Starting today, Karl and I are attending the National Lifespan Respite Conference in Denver, Colorado. With our friends from Massachusetts Lifespan Respite Coalition, we will be learning the latest knowledge and interventions from our peers championing respite for long-term caregivers across the United States and Canada. I’ll be posting updates from the conference on twitter @marymacmissions.
The new pickup is a gift from my deceased mom and dad’s modest public-teacher estate. Having driven, with gratitude, their hand-me-down 4-door sedans for twenty years, the new pickup is the first vehicle I’ve chosen for myself. Twenty years ago, when I studied music therapy and health psychology at the University of Kansas, I fell in love with the handsome RAM pickup truck. Now, in 2016, owning this vehicle suits our mission to carry dirt, rocks, and trees, and other building materials that realize our dream to create, one day at a time, at our home in Topsfield, wheelchair-accessible gardens and a Respite Retreat Center. It is also now a safe, new vehicle to carry me back-and-forth from Concord, NH during the winter…
Next week, September 27, I begin my 4th and final unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Havenwood Heritage Heights in Concord, NH ~ a continuing care retirement community. I will serve the 55+ community as a chaplain from September – April, on a part-time basis. I will continue to be available for Respite Retreats at our Caretaker’s Cottage during this time, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
Moving forward with a listening heart,
vision, inquiry, and action,
~ Mary
For Christians, this verse from Matthew 11:28 captures the essence of our hospitality ministry:
“Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
