Gleaning for Turnips

We gleaned for the first time this past Saturday! Turnip gleaning. This experience was almost allowed to slip by me. I wasn't going to attend. I was coming off of a lousy week. You know that kind that makes you feel like your putting out a tremendous amount of effort but very little gets accomplished. Day after day of feeling like your running in place draining all motivation and life from you. I was hoping to use my weekend with only a 'light load' of three kids to take care of business around the house and get some preplanning done for the upcoming week in hopes to make it better than the last one. However, the thought of getting my hands dirty on a farm sounded quite therapeutic after such a rough couple of days--to just forget everything, get some fresh air and get dirty. Heck, why not?! Besides, I'm trying to put together my Portraits of Produce series for Art Charity and I needed one of those turnips to model for my drawing. What better, more intimate way, to get to know my food source from the local farmers than to go out and pull it from the earth myself!

 

As an added bonus, one of these 10 lb bags of turnips was going to be donated to Adam McArthur and his family. The rest would be distributed to various food pantries, ministries, shelters, and needy families. Such a cause is worthy of a day off of housework and lesson planning!

 

Marker-Miller Farm Winchester, VA.





The turnip field and gleaning volunteers.



The largest turnip came in at over 5 lbs!




My 4 year old daughter, Olivia, had a blast picking turnips. I swear
she has some 'farmer' in her blood. She picked for close to 2 hours
never stopping, never complaining, having the time of her life!
 

The day was really geared towards children. There was a free lunch, contests,
and prizes. Olivia was even named Turnip Queen!



A beautiful sight! A mountain of 10 lb bags of turnips!
 

All mine!

And so it ended up being a  wonderful day! So much better than staying home for a 'catch up day'. It was a special day for my three youngest daughters, especially my Olivia. We've caught the gleaning bug! I hear there are apple, green bean, peaches, and potato gleanings in our area to name a few.

 

You'll be seeing these lovely ladies to the right again. This is my stash for art and cooking--hand picked! From the field, to the studio, to the kitchen they go :)





Art Charity

I've discovered a way to incorporate everything I do. Lay Missionary of Charity (service), St. Catherine's Apprentice (art), Spiritual Homesteading (blog), MaryJane Farmgirl Sisterhood (earning awesome merit badges), Team McArthur (charity and community). . . . all rolled into one makes Art Charity! Art Charity will be an extension of my art business, which I pursued for my MaryJane entrepreneur badge. I've written that my whole desire behind my business was never to be successful, but to put my art to service. Art Charity is the fruit that desire! My St. Catherine's Apprentice website and this blog will be the canvas to share this.

So those who read this blog already have already met Adam McArthur. He will be the first to receive these donations. But I'd like to expand this service beyond Team McArthur to other charitable causes. My own unique way of giving~using art to spread love!


So here's my blurb:

St. Catherine's Apprentice would like to present Art Charity!! All profits received from this series of drawings will go to charity. Each series will be inspired by and created specifically for a certain charitable cause. It’s art for a cause!

The first Recipient for Art Charity profits will be the McArthur Family! Adam McArthur is a husband and father of 3, diagnosed with brain cancer. His family is in need of donations to continue his cancer treatments and assist with their daily living expenses. You can read more about Adam on Healer in Your Heart and on the Team McArthur Facebook page set up to raise awareness for his condition and support for the family.

An imperative component of Adam’s cancer treatment is his food. He is on a strict gluten-free, sugar-free, vegetarian diet.  Therefore this series will be called Portraits of Produce: the McArthur Collection. Raising awareness for Adam, brain cancer, natural cancer treatment options, organic foods and local farmers, this collection will include a weekly drawing inspired by locally grown, organic produce item purchased from area farmer markets.  Each “portrait” of a fruit or veggie will be coupled with a tasty recipe and farm highlights.

It's going to be exciting! God willing, this will only be a precurser to a larger project I have in store called Saints and Veggies.

Save a farm. Buy local.

Support Adam. Buy art J

Team McArthur Yard Sale Fundraiser

 

Follow that sign!! From the flea market to the yard sale. . .

 

Saturday Oct. 27, 2012

Luckily, the weather held out for us despite being cloudy and overcast the entire day. We had a steady flow of yard sale patrons for a majority of the time. We are so grateful to everyone who donated items or bought them, or like me, did BOTH! What?! There was some good stuff there. :) And when you're sitting there all day looking at these things, a few items are bound to catch your eye!

So what's next you ask? We are in the workings of a Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night with a tentative date of November 27th. Vanessa McArthur just launched the new web page Healer in Your Heart that raises awareness about Adam's condition and aids Team McArthur in our fundraising efforts. You can track us there or on the Team McArthur Facebook page.

