Welcome to part 7 of my “week in the life of a missionary” series. If you missed Wednesday, you can read it here.

7:00am– Wake up and get ready for the day.

7:30am– Morning prayer in a chapel that is totally packed. An alternative break group from Benedictine College got to the Seton House late last night, so we have more than twice as many people living here and praying here than we usually do.

8:15am– Breakfast.

8:45am– After breakfast, I teach one of the BC students how to do my chores so she can help out while she is here.

9:30am– Gathering prayer before leaving for our agencies.

9:40am– Maggie, Hannah and I leave the Seton House for work. I drop Hannah off at Catholic Charities and Maggie and I continue to Regis University.

10:00am– Arrive at Regis. I spend the morning in the workshop gift setting, which means taking 3 pieces of clothing that are designed for the same size person (like men’s large or women’s small) and putting them in a bag together. Later on in the year, this will make it easier to wrap the presents before the Father Woody’s Christmas Party since we’ll already have a jacket, gloves, and socks all in one place together.

12:15pm– Drew and I leave for lunch. We sort of have a tradition of “Taco Bell Thursdays” which has only been kept a couple times during the year, but we decide to go today because, well, why not?

12:55pm– Tony and Maggie finally get back from a shopping trip to Wal-Mart to get more sweaters for girls and boys since we are still lacking a lot of the  youth clothes that we will need for the Christmas party. Since they were delayed so much at Wal-Mart that neither of them have eaten lunch yet, I take Maggie to get lunch on our way to Guardian Angels School.

I work with several Regis students at Guardian Angels moving lots of sand back and forth from the parking lot to the garden.

1:10pm– We arrive at Guardian Angels. Today is pretty different from most days because instead of going into the classrooms to help out, we are needed on the playground to help spread out new wood chips and move excess sand that was dropped off. For some reason, the school received far more sand than they needed or could ever really use, so we need to move it somewhere that is not in the middle of the parking lot. This involves spending over an hour loading up trashcans, buckets, and wheelbarrows full of sand and moving it all behind the garden. By the end of our time here, I think my arms have gotten a sufficient workout for the whole week.

3:00pm– Return to Regis and spend the remaining hour rolling yard and chatting with Maggie in the workshop.

4:00pm– We depart Regis and I buy Maggie and myself ice cream on the way to pick Hannah up to celebrate a successful first week having her with me at Regis.

4:30pm– Arrive at the Seton House.

5:00pm– A holy hour in the chapel begins. It includes Eucharistic adoration, time for confession, and lots of incense.

The chapel is packed for mass with Denver and Colorado Springs missionaries, and visiting Benedictine College students.

6:00pm– Mass with a visiting priest from Georgia. I’m asked to be the lector (Lector? Hardly know her!) for the mass and have some unexpected fun finding where the reading is when I get to the podium and the book is opened to the readings from about 2 weeks ago.

7:00pm– Dinner with all of the Benedictine College guests, the Colorado Springs missionaries who arrived around 5 today, and all of the usual Denver missionaries. I’ve never seen the dining room more full.

8:00pm– Spiritual dialogues start. Each week, the men and women missionaries split up and we have dialogues, which are a time to reflect on a specific topic and learn from each other by sharing our thoughts and insights. I usually love these times because I get to learn a lot about how the other missionaries think and get to think of ways to challenge myself spiritually in the upcoming week.

9:00pm– Night prayer, followed by free time until I go to sleep around 11.