Summer seems to have arrived

St. Raphael Church at Indian Grove, MO is today
celebrating it's 125th anniversary. This is the
church where my Dad and Mother were married
in 1921. It is still open today--a country church
at the little village of Indian Grove. Bishop Gaydos
will be there for Mass today.

Summer seems to have arrived. In the last couple of weeks we have had a lot of hot and humid weather. The weekend of May 28-29 and again on the weekend of June 4-5, I went to Kansas City to celebrate the Masses at St. Andrew Parish in the north part of Kansas City. The first weekend it was chilly when I left Conception so I wore a sweater. By the time I got to Kansas City it was hot so I did not even have to take the sweater out of the car. Both weekends I celebrated four Masses, one on Saturday evening and three on Sunday. I spent the nights with my brother and his wife, Harold and Dee Reichert who live very close to this church.

We have had enough rain so that everything is green and the flowers are blooming. It's a beautiful time of the year except for the heat and humidity. We do not have air-conditioning in the monastery except for a few rooms but most of us do have fans. We hope to eventually renovate the monastery and we will probably air condition then, but I don't know whether I will still be around by that time. Who knows? This summer we are planning to begin work on our new guest house. It will be toward the north part of the campus and will have 32 rooms as well as some meeting rooms. At the present time they are moving some gas lines in order to get ready to start building. I believe the ground breaking is scheduled for June 20.

I have been working on a little project, trying to write some of my memories down and make them available to my nephews and nieces, and other family members. It is kind of fun to do this and I enjoy such projects. I have, in the process, put together a number of older family pictures. A lot has changed in my life time for sure. We did not even have electricity on the farm until I was in the fifth grade.

Many of the monks are coming and going during the summer. Each final professed monk is allowed two weeks for a home visit or vacation each year. The latter part of July I plan to go to Brunswick and spend some time on the farm, just relaxing and visiting relatives. Sometimes during the summer we really get low on numbers, especially on weekends when many priests have to go out to parishes to help out.

Monsignor Louis McCorkle, a priest of the diocese
of Jefferson City and an alumnus of Conception, who
is in residence in our Health Care Center celebrated
his 90th birthday on May 28

Father Anthony Shidler, O.S.B. and Monsignor
McCorkle shake hands. Father Anthony will
celebrate his 90th birthday in August, 2011