Team McArthur Flea Market Fundraiser

On Saturday October 20, 2012 Team McArthur set up two tables at a local flea market. Friends and church members donated an amazing number of items. A garage full, in fact, many of them brand new! It was a wonderful experience and we met some terrific people at the market with their own stories to share of loved ones who have battled or are battling cancer. We made an outstanding profit from this event!!! It will go a long ways to assisting the McArthurs with Adam's treatments. What didn't get sold at the flea market will have a second chance this coming Saturday in a follow up yard sale.

 

 

 

A couple of our "junior" volunteers.

One of our two tables. . .

The story of Mother Teresa and Adam McArthur continued...

I've just completed a day of home school, picked up my oldest daughter from her school, cleaned up a mess of a house, the younger kids are tucked away for a few moments--I've got my hot country peach tea, I'm sitting down in front of my computer ready to continue telling you the story of Adam McArthur and Mother Teresa.

Alright. Where was I?

The prayer from India, that's right! Tracked it down today.

Almighty and powerful God, nothing is impossible to you.You worked so many miracles while walking on this sinful world. The blind received sight, the lame walked, the dead brought back to life. Listen to the prayers of this humble LMC group in union with our Blessed Mother Teresa and grant a speedy healing to Adam McArthur from brain cancer. We ask this through your mighty name. Amen.

 

 

That is one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard. It almost brought tears to my eyes.

 

 

I still didn't have a relic though. I still didn't know really where to look. I was having a heck of a time getting in touch with Sr. Clovis, the new Supior General of the convent, who ironically (again) was the very sister I drove around D.C. during my first Missionary of Charity visit years before. She had recently switched houses and was now the sister I needed to speak with that had the authority to make the decision on the relic.

 

Back on August 31st, Vanessa had posted to our online chat group that she was feeling drawn to a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I had recommended she visit Monsignor John Esseff's web page called Building a Kingdom of Love: The Triumph of the Sacred Heart to see if she could glean some spiritual nuggets from it. You see, Msgr. Esseff was one of the two retreat directors when I attended my first and only LMC retreat a few years before. He is totally amazing. He's a priest of over 50 years, a former exorcist, a spiritual director and confessor of Mother Teresa, who met and is a spiritual child of Saint Padre Pio, who to this day is a retreat director to the Missionaries of Charity around the world. I could write an entire blog post about my experience at that LMC retreat years before, it made such an impression on me. I've been following him ever since. So anyways, her mention of the Sacred Heart made me recall Msgr. Esseff.

 

That one reply I made days before recommending the site was important but at the time an isolated incident. It was made before being given the mission to find a relic. I thought since his web page was proving to be a help for Vanessa I'd email him and ask for his prayers. In that same email I relayed the chain of events that had me now seeking a Mother Teresa relic. I asked if he'd join me in seeking her intercession and say a prayer or point me in the right direction in finding this relic--as I truly felt JUST finding a relic of hers would take a small miracle, it seemed so impossible of a task. That was on September 3rd.

 

September 4th, I received a reply email. He had prayed for Adam and had a second class relic he was willing to send to the McArthurs if I forwarded him their address! WHAT?! Had I done it? Was that small miracle taking place and my mission being fulfilled? All it took was one email? My heart was about to beat out of my chest. Of course I got the address to him ASAP.

 

September 5th, Monsignor mailed out the relic. September 5th. Mother's feast day! (Ironically?!)

 

I am pleased to report from Vanessa that Adam prays with that relic every day and sleeps with it under his pillow at night. I love that part! Seeing how he has brain cancer keeping that relic close to his head--under his pillow--where he needs the healing. I say that because whenever I pray for him and pray for Mother Teresa's healing of his tumors I envision her gently, lovingly, placing her two hands on Adam's hair and leaning in to kiss his head. A kiss of healing. A kiss of peace. A kiss of love.

 

I told you yesterday that I would conclude this story. But this story is yet to have an ending. It really has only begun a new chapter. And God is the only one who knows how it will end. I told Vanessa back on August 31st,  "I get this sense that something beautiful is happening here--you know like that supernatural kind of beautiful ♥."

"Something" beautiful is definitely happening.

 

Perhaps we will not receive our miracle in the form that we seek but I truly believe that miracle is not going untranspired. And besides, with all the prayers being sought for Adam from Mother Teresa, their souls are surely old friends by this point :)

 

***********************************

 

I have stayed to my commitment to pray a continuous novena for Adam. I pray the Jesus is my All in All Novena. I just keep cycling through it--over and over again. You can read some exerts and recite it here.

 

In addition I pray the Prayer for Canonization:

 

 

Jesus, you made Blessed Teresa an inspiring example of firm faith and burning charity, an extraordinary witness to the way of spiritual childhood, and a great and esteemed teacher of the value and dignity of every human life. Grant that she may be venerated and imitated as one of the Church's canonized saints.
Hear the requests of all those who seek her intercession, especially the petition I now implore... (mention here the favour you wish to pray for).

