NCRegister: How I Keep my Children Clothed and Build Up the Body of Christ

As in all callings, raising children is full of Sisyphean tasks, and the acquiring, ordering, and cleaning of their clothes is probably the most Sisyphean of them all. Thanks to Adam and Eve it is an unavoidable task as well. Children need to be clothed (in public at least), and in Minnesota where I live, for most of the year it is a necessity to keep them warm. This aspect of a parent’s vocation is a topic that comes up fairly often in my conversations with other parents. We discuss laundry routines, trying to get a better handle on our own. Whether we realize it or not, but doing this we are actually helping each other on the path to sanctification—when Christian parents help each other do even the smallest of necessary tasks we are building up the Body of Christ.

Managing of the clothes of multiple little people (or even one) can often be an overwhelming task. Recently, a good friend of mine shared her exasperation over it on social media, and we commiserated over the drudgery of it all.

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NCRegister Blog: A Simple Way to Give to the Church in India

David and Kathy Rennie of Bloomington, Minnesota had an experience of being rich with poor outside their gate when traveling to India in 1985 to adopt their sixth child (their fifth adoption). Kathy had long desired to adopt a little girl from India, and had been inspired to do so by the life and work of St. Teresa of Calcutta. Kathy’s mother, Rose Mayer, had sponsored a poor seminarian more than a decade before, and the Rennies contacted him during their visit to India.  This seminarian was now a priest working as a secretary to the bishop of his diocese, and after they made contact he helped them overcome the difficulties they were having in adopting their daughter. It was through knowing Fr. Sebastian Thekethecheril, who was consecrated as Bishop of the Diocese of Vijayapuram in Kottayam, Kerala, India, in 2006, that the Rennies saw firsthand the great poverty of the Christian people of Kerala.

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