June 17, 2015

Our Philly Pilgrims

One of the great legacies our former campus minster Fr. Andrew Nelson left us was our annual pilgrimage to St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia.  St. Francis Inn is a meal center in the Kensington neighborhood of the city that has served meals every single day since December of 1979.  We started taking groups of students there (I believe) in 2006.  One of our former parents had a relationship with the inn and suggested it to Mr. Nelson and the rest is history.  We used to send two groups each summer but other people around the country have heard about the amazing experience so we only get one week.  Mr. Sheehan '79 has been going on the trip for as long as I can remember and he looks forward to it every year.  This will be Mrs. Trachim's third trip and my fourth.  I go for half the week as a compromise to my wife as we have four little kids at home.

Last night we had a meeting with the students going on the trip along with their parents.  We began by praying together the Prayer of St. Francis from prayer cards I had and gave to everyone.  We then went over the logistics of the trip, expectations, etc.  We can only take eight students and this year we have seven going - all girls.  Four of the seven went on our Montana mission trip this past April and are very excited to experience this trip.  The students going are:

Bethany Boulanger '16
Olivia Boulton '16
Ally Curran '16
Molly Hayden '16
Halle Jones '16
Danielle Mackey '16
Jessica Tremblay '16

At the end of the meeting, I presented the group with St. Francis of Assisi medals (luckily I had exactly nine).  The group will head out on Saturday at 8am and we will return the following Saturday night.  I will be blogging about the trip when I arrive next week so stay tuned.






No comments:

Post a Comment