May we follow her example in heeding Your cry of thirst from the Cross and joyfully loving You in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor, especially those most unloved and unwanted.

We ask this in Your name and through the intercession of Mary, Your Mother and the Mother of us all.
Amen.

 



*************************************

 

So, I'll keep you posted as to the new unfoldings with Team McArthur and any new revelations of the story of Adam McArthur and Mother Teresa. To be continued ;)

 

 



What I've been busy with and how Mother Teresa's involved...

Two posts in a row! Looks like I might be making a come back to the blogging world! I may not have been blogging this past month and a half but life certainly didn't stop being busy.

Aside from birthing babies with my first doula experience I've been busy with some charity work of sorts. So grab a cup of hot tea, sit back and settle in while I tell you story about Adam McArthur and Mother Teresa . . .

I'd like to introduce you to Adam McArthur.

 

This is Adam and his beautiful family: Vanessa, his wife, and his three boys. A few friends from church and I began a little informal "prayer group" where we meet, or try to at least, once a week in each other's homes and pray--and chit chat. Maybe a bit more chit chatting than praying, but it's all good, right, if it's all in the name of fellowship. Vanessa is a part of this group. Her husband was diagnosed with stage three brain cancer last year. She's a fellow blogger, as well, and has documented her families experience with this diagnosis on her blog Healer in Your Heart. It's been a heart breaking story--which is no story to them, it's their life--with ups and downs, steps forward and steps backwards. But mostly it's a story of inspiration--perseverance, faith, love, hope. Listen to Adam recount this past year in this interview, and then I'll tell you how Mother Teresa entered this story:

Healer in Your Heart: The McArthur Family and Brain Cancer 10/13 by The Warrior Catholic | Blog Talk Radio

Amazing, isn't he. What character! What faith! (What an accent too? Did I mention he was English?!)

Of course our little group of prayer friends has kept Adam in our constant prayers over this time, but after Adam's first cancer treatment failed, we went from prayer to action. Team McArthur was formed. We have a Facebook page here, that I ask you take a look at--perhaps "like" it if you feel so inclined--to show support, keep abreast of our fundraising endeavours and receive updates on Adam. To date we've held a "Donut Sunday", selling donuts after mass at church one Sunday, run a SweetFrog's Frozen Yogurt fundraising event, and are currently putting together a flea market and yard sale event coming up this Saturday October 20th.

 

 

Above are a couple photos of a few of us Team McArthur members and Vanessa. Notice the pink sign in top photo? That was one of my contributions to the event :)  Team McArthur was even interviewed by our local news station!! Watch here. Read here.

So where's Mother Teresa in all this you say?! Well while attending my Lay Missionary of Charity meeting last month I asked my groups' prayers for Adam and his family. It was the end of the meeting, another member had asked for prayer for an acquaintance of hers, and now everyone was beginning to pack up their things. I almost hesitated to add my prayer request at this time thinking maybe I should just let it go until next time, not wanting to bother anyone with my interruption. But then I thought, "Well, I owe it to Adam and Vanessa to ask for a few more prayers for them." Adam had just received the news that the first treatment had failed and the tumors had grown back. They needed all the prayer they could get. So, I blurted out one last request before closing. Perhaps, it was meant to be?! That one prayer request turned into a mission. Fr. McAfee looked at me in all seriousness and instructed me that I needed to get a first or second class relic of Mother Teresa out to Adam and I was to seek her intercession for him. Mother Teresa is beautified and needs one more miracle to receive canonization to become a saint. We were to pray to Mother Teresa for Adam's healing.  My request went from seeking prayer to seeking a miracle! I was way out of my league (gulp). How was I--a no one of importance, totally unworthy, have-you-seen-my-list-of-past-sins-?, homemaking, mama of six--supposed to get my hands on a relic of Mother Teresa???? 'Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut' crossed my mind for an instant. But no. I was going to try my hardest to fulfill this mission I was given.

To merely get my hands on a relic was going to take a small miracle. Where do I even start to look for one? How do you go about a task like this? One of my beautiful, fellow LMC members, Mary Ann, gave me a call with some helpful information. I was to start by calling the Missionaries of Charity in D.C. to see if they would be willing to bring out their first class relic to Adam, if they wouldn't be willing to relinquish it to the custody of one of us Lay Missionary of Charity. So I tried calling. I failed at reaching the sisters but was successful in getting Adam's name put on their prayer list--so at least the sisters would be praying for him in the meanwhile as I was tracking down this relic. *By the way, ANYONE can call one of the Missionary of Charity Houses and have a prayer request made. If any of you ever have a prayer request please call them!*

The mixed up timing of this was ironically perfect. I received my relic commission from Fr. McAfee on September 1st. I did my 3-4am adoration on Sunday, September 2nd, I was planning on beginning a continuous novena to Mother Teresa at my session on my own accord. Later that morning I received an email from my LMC Link stating ALL LMC's were to begin a Novena to Mother Teresa in preparation for her feast. Perfect, I thought! Only I didn't realize until later that that email was from a few days prior, somewhere in the chain of emailing it got delayed. My novena wasn't going to end on Mother's feast day on September 5th, mine would end on September 10th--Mother's Inspiration Day! This was the day she received her vision of Christ thirsting on the cross and got her inspiration for the Missionaries of Charity. Hmmm... interesting...


