August 30, 2010 Dear Family of Mary!"Dear children! With great joy, also today, I desire to call you anew: pray, pray, pray. May this time be a time of personal prayer for you. During the day, find a place where you will pray joyfully in a recollected way. I love you and bless you all. Thank you for having responded to my call." (August 25, 2010) Time for another miracle story from Denis! It really has nothing to do with this beautiful message, but maybe we all need our faith built up again! Enjoy! "One day I became infuriated when I happened to overhear one of the children call his sister a name while they were playing out in the yard. All our family prayer aside, I knew that if the relationships between members of a family weren't right, the Holy Spirit would no longer dwell in our home.
"I remembered that in school I had my marriage class read an article by a family counselor who advocated a family meeting every week in which members of the family could air their grievances freely. So I immediately called a family council for that evening at 8:00 P.M. When we gathered around the table I was about to explode, because I was still very angry, when the thought came into my mind, 'Perhaps someone else here has a grievance, and before I blow up about what's bothering me, I should give the kids a chance to talk first.' And so I asked, 'Have any of you got a problem with your life in this family? Any criticisms about the way your mother and I are running things? You can say anything you want, just do it respectfully.' I pointed to the first child. 'Do you have any problems?' As I went down the row pointing to each child, asking my question, ten year old Elizabeth, who was sitting on the other side of the table started waving her hand. 'Daddy, I have a complaint. You never take us anywhere. Other families go on vacations. Fathers in other families take their kids camping. We always just go to our grandparent's home for the summer, but you don't do other things with us. You're always working on projects around the house. I think that's selfish. You ought to take us camping!' It hit me like a ton of bricks. She was telling the truth!
"The day before, as I was splitting wood for the winter, the thought had gone through my mind, 'Don' take for granted, as a teacher, having the summers off. Your children have never seen the ranch in California where you grew up. Before they get much older you ought to think of taking them on a trip to California while you still have the summers free.' We still had five weeks of summer left before school was to start again. 'Elizabeth, you're right! Let's go to California!'
"Cathy interrupted the kid's enthusiasm, 'Wait a minute. (We had just had our sixth child.) There's no way I'm taking a trip to California unless we have a bigger car!' She was right. Even going to Mass on Sunday was difficult because of the size of our car.
"So I said, 'Mom's right. Let's pray and ask Jesus to give us a bigger car so we can go to California! When we pray as a family we'll ask him, and each one of you, in your own relationship with Him, ask that he give us a bigger car!' Everyone agreed. I can still remember their little heads bobbing up and down.
"Neither Cathy nor I mentioned this petition to anyone. We just left it with Jesus. Two days later the phone rang. It was a friend who worked at a local hospital. 'Denis, as you know I'm planning on taking my family back to California. (For this purpose he was trading in his old suburban for a new one. He also had six kids.) But the dealer where we're getting our new car isn't really giving us what's its worth as a trade in. I'd rather you have it. Would you take it off my hands for a dollar?' It turned out that he and his wife had been praying about it for some time and had been constantly getting a passage from Scripture that they thought confirmed that they should give us the car!
"In two days we were on our way to California. In exactly one month we were back, the day before school started. Everything I had wanted to do on that trip happened! Thank you, Jesus, for providing that wonderful car for us, and for our safe trip!" (Denis) Our Lady calls us to "Pray, pray, pray!" God wants to do miracles in our lives!
In Jesus and Mary!
Cathy Nolan
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