I LOVE MONDAYS!

I love Mondays.  No, I'm not being sarcastic.  Yes, this is real life.  I love Mondays!

First of all, Mondays are great because usually I get at least a little more sleep over the weekends, so I feel slightly more awake than I do the rest of the week.  Also, we start Mondays with mass and a holy hour.  (And even though I do have that extra bit of sleep in me, I still find myself falling asleep in adoration, but what better place to sleep, right?!)  Then, we have a great breakfast, and since our weekly chef typically does the shopping over the weekend, nothing is expired yet and we have things like fruit and yogurt sometimes! 

After breakfast we have intellectual formation, so a speaker comes to our place and gives us a lecture on a variety of topics.  Today we just finished up salvation history, and I learned a lot about the Old Testament world that I never learned before.  Next I do some office work for about 3 hours.  I never thought I'd be excited to do office work, but I really enjoy it!  I get to email a bunch of people about a bunch of things, and I get to create and organize files, and work with the company of one or two other missionaries who do office work that day as well as our director.  I also get to have lunch with them, and today we had a great discussion about literature and our culture and immaturity and I don't even know what else.  It was awesome.  :)

You're probably thinking right now, Wow, what an awesome day! Could it get any better? Indeed, it can.  After my office work is done, I head to the Samaritan House with 3 teammates to join the 2 already there.  We eat dinner with the residents (at like 4:30, which is weird) and also catch up on how each others' day was.  I try to pop my head into Bri's office and say hi.  We split into 3 groups to lead children, teen, and adult bible studies.  I'm with the adult group.  So far, we just go through the readings for the following Sunday, then pick a book of the bible to read from and discuss if there's time.  We never know how many people will show up, if they've come before, if they're Catholic, if they want to talk your ear off or not say a word, but there hasn't been a bible study yet that wasn't fruitful in some way. 

The 4 female missionaries at the Sam House on Mondays will also have the opportunity to join an ENDOW study with the women residents there.  ENDOW stands for Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women, and is based on JPII's letter to women.  We're there to help the women understand their dignity, but mostly I find that we learn from them.  In two weeks, I'll also start teaching the class that I was talking about in a previous post.  It's a 12 week class, once a week, but we split it into 3 sections, Community, Philia, and Spirituality, and each of these 4 week sections will be taught by 2 of our missionaries.  So I'll only be teaching the class a third of the times we go to the Sam House.  (Knew that math major would come in use somehow.)

Finally, we come back and have a little free time before night prayer, then I'm free to sleep!  Or chat with people.  Or blog.  It's a full day, but I dare say I'm changing the reputation of Mondays, one week at a time.