Children's Sunday 2001 ... a celebration of another great year! Sunday, May 20, 2001

On May 20th St. Joan of Arc celebrated Children's Sunday. It was the last Sunday of the Religious Education Program. I attended the 9:00 service in the "great room" and loved seeing the room filled with balloons of all colors, drawings done by the children depicting their "Good Choices", silhouettes of themselves, and most especially, there were lots of children.

Our greeter for this celebration was Karen Wendt. She explained how the Religious Education Program has grown at St. Joan's. This year there were 850 youth enrolled in the program and that doesn't include the Nursery program that has 225 enrolled. Karen went on to mention all the important adults involved in the organization of this program and also that there were many young people that have volunteered their time to help in the classrooms. Planetary Players-ever heard of them? It's a group of young actors directed by Karen Wendt from St. Joan's. How about the Musical Ed. Program? Look at what has been started from the Religious Education Program!

Michael Hennessy led all the children in a procession to the sound of music and clapping. We had Ms. Ashlee Jurewicz do the reading. It was refreshing to hear her explain God in her life. Our homily was a pantomime entitled, "The Magic Whistle" by Michael Hennessy and his merry band of actors. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all looked for a magic whistle in ourselves to blow and have good choices come of bad situations?

The music for Children's Sunday was provided by The St. Joan of Arc Children's Choir with the help of their Director, Nancy Stockhaus. The "warmup act" was the Preschool Choir who were so great with their sign language and beautiful voices, under the direction of Seth Boyd and Karen Wendt. Seth Boyd is a young man who will be going places as we can see from how involved he is in the Youth program here at St. Joan's. I hope we have more chances to hear him sing.

At World Youth Day 2000, in Rome, the pope called the youth of today,

Molly Ryan is a full-blooded Mexican married to a full-blooded Irishman. They have 2 grown children, Kelly and Shannon. Molly has been attending SJA since 1994 and has taught Sunday School in addition to other volunteering.

"THE YOUNG CHURCH" and at St. Joan of Arc we had a sample of how wonderful our youth will make our church, our community. Aren't we blessed?