Always pray and never give up. - Luke 18:1

I recently came across a website that I thought was pretty neat...www.praymorenovenas.com. Basically you can sign up and get email reminders of the prayers you need to accomplish each day of a novena. So for example, my favorite Saint (and the Saint who my sweet baby girl's middle name is in honor of), St. Therese of Lisieux - her feast day is coming up on October 1. If you sign up on this website, you receive a daily prayer by email for all 9 days beginning September 22 (tomorrow!). When you check your email in the morning, you will have that reminder to pray your novena prayer!

I prayed my first novena this year, thanks to a group of women who offered to pray one with me before our daughter was born.  I have to say it was quite refreshing, and I looked forward to praying to that Saint each day. Try one out on your own and if you like it, sign up on this website and join thousands of others!

St. Therese

Oh how things have changed!

I know I am doing a terrible job at being a "regular" blogger and most likely alienating my readers, but what can I say, I'm a strong believer in absence makes the heart grow fonder!

Here are a few updates since last we met:

• Our launch of the Good Friends of the Pokot website was a huge success in it's first round and it is still up and running for those of you who would like to donate (http://pokotfriends.org/  every dollar goes a really long way!). Our first "drive" in July allowed us to send $3000 to Kenya with the new VLM this year which we were really excited about! Soon after, we received an email from Sister Pat in Chepnyal saying she was wondering how they were going to fund Cheptesok and that they were very grateful for the donation to help take care of the educational needs there. I will be in touch with the 2013 VLM shortly to get some photos and updates from this year. 
• Speaking of which, we received a letter from Gabriel, our beloved driver asking when we are coming back. Oh how I hope it will be sooner rather than later!
• Our big news - we are parents now! Our sweet baby girl Millie arrived in June and by God's grace has improved our lives more than we could've imagined! I will be like every parent now and say what is typically said about their own children: she is so stinkin' cute! Of course you may judge for yourself by looking at the photo below. Warning: be prepared to smile! :)
• We were asked by the director of VLM to speak as part of their presentation at the Vincentian Family Gathering in October. We are very honored and excited to share how the Vincentian charism has improved our lives as Young Adults and how it has influenced our volunteerism and focus on helping those in need.
• One of my favorite people in the entire world, Katie W., who served as my intern for the past 3 years, is currently serving the people of Jamaica for a full year! She left in July and will return next August. Please keep her in your prayers...and you can keep up with her year of service by clicking here. Be prepared to be challenged...and entertained, she is a delight!
• Another of my favorites in the entire world, Sr. Maria Christi (formerly known as Katie D.) has recently become a Novice with the Sister's of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George. Please keep her in your prayers as well as she continues her formation!

Our little sweet pea

I think that is it for now! I will keep you posted about our beloved friends in Chepnyal and other such life happenings. But now it is time to sign off in my usual fashion!

Things I am grateful for this day:
1) Our amazing Pope Francis...my heart bursts with love for that fantastic man of God.
2) My sweet baby girl - I thank God for her every day...and probably about a thousand times a day.
3) The Vincentian Family - that they see the importance of collaboration and gathering together to discuss how we can truly make an impact on providing to those in need and decreasing poverty...and that they know the importance of involving youth and young adults in their endeavors!

Good Friends of the Pokot Officially Launched!

So, about four months ago  (you can read about the good reason for my continued delinquency below!) I promised a link to our fundraising website for our Pokot Friends. I am proud to say that after months of hard work, we have launched "Good Friends of the Pokot" which can be found at http://pokotfriends.org/.

What is this website? The simple answer is that it is our way of continuing our service to the people and children of Chepnyal, Kenya. While there were many projects we could have assisted with, we decided to focus on education this year. I invite you to take a look at the website (http://pokotfriends.org), read about our projects and ask that you consider donating to our cause. All contributions will go directly toward the completion of the projects detailed. U.S. Dollars go a LONG way in Kenya, so no amount is too small! If you are unable to donate, we would be grateful if you could simply keep our Pokot friends in your thoughts and prayers!

After a really long day yesterday, I received a note from one of the Sister's in Thigio, Kenya which totally turned my day around and made me so happy to read. It was a response to a thank you note I had written to her for the baby blanket she knitted for our newest, upcoming family member, Baby A (Baby A as in Baby Astridge, not Baby A as in there are two - since twins do run in my family!). So our focus, while still dedicated to service to those in need, has shifted slightly to prepare ourselves for becoming parents! Good excuse for taking so long right?

