This past week, Eileen and I went with some friends, the McDonalds, on a religious retreat to a convent about four hours from Green Bay. The sisters who were hosting it were a lot of fun!
One of the sisters we really enjoyed getting to know was Sister Margareta. She was very down to earth and funny. On the last day of the retreat, we did an art activity, making a poster collage of pictures and sayings from magazines. I came across a picture of our Uncle Tim, Aunt Suzy and little cousin Camille that went along with a story Tim had written for the Franciscan University of Stuebenville magazine. I cut the picture out and put it on my group's poster, proudly pointing out that these people were my family. Later, my group was showing off our poster to the sisters and the other girls, and again, I proudly pointed out our aunt, uncle and cousin. This time, Sister Margareta got excited, telling me she knew them and was good friends with Tim, and knew Suzy pretty well when they all attended college together at Franciscan U. After that funny coincidence she surprised Eileen and I again saying, "OH, and I also knew your Uncle Andy"! This got us soooo excited because we don't know many people, besides our family, who knew our Uncle Andy. He died when we were young. She went on to say how much she enjoyed being around him, and how funny he was. She also went so far as to say, "He was a true saint even before he died. It's funny how someone can just truly know things like that, and I knew it, knowing your Uncle"...That really touched us! It was a very nice "coincidental" highlight of the retreat for both Eileen and I.
So after the retreat we went to our friends' Grandparent's house for the night, where we had much fun! Then we became road warriors for the four.....er, aaaah six hour ride home. Because of some flooding in near-by WI towns, there was a lot of detours and traffic which added two hours onto our ride. We kept our patience and made the best of it, laughing the whole way home!
