Dear Shawl-Makers,
THANKS for coming out on such a cold Tuesday evening to celebrate the Shawl
Ministry's third anniversary!  WoW!  What a wonderful night filled with
blessings!  It is such a pleasure to be able to offer this special Blessing
of the Hands to each of you for the wonderful work that you do throughout
the year.  We want to give a extra thank you to Fr. Tony for presiding, Nina
McKay and Cece Rogers for the BEAUTIFUL music and Mary Wojcik for working
with us in setting up the chapel in such a lovely way.  Thank you to Cecelia
Jones our staff liaision for the encouragement and all her behind the scenes
work that she does to get our information out there... in the bulletin,
etc.... and simply putting up with our multitude of questions as we continue
to grow in leaps and bounds! This ministry would not be were it is today
without the gift of God's grace and favor, parish staff support and great
volunteers!!!  :-)

It was interesting that the exact day that we would be celebrating our shawl
anniversary, the Dallas Morning News ran a special feature on one of the
twelve healthy virtues....COMPASSION.  I thought of each of our shawl
volunteers as I read the feature.  The article's writer, Leslie Garcia,
states, "Compassion is slipping inside someone's soul to try to understand
what fills his life with shadows instead of sunshine."  She also states that
"Compassion begets compassion".  The work that you all do in this beautiful
ministry is a gift of compassion.  A lovely virtue for you to use, feel,
bestow and pass on in such a way that one day someone else will pick up that
strand of compassion and knit it into another life...not for the recognition
but because you have TRUE compassion.  May we continue to pass on this
special gift of compassion so that we might connect the fragments of our
lives to the strands of each other...weaving our hearts together as one in
God.

We'd like to thank you again for the work that you continue to do.  The
SEVEN baskets of shawls  Tuesday evening were overflowing!   We received a
record number of shawls for a meeting.  SEVENTY shawls came in Tuesday
night!  (Biblical numbers I might add!!!)  I was told the next day by
Cecilia Jones that we could add an additional TEN shawls to that number! 
This brings our total number of shawls for the February meeting to EIGHTY
shawls!!!  Over the last three years, our group alone has CREATED well over
1100 shawls...continuing to spread the gift of our Lord's compassion across
the globe!

Keep up the good work that you do.  We are SO incredibly blessed to know
each of you!  :-)

Blessings,
Tish and Kathy