Family Shower Day

Cake from my work shower -
of course it has a Giraffe, Elephant
and Monkey on it!

This was a cake one of Matt's co-workers made...
loved the baby nose-diving into the cake!

Other than the preparation and excitement surrounding our upcoming arrival, we also were able to hang out with Nick and Raelynne in February and meet some of the 2013 VLM who are current St. John's students! That was a really great trip and was so nice to spend time with everyone.

A special thanks to Kevin Manne and Buffalo Business for featuring our work in their alumni magazine! Here is a link to that article for anyone interested: http://mgt.buffalo.edu/sites/magazine/features/astridge.html

Things I am grateful for today:
1) Launching the Good Friends of the Pokot Website and continuing to support our efforts in Africa.
2) A healthy little baby who likes to kick its momma.
3) Looking back and having relief and thorough gratitude for the safe presidential elections that took place in Kenya back in March.

This is great!

This is a good read for the New Year...check it out:
http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/01/04/9-beliefs-of-highly-ineffective-people/

Happy New Year!

It’s been so long – I feel like such a slacker but part of my delay in online journaling is that I’ve been doing a lot of hand-written journaling. So archaic I know – but for some reason once we got back, it has been hard for me to be on the computer all the time. Almost seems too easy with a fast internet here in the States!

The past few months have brought many happy moments: meeting and having dinner with the Daughters of Charity at Sister’s Hospital, the October VLM retreat in Chicago (http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8IatmLZy4cMqq), meeting and having dinner with Fr. Freund, the Buffalo Vincentian gathering in November, and of course, the contact we have kept with the Sister’s in Kenya. It has been both by email and by phone, although the phone conversations are often cut off multiple times because of reception, but that’s ok, we just call right back!

We are excited to be launching our fundraising website very soon – as the adults and children of Kenya remain in our hearts, we know we need to continue to help them. We figured although it may be small, it is our way of showing them we are thinking about them and caring for them from afar. I will post that link as soon as it becomes available…it should be in the next few weeks! 

Matt and I constantly joked throughout 2012 that it was the year of nothing…only because we didn’t do many of our usual Buffalove events, like the Ride for Roswell. I am drawing a blank right now because I know there were many examples that I had from throughout the year but cannot think of them at the moment – probably because the examples themselves are not important. The beginning of the year brought a few major stresses in my life. I can remember being in Adoration feeling helpless and wondering why things were happening the way they were. I've heard the phrase so many times before, but all I can remember from that time now was finally, "letting go and letting God." I can't say it was some huge turnaround in my life, but the beginning of something that will always keep me going. 2012 really was the beginning of many, many great things for me, Matt, and our relationship with one another. Turns out the year of nothing really was the year of something great.

Four things I am so grateful for on this first day of 2013:

1) My husband. He really is awesome. 

2) The love and support we received from our families this year.

3) The best girlfriends - those who are near, and those in Alton, DC, Boston, Detroit and Hawaii whom I miss dearly.

4) Our Vincentian family here in Buffalo and throughout the world, and our friends Raelynne and Nick.

Photos and other good stuff!

Here is the link to our photos:
https://picasaweb.google.com/mastridg?authkey=Gv1sRgCJz69Mr-3t7xuAE
Basically there is a "Best of Kenya" Album, and then 10 other albums of even more photos on each aspect of the trip. I hope you enjoy them, if you have any questions feel free to ask!

I've come across a number of "good read" articles about poverty in the U.S.:

http://www.americancatholic.org/samo/Feature.aspx?articleid=109&IssueID=40

My favorite excerpt from the second one is at the end:

"Fighting poverty isn’t sexy. There are no ribbon cutting ceremonies that come with infrastructure improvements; no awe-inspiring videos like with the Mars Rover; and, perhaps most detrimental to its cause, no big checks to political coffers for passing legislation.

But by ignoring poverty, it only gets worse. And while we can keep it out of sight and out of mind for a bit longer, Obama is right. Its growth will harm our communities, our nation, and our spirits. Voters need to demand that our candidates discuss poverty, and more importantly, take steps to combat it."

