Provincial Council report

REPORT FROM THE

PROVINCIAL COUNCIL
July 2007

Summer brings our busy time for visitations. Pascal visited Natchez (formerly Vidalia) where we have a small but very faithful and active study group. Amelia visited our Gulf Coast community in Mississippi which seems to have recovered well from the ravages of Katrina. We’ve decided that Gerald is jinxed in relation to making a visitation with Topeka. Twice now he’s had problems that resulted in a delay. We’re hoping that the third time is the charm. Several visitations will take place here during July and August by all provincial councilors.

June 9-12 brought our annual in person meeting. As always, we rejoiced in spending time together even though this year came with a touch of sadness since this was our last meeting of this very first Provincial Council. Next year’s meeting will be with the new councilors. Topics that we discussed include congresses and particularly finances for congresses. The Houston planners informed us that the amount of funds left over from the St Louis congress is greatly insufficient and they are having to do a number of fund raisers in order to make the required deposit on the hotel in a couple of months. The Provincial Council has decided to work with host communities towards building up the congress fund to a minimum of $10,000 to be passed from each host community to the next. We know it’ll take some time to build the fund up to that amount but given the size of deposits asked for by hotels and other such initial costs for congresses, we felt this amount is necessary.

We spent a great deal of time discussing Provincial Council elections and how to best make the transition and orient new members. We had some good candidates nominated to be on the ballot and contacted them during our meeting to explain the expectations of serving on the Provincial Council and answer questions each candidate had. In addition, we discussed canonical establishment for a few of our study groups. Finally we shared some long term dreams about the future of the Provincial Council.

While the rest headed home, Elizabeth and Fr. John Michael headed for the OCDS National Council meeting followed by the Regional Congress in Seattle. Fr. John Michael’s plane was scheduled to leave an hour earlier than Elizabeth’s but somehow her plane left before his and she arrived in Seattle an hour before him, much to Father’s consternation. Highlights of the National Council meeting are included in this issue of the Flos. Both very much enjoyed the Congress. There were some great talks (esp. by OCDS) and we encourage folks who were unable to attend the Congress to order copies of the talks from http://congress.ocds.info/recordings.htm

The Houston Congress will be Sept 11-14, 2008 and their website is at http://ocdscongresshouston.com/

Finally, we ask that everyone continue to hold the process of our first Provincial Council elections in prayer. Nominees are in discernment and soon we will be asking them to write up a few things that we’ll print in a future Flos Carmeli to help our province discern when it comes time to vote. In the meantime, this current Provincial Council serves on and wishes everyone a blessed feast of Our Lady of Mt Carmel !!

Provincial Council:
Pascal Alfano, Gerald Alford, Elizabeth Korves, Nancy Thompson, and Amelia Wilken