Holidays over… On to 2011!

Hello friends of John XXIII Retreat Center! We hope that every one of you made it through the Christmas season well-rested, Blessed, and hopefully not too many pounds heavier!

We had a great Christmas season here at the Center. Sr. Joetta took some time off and went on a whirlwind tour to catch up with her family. She came back just in time to help lead to our New Years Eve Retreat that ran from 12/31/10 to 1/2/2010. The retreat’s main presenter was Patrick Cleary-Burns, and he led the group in a reflection of the past year and contemplation about the approaching year. The group had a fantastic candlelight dinner for New Years Eve and had a wonderful time passing into the New Year here at the Center.

On Sunday, we held one of our most favorite events all year: Our Annual Volunteers’ Appreciation Party! The carry-in dinner is our way of saying thank you to all the people that help make everything we do here at the Center possible. These wonderful individuals sacrifice time out of their own weekends to come and serve others on retreat and we cannot possibly thank them enough.

We will hopefully keep them all busy into 2011 because we are hitting the ground running here at John XXIII. We have a wide variety of programs coming up, from a Quilting and Spa Day Retreat in January to a free community retreat on helping the unemployed in March.

Also, we are incredibly excited to announce that this year we are celebrating our 45th Anniversary as a Retreat Center with a hosted trip to tour the Shrines at Lourdes and Fatima in October of 2011! If you might be interested in accompanying us as we mark this very special anniversary, please consider to come to our informational session on January 31 at 7:00 P.M. here at the Center. If you have any questions or want more information, don’t hesitate to call us!

We are so excited to have a fantastic 2011, and we hope you come share it with us!

God Bless You and Keep You