Mother Teresa used to say, "Let's storm the heavens with prayers". In this spirit I sought out prayers from a fellow LMC in India. When Adam mentions in his interview receiving prayers from India, this is who he speaks of. Here is the prayer this LMC sent in reply:

 

                                        

   ummmm...well I can't seem to locate the prayer at the moment *sigh*

 It was so beautiful. So perfect. Where did I put it??

      Let me track that down for you, it has to be shared....

Maybe this is a good place to stop. I'll leave you hanging on as to how I came about getting the relic. Stay tuned tomorrow for the conclusion of this story ;)
            

Spirit of Service: Passing on Old Clothes

One of the Works of Mercy is to clothe the naked. A very simple way of sharing the love is by donating. We donate our old, unused, or unwanted clothing and household items. It's not a big thing, but as St. Therese of Lisieux and Mother Teresa say,

 "Do small things with great love."

A way to stretch our family's money, aside from shopping sales and scouting the clearance racks at department stores, is by frequenting our local thrift stores. Just about all my maternity wardrobe from this last pregnancy was purchased from them. We've also been very blessed to have a number of friends pass around their daughters old clothes to us. Not to mention donating, buying used, and passing around clothing and other items is a superb, easy, green way of helping the environment through reusing.

I am in the process of doing some house cleaning and organizing. This stash of clothing is headed today for CCAP, a local needs assistance center that gives out clothes without charge to those who need them.

Spirit of Service: Prayer Intention Board

 "I entrust to your infinite mercy, O Lord, those who have asked for my prayer, those for whom I have promised to prayer, and those for whom I should pray."

 ~Excerpt from LMC Morning Offering Prayer





Prayer is a part of my life as an LMC.

I love souls and I love praying for souls. It's a spiritual work of mercy, in fact. One way to assist the poor is through the service of prayer.

There are so many people in need of prayer. The list is forever getting longer and my heart and prayer goes out to each and every one of them.

One thing my family has begun to do recently is to create a Prayer Intention Board. It's simply a cork board dedicated only for people we're praying for. In this way we can keep them in our hearts and minds, being reminded of them each time we look at the board.









When the time affords me, I'd like to glam it up; maybe decorate the trim or something. Right now our intentions are written on a sticky note pinned to the board, but I'd like to create heart or angel shaped cut outs to give it a little special touch.

Spirit of Service: Passing on the Legacy

There is nothing that makes this mama's heart sing louder than watching her own children practice the spirit of service. Instilling my six daughters with a servant's heart is one of my goals as a parent.

This summer my oldest daughter, who is 12 (soon to be 13~eek!!), had the opportunity to volunteer at not one but two Vacation Bible Schools. There was more involved to being a camp assistant than I first realized. She was required to attend numerous prior planning, training, and set up meetings. Faithfully she attended each one.

Watching her over these couple months, I discovered she has a bigger heart than I first realized and a knack for working with kids (having 5 younger sisters may contribute a little something to that, although she's not always so generous with them!). Her adult leader counterparts on more than one occasion made compliments on how much of a help she was. It was heartening to see her bud and blossom in this new leadership role as she grows into a beautiful and giving young lady.

Christmas Nursing Home Visit

I believe the greatest of all human sufferings is to feel alone. Visit someone this week who needs your company. You will bring the light of Christ to that person's life and you will learn more than you think.

- Mustard Seeds My girls are blessed to be a part of a small, but fruitful Junior Legion of Mary group at our church. Aside from weekly meetings, they go out and do good works for the community. One these good deeds is visiting a local nursing. For this visit the kids made and decorated Christmas cards for the residents. We walked throughout the home, passing them out and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. The kids always have a good time during these visits, and the residents seem to enjoy it. O(3) got the hang of it fast and got to hand out cards with the big kids.    Our small group of Legionaries. Out of respect and dignity for the residents, I didn't snap any photos inside the homes. But I figured between buildings was fair game! My goofball troop :) My oldest was at school-she didn't get to participate this time. I had to snap a picture fast, getting them all together lasts only a split second. There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. ~ Mother Theresa Quotes