District Spring Fling!

We had a fun social to welcome our District friends. Thank you Perez family for opening your gorgeous home to us. Fr. Donal said mass in their living room! Mojos catered our dinner then we had a great meeting and special Lent enrichment.

Community Mass at the Perezes

Our District friends encouraged us all to come to the National Convention August 26-28 in New Orleans! Registration is up, so don't delay. The early registration discount goes until May. If you are an active member of our community, we may throw some dollars your way to help you get to convention. Talk to us for more details.

Here are a few important pointers about the upcoming convention: 1. The hotel is giving us the same deep discount for extra nights before and after the convention. Reservations must be made by August 5. Check the hotel reservation page for a list of those dates.
2. Food: The convention will provide Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner on Saturday and Breakfast on Sunday. Breakfasts will be a grab-and-go provided in the Hospitality Suites, lunch will be a boxed lunch provided by the hotel.
3. Attractions: New Orleans has much to offer people of all ages. The World War II Museum is a world class museum and is not to be missed. The hotel is just blocks away from Historic St. Louis Cathedral which is celebrating the Jubilee year of Mercy. If you have little ones, New Orleans has lots to offer them too!! The Aquarium and Insectarium are both a 10 minute walk from the hotel. The street cars are a quick way to ride through and get a look at the city. There are also horse and buggy tours available. Check out the attractions that New Orleans has to offer.
4. Dining: The hotel is very close to so many French Quarter restaurants. During August, you can take advantage of COOLinary Days where local restaurants offer great prices on prix-fixe meals. Check out 2015 menus now as a reference. Also, Café Du Monde (beignets) is about a mile from the hotel, but there are also 2 Café Beignets which are both 0.2 miles from the hotel.
5. Childcare is available during the convention but will be limited to 50 kids (ages 1-12) and 10 helpers (13 and over). If childcare could be a limiting factor, please register early. Knowing the ages of the kids coming will help us make plans.
6. If you are driving in, don’t forget to look into parking. You can reserve a spot at a cheaper lot, but must do so in advance.
7. This summer we will be sending out confirmation letters via email. More info will be given on childcare, t-shirts and lunch choices at that time.

Important Dates
Early Bird discount for Registration and for childcare Ends May 31
Last Day to get EE discounted hotel room
August 5 (at 5pm CDT)

Recommended Parking Reservations dates
August 15-26

Friday Enrichment
Aug 26, 9-noon
Convention Dates August 26-28

Please keep in mind the heat while visiting New Orleans in August. Bring a bottle for water, sunglasses, sunscreen and even an umbrella if you plan on exploring this great city! Please don’t forget to encourage family and friends to donate here to help keep our registration cost down!

Keeping that Romanic Fire Going this Winter

We've had two CEE weekends and an enrichment so far this year. Things are going well in our community! At the January weekend, the Venturas came to the rescue to help behind the scenes. The Applegates came for the second half to view the weekend and work on their talks. The Gibsons and Hutchinsons presented with Fr. Ed and the Johnsons helped with registration again. We had 16 couples complete the weekend. It was very spiritual and full of love! So much romantic fire that the bell broke!
At our enrichment gathering we had a few new couples from St. Matthews join us! We're excited to get them involved! We did a salad bar to help support all those new years resolutions. We did a neat enrichment activity focusing on communication.
Last weekend we presented at the February weekend with the Andersons and Fr. Donal. The Hotchsteins rocked it as a new BTS couple and even helped cover registration when the Toros ran late. We had a neat group with 15 couples. Lots of laughing and much needed life-giving reminders. This Florida winter isn't keeping us down!

The February Dream Team! (Missing Lydia and Fr. Donal)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to our Engaged Encounter family! We had a great time at the Christmas party at Ventura's on the 12th. They do such an awesome job hosting this party in their gorgeous home. Homemade sangria and yummy eats! The white elephant gift exchange was pretty good, only a few steals! We ended with a game of trivia.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas break with your loved ones. Try to relax and enjoy each other's company and your many blessings. Don't forget to sign up for a weekend in the new year!

November Gathering

Our November Gathering was pretty light this week. We did a Thanksgiving potluck with a smoked turkey from Mojo's. YUM! The biggest take away from the meeting is that we now have a storage unit. So, when it's your turn to work a weekend, you need to go to the storage unit to get all the stuff. The Oehmann's did an awesome job of organizing the space and labeling everything to make it easy to pick up and drop off on your way to Marywood. Thank you, Jamie and Dawn! Don't forget about this fun enrichment just in time for the stress of the holidays. Go over it by yourself first, then come together to discuss as a couple (just like on a weekend). Here it is in case you missed it.

Celebrating 40 Years of CEE with a beautiful mass and sandWITCHES!

Happy 40th Anniversary, Catholic Engaged Encounter! We had a special mass at Marywood on a beautiful Saturday morning overlooking the river. Fr. Tim and Fr. Donal celebrated mass for us, some of our presenting priest pals. After mass we did a sandWITCH potluck. We loved catching up with each other, being outside on a pretty, Florida fall day and coming together to celebrate marriage. What a great way to spend a Saturday morning!


Our special mass at Marywood

Conference Call

We had our first conference call last night to discuss some business. Back at the Discernment in March we discerned some positions and wanted to make sure everyone is on the same page. The Venturas are the finance & prayer couple. Perezes are the Database couple, Berrioses are the Social Media couple and Pendletons are the follow up couple. The call began with each couple telling us a High and a Low in their lives right now. We did an Opening Prayer, then discussed the 40th Anniversary- instead of the family challenge, we decided to still celebrate the 40th Anniversary with a party after mass at the Marywood outdoor chapel October 31 at 11am. A blurb will be in the bulletins inviting everyone. So much love it's scary!The October 16th Enrichment is cancelled. The Nov 6th Enrichment is still on. For finances- Mike created a reimbursement form to use here. This is also on the Job Responsibilities page. Ron & Patty have plans to meet with the marriage prep guru at each church in the diocese. They are going to send out an email to give a heads up first. They will start with thanking those who send lots of couples on weekends. The goal is to tap in to the large parishes who send few couples on weekends. We need a media committee to edit advertising literature and work on advertising pieces. We also need a supply committee to keep an inventory of materials and purchase needed supplies. Bravos will send out a group email for these needs and invite others to join in future calls. Steve closed with a prayer. The call lasted about an hour and a half.

Happy 40th Anniversary Catholic Engaged Encounter!

The Venturas represented us the last weekend in August for the Unit meeting in Tallahassee. The most exciting thing to come from that weekend is our preparation for next month- the 40th Anniversary for CEE! At our September enrichment this past Friday we discussed our plan. We'll post the daily prayers that we passed out at the meeting on the blog and Facebook. Instead of the enrichment scheduled, we're going to have a 40th Anniversary party on October 31st (Halloween). Fr. Tim Lozier will preside a mass at 11am at the outdoor altar at Marywood. Then we'll have a party afterwards (details to come). We also talked about taking it up a notch to celebrate 40 years by giving back. We're going to choose a family to help. Maybe it's yard work and doing a "honey do" list for an older couple or bringing gifts and a Christmas dinner to a family with children. As a ministry, we will get together and give back to a family in need. Then, we are going to challenge other ministries in our diocese to do the same. Our goal is 40 ministries and 40 families! Game on!