Here's the full article http://bustedhalo.com/blogs/if-youre-running-for-president-poor-people-dont-matter 

Why did I include these in my post? Well, I think sometimes it's easy to forget about the poor in the United States because we are such a rich nation. And sometimes it's good to put this kind of stuff out there as a reminder that we are all responsible for one another in some way shape or form. So, some may have already asked themselves, why did I go all the way to Kenya to serve the people there when there are so many problems in the U.S.? I don't think I could have phrased my response to that question any better than my husband did:

"Everywhere you look in life there is an opportunity to try to help someone else. With such an abundance of problems who could possibly judge where a particular person is called to help? All that really matters is that an individual is compelled, and then follows through on that calling. To say helping one group over another is better or worse, one would have to judge one recipient as more deserving or needy than another. Or one would have to say that we have a duty or obligation for a particular reason to help one group over another. These are very tricky things to prove, or even argue, and they all distract from the real issue: as a worldwide community of human beings, the lack of people helping others (no matter how or to whom) is the real problem, not misdirected acts of kindness missing the "correct" recipients. So, in my opinion, go to your own communities, go to communities across the world, go to your own family -- it doesn't matter as long as you go, and you go with open, true intentions and a humble heart." 

Things I am grateful for this day:

1) The Vincentian spirit within me that helps me to continually reflect on my day, my actions and my responsibilities as a human being. 

2) Those people in my life willing to ask me challenging questions.

3) For all the fantastic little kids in Kenya who, while I was teaching some of them how to glue or watched them tend to their siblings, showed me how I want to live my life. 

Adjusting?

We have officially been back in Buffalo for two weeks. It took me about a week and a half to get my sleep schedule back in order – that was only frustrating when I’d wake up at 3:00 am, wide awake, and wondered if I should get up for the day or just stay in bed. I just stayed in bed.

Going back to work was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, I think because of how energized we were (and still are) coming off of this trip. Everything about it was so positive and I am excited to talk to people about it, and to continue to help in whatever way we can. I think we’ve also been really good about letting things go. Within two days back to work we had a conversation about how impatient drivers around us have been and how instead of letting their negative energy get to us, that we have been adamant about letting it go and just keeping ourselves calm. (Side note – not that we aren’t normally calm, but you know how easy it is to get yourself sucked into anger because some other person is riding your tail or mad you didn’t go through a yellow light, and a million of the other reasons people senselessly get angry on the road). 

The other thing that has come up, a commonly known phrase, are the “first world problems” that we have encountered. I spent an entire month without my cell phone and have definitely not had it in front of my face as often as I did before the trip, but one day last week, I forgot it and left it at home. So from 8:00 am – 8:00 pm I didn’t have access to my phone, and I’ll tell you, it felt awkward at first. The more I had time to think about it though, the more I realized how reliant people are on their phones, to the immediate communication, and how all of us (including myself) are guilty of being angry because someone didn’t respond almost immediately. Once I realized how silly that was, my lack of phone didn’t enter my mind and I responded to my text messages and voicemails when I got home that night. That is just one example of many, but the bottom line is that we have been good about not letting frivolous things get to us.

Every so often, Matt and I will stop mid-thought and just say how much we miss our Chepnyal home and family. When you spend that long in a place, especially for the purpose of integrating yourself into a community to bring about positive change, you can’t help but get attached. Granted, Matt and I entertain each other a lot while we dine, but it doesn't quite compare to sharing a meal with Sr. Pat, Sr. Sharon, Sr. Mary, Sr. Esther, and the other VLM!

Right now we are discussing ways in which we can help the people of Chepnyal with some of the projects we started while there. We were excited to hear from Sr. Sharon over the weekend who informed us that so far five women from Tamugh approached Sr. Esther about starting a business! So, over the next few weeks we are going to formulate a plan with some concrete goals and see what we can do from Buffalo. We also got in touch with the local Daughters of Charity and are going to meet with them in a few weeks to see if there is any way we can assist them here. We are very excited to continue our ministry and hope our efforts are fruitful...we will keep you posted!

 I will leave you with two things...one is the second reading from Mass this past weekend which really got me thinking (James 2:14-18), and the other is an array of photos from the Giraffe Center in Nairobi. (For those of you who may not know, I love giraffes!)

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, 

if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him?

If a brother or sister has nothing to wear

and has no food for the day,

and one of you says to them,

"Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, "

but you do not give them the necessities of the body,

what good is it?

So also faith of itself,

if it does not have works, is dead.

Indeed someone might say,

"You have faith and I have works."

Demonstrate your faith to me without works,

and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

GIRAFFES!!!

That's a Giraffe femur - and it is super heavy!

Their jaws are a little bit bigger...

Almost learned this lesson the hard way

Kelly our Giraffe friend!