FIRST SNOW OF THE YEAR, NOVEMBER 5, 2013

I have good news to pass on to you, all my friends, and readers of my blog.  Today we had our first snow since I came to Nebraska.  It really came down this morning then started snowing again this afternoon.  A big part of the snow melted right away but that's probably good the way it was falling.  I told a couple of the nurses over in the nursing home that "snow was not mentioned in my contract."  Actually, snow is beautiful as long as you don't have to go out in it. 

These two photos taken about noon on Tuesday, November 5, 2013

This photo taken about 3:00 PM on Tuesday, November 5

Last Sunday I went over to Stanton, Nebraska for a while.  The priest over there is the one I have been using as my confessor.  He is an alumnus.  When I came back I noticed that I needed to change the clock in the car back to standard time.  After I got back I eventually decided to go out and do that, after I checked the directions.  When I finished I guess I left the dome light on and so yesterday the battery was completely dead.  I called Terry Beckman, and his wife stopped by when they got off of work to jump start the car.  Terry and his wife live just across the street from the monastery and they own a garage.  Terry is a nephew of Father Martin Beckman who I remember well from my younger years.  He is a very good mechanic and very kind.   It was 8:00 PM or so when she came by and she said they usually are at the shop every night until that late or later. So obviously he has a lot of business.

This Thursday night, November 7,  is the Priests Appreciation Dinner put on by the local Serra Club.  They have asked me, soon after I got here, to give the keynote address at the dinner.  Archbishop Lucas will be here for the dinner so I hope all goes well.  I have been thinking about the talk and writing for quite a long time.  I want to keep it fairly brief since I doubt any of the priests want to hear a long winded talk. The dinner will be held at the Knights of Columbus hall on the east side of town.

Halloween:  Just a day or two before Halloween I went to HyVee and bought a big sack of candy.  Fortunately I did that as a lot of kids stopped here that evening.  Finally I ran out of candy so I simply turned off the porch light and closed the door.  No more then came to the door.  It was a nice evening and so I guess all the kids got out to celebrate.

That's about it for this week.  Hope you all have a good week. 

End of October, 2013

I thought I would add a little color to this blog.  After all it is fall and the trees are turning colors.  We have had a number of heavy frosts here but so far no snow, not even flurries.  Of course the farmers want more nice weather.  Evidently there is a rather good crop of corn in this area and, while many seem to have their beans out now, there is still a lot of corn out in the fields.  Being from a farm I know how they feel.

Another week has passed and I continue to enjoy my work here in Norfolk.  The Sisters are very good to me and I enjoy working with them.  The nursing home personnel are also very friendly and I find myself getting attached to some of the residents.  Like this morning I visited many of the patients, probably most of those who were awake.  Three of those I visited were 100 or more years old.  All three of them seem to have good use of their minds yet and can carry on a conversation.  One of them who is quite poorly just grabbed hold of my hand with both her hands and didn't want me to leave.  I told her "God loves you very much" and her response was "I love God too."  

On Thursday of this past week Father Tom Greisen took me out to dinner.  He has an assignment in the Archdiocese as "servant priest."   He goes around throughtout the diocese to visit the priests, listen to them and tries to help them.  He spent most of last week in the this part of the archdiocese.  It was very good to see him again  We had a nice dinner at a restaurant and then it was my bed time.

I still get up every morning about 4:30 AM.  Use that early morning time for prayer while having a good cup of coffee and then I go over to pray morning prayer with the Sisters, followed by Mass for the Sisters at 7:00 AM and then at the nursing home at 9:30 AM.

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Two pictures of fall taken from the back door of my

house.  The sidewalk and steps you see lead to

and from my house and the Monastery.  You can click

on the picture to enlarge it.

Just today I received an e-mail from Paul Moser.  I had not had contact with him for a long time.  A few weeks ago he visited his sister Eva and her husband in Salisbury and I asked Lillian to send me his e-mail.  So I wrote to him and today I got a return with a lot of news in it.  He and I were classmates all through grade school and he is also 80 years old this year. Of course he is also a cousin.  His grandmother (Eva Reichert) and my grandfather (Matthew Reichert) were brother and sister, and his grandfather (Keida Moser) and my grandmother (Frances Moser Reichert) were brother and sister.  To quote a brief part of his e-mail:

I spent 2 1/2 years in college, 4 1/2 years as a Navy  pilot, 6 years as an air traffic controller, 23 years as a pilot for Pan American Airlines and 10 years as a  flight engineer for United Airlines.

 I have 5 children, 14 grandchildren and one great grand-daughter..

He said his oldest sister, Eulalia, is 94 years old and lives with her daughter in Illinois. 

It was so good to hear from him.

Hope you are all well.  Have a blessed feast of All Saints on Friday and remember all the faithful departed on Saturday.

Interesting Week

The past week has been a rather interesting week.  Seemed like there was a lot going on.  First of all, on Wednesday, October 16, my brother Harold arrived.  His son Steve and Mary brought him up here on Wednesday from Kansas City.  We had an enjoyable few days together visiting, walking, going places and even shopping.  On Thursday I took him to the Benedictine Missionary Benedictines at Schuyler, Nebraska.  That is only about an hour from here by car.  We went out to eat a couple times and other times fixed our own meals here at the house where I live.

Top row:  my Dad and Mother, then Raymond and Mary Jane,

Harold and Dee, Jim and Vera, Fr. Kenneth and Ed.

