we would have a feel for whether or not a certain couple would be willing to co-host. I say 'co-host' because clearly we couldn't just say "Go host this weekend" to a couple that has never hosted. The idea would be the previous presenting couple (Pedrozas in this example) would co-host with the recent EE alumni (no, the host couple doesn't have to be married to host by the way). This is certainly something that requires further discussion, but is something that I think we could explore and would like to get feedback on. No worries Lazinskis, you're not out of a job - we're just trying to explore new ways to keep in contact with the engaged in hopes of building the community.
- Sister Community - During the Friday enrichment at the convention, the unit and district leaders introduced a new idea... that of a sister community. What that means is that each EE community would have another community that they communicate with, share ideas, pray for, etc. My impression was that this would be a reminder to each community to that we're all part of a larger community; Engaged Encounter as a whole. I think those of us who were able to attend the convention would affirm that this is a feeling that each of us left with. I know JoAnna and I did. During the enrichment, Jo & I, as representatives of our community were given a cross with the following inscription on it:
"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" Joshua 24:15
On the back of the cross is the name of our sister community, San Bernadino, CA. I believe the communities were assigned so that each sister community would be in a different unit (San Bernadino is in Unit 4). Jo and I will try to remember to bring the cross to our next meeting. Pedrozas are asking for someone to reach out to our sister community and at least establish contact. We would like to make some attempt to see if the sister community idea can work. Please respond if you are able to take this first step.
Based on the info on the national site, here is a link to the San Bernadino website and the contact info for the LCs.
James & Lisa Platske (engagedencounter@att.net)
I noticed, however, that that according to their site, Mitchell & Irena Norton (inorton@shbllp.com) are the LCs so I can't say which is correct. - Convention Wrapup - We discussed some post convention thoughts for the convention report that the Penns will be sending out. We talked about what worked, what didn't, likes, dislikes, etc. Financially, the convention was a huge success. The seed money we received to get the convention going was around $6K. I believe we will be sending over $14K onto district and the next convention. Thank you all once again for helping to make the convention a wonderful (and successful) event.
- Reminders
November 20-22 - Unit meeting in El Paso for unit discernment
Saturday, November 21 - This was the original date scheduled for our new community meeting. Currently, we don't have a host for this meeting. At the same time, Pedrozas will be in El Paso for the unit meeting so rescheduling (depending on what we want to do for the meeting) may be necessary. Is anyone able to host that day or another? We don't have a December meeting scheduled so we could certainly push the meeting to another date. Whoever is able to host can decide what sort of meeting it would be. Clearly, there are items from above that warrant further discussion. We would like to get this meeting scheduled within 2 weeks so that people can make arrangements to attend. - No tequila and no seal despite JP's promise :-(
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