Harold and I are the only two still living, plus Vera, 

Jim's wife.

On Saturday Harold's daughter, Diane and Randy, drove up here.  We went out to eat and then visited here in the house.  They had arranged for a room at the Holiday Inn for the night.  This morning they all came to my 9:30 AM Mass at the Nursing Home and then left for Kansas City.  Harold called me this evening to tell me that they got home about 5:00 PM. 

On Friday evening Abbot Gregory arrived.  He had been in North Platte, NE to give a workshop.  When that ended about noon on Friday he drove on to Norfolk.  We went out to eat Friday evening, and then he left to drive back to Conception on Saturday morning after breakfast.  It was good to see him and visit with him.

Weather of course continues to go up and down.  The lowest I have seen it so far was a couple days this past week when it got down to the upper 20's and lower 30's.  

This coming week Fr. Tom Greisen, a priest of the Archdiocese of Omaha, is coming to visit a while and we plan to go out to dinner on Thursday.  Fr. Tom worked for a number of years in our seminary college as dean of students and vice-rector.  He had gone to school at Conception as a seminarian.

So much for this week.  Have a great week and may God bless each of you.

Fr. Kenneth
e-mail:  kenneth@conception.edu

COOL FALL WEATHER IS HERE

Finally had to turn the heat on in the house yesterday, October 5.  We have had rain off and on the past week and the weather, especially the last two or three days, has been very cool.  Saturday morning my thermometer had 39 degrees and this morning 40 degrees.  And I always thought that Conception had a lot of wind, but I am beginning to believe that Nebraska even has more windy days than we do at Conception.

At any rate all is still going well.  It seems that the days pass by very fast.  Of course I am pretty busy until about noon with two Masses and then visiting the residents in the nursing home.  Most days I get back here to my house between 11:00 and 11:30 AM.  The afternoons also seem to go fast as I spend the time reading, working on the computer, and preparing homilies.  I give a brief homily everyday at both Masses.

The abbot has informed me that he will be up in this area October 18-19.  He will be in Grand Island for a workshop and then stop by here on Friday afternoon, but has to leave again on Saturday morning.  My only living brother, Harold, who is now a widower, also plans to spend a few days with me beginning on October 16.  One of his children will drive him up and another one then come up to take him back home.  I am happy he is not trying to drive that distance all alone -- he will be 87 years old in December.

Many of you probably heard on the news about the tornado the other evening at Wayne, Nebraska.  That is not far from here but we had nothing at all that evening.  Two or three of the Sisters from here live and work in Wayne, but they were not in the tornado.  I guess there was a lot of damage. On the radar you could see how the storm went to the north of us.  We do get a few television stations from Sioux City and so they were giving full time to the storm and tornadoes that night

The days are certainly getting short.  When I first arrived here it was daylight when I left the house to go to the monastery about 6:00 AM.  Now it is still dark but fortunately there is plenty of lighting around so I can find my way.

Ever so often I like to put some older pictures on my blog site so here are a couple for this edition.

Back in the days when I was growing up we all did our own butchering.

The picture above shows my Dad (on the left) and two of

his brothers, Matthew and Otto helping to butcher a hog. 

This has always been one of my favorite old pictures of

the five boys in our family.  In our bib overalls and

straw hats.  Left to right:  Jim, Harold, Ed, Raymond and me.

My brother Harold and I are the only two still living.

Have a good week and God bless each of you.

My e-mail:  kenneth@conception.edu

My photo site:  http://http://kennethosb.smugmug.com/

Time for an Update

Already another week has gone by and already tomorrow (Tuesday) we enter the month of October.  Fall is here and yet we still have some fairly warm days.  They are predicting some pretty cool weather by the end of this week.

Well, the Kansas City Royals did not make it to the play offs but they sure got my attention this last part of the season.  They had a good year and I just hope they can keep all those young players they have coming along.  So now I guess we can turn our attention to the Chiefs.  They have won their first four games so certainly are off to a good start.  Hopefully that will continue.

This last weekend we had a large group here at the monastery.  The deacon candidates for the Archdiocese of Omaha come up here for their education and formation.  There were about seventy here this past weekend as a new class is beginning and an older class is still going on.  A good thing for me is that one of the deacons serves as deacon at the Sisters Mass on both Saturday and Sunday so they do the preaching. This past Sunday Deacon John Starman was deacon for me.  He is a brother of Sister Ruth Starman from Clyde.  

Yesterday evening on Sunday we had our first deanery meeting since I arrived here.  It was held at the church at Battle Creek which is only about 10-12 miles from Norfolk.  Father Ross Burkhalter is the dean of this deanery.  Ross is an alumnus of Conception.  Father Stan Schmit and Father Greg Carl are also members of this deanery and both are alumni.  After our meeting they evidently have the custom of going out to eat so we all came back to Norfolk and ate at the newly opened Perkins which just opened a week ago.  I love to eat breakfast there any time of the day so that is what I ordered.  The pastor of the parish where we meet pays for the meal.  

I really don't like to drive after dark anymore so I rode over with Father Greg Carl who is the associate pastor here in Norfolk.

The days are getting shorter and the nights longer.  I have started checking out books from the Norfolk Public Library.  They have a lot of large print books and I enjoy reading them very much.  I can also check out books for my kindle from the library.  I am not a big television watcher but do enjoy sports on t.v., the news and a few programs on the history channel.

Hope you are all enjoying the fall weather and I ask God's blessing on each of you.

Immculata Monastery at Norfolk