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Thursday, April 19, 2018

54 Masses Offered

On April 18th we concluded an Anniversary novena of Masses. This has become an annual tradition each year to have 2 consecutive 9 day novenas of Masses celebrated surrounding the anniversary of the Children's Rosary which is April 10th. 

From April 1st through April 9th three Masses were said daily for the fulfillment of Our Lady's plans. From April 10th until April 18th three Masses were said daily in thanksgiving. We are grateful to the many people who contributed donations which allowed us to request 54 Masses in total. It is interesting this novena of Masses turned out to mirror in many ways a 54 day Rosary novena. We had 27 Masses in petition and 27 Masses in thanksgiving. One of the other interesting things we noticed during these 18 days was the many days we had snow. 

Snow in April in Connecticut can certainly happen although somewhat unusual. Yet we had snow many days during the novena. Even this past Monday April 16th we had ice falling that covered many plants and even the new pansies the kids had planted two days earlier. There is something very special about a new snow fall. There is something majestic about it. A fresh coat of snow makes everything look new and clean. It also seemed to increase the expectation of many in the region for spring or at least the warm days of spring. Yet today we had a beautiful surprise, seeds the kids had planted were up!

In discussing with my husband, who is Jewish,  our 7 year anniversary of the Children's Rosary, I mentioned how it felt particularly special since there are many Biblical references to the year 7. There are also agricultural connections to the year 7. Having attended a lecture on gardening one of the speakers mentioned that if you have diseases with your tomato plants one of the ways to get rid of it is to let the land lay fallow for 7 years. Essentially seven years is needed to "clean"  or renew the soil. My husband mentioned that the number 18 is significant in the Jewish faith. He explained that the Hebrew letters also represent numbers. The Hebrew letter that represents 18 also means "life". Therefore many Jewish people give monetary gifts such as at Bar Mitzvahs in multiples of 18.  Seeing that our anniversary novena ended on the 18th it was interesting to contemplate the connection with life coming forth. 

During our anniversary novena of Masses, we had a surprise. This past weekend a message came across our Children's Rosary website (www.childrensrosary.org) that indicated the memory on the site was exceeded. This was good news in many ways as it was an indication of the growth we have seen. The number of groups and meetings that were scheduled had reached a level too high to be accommodated on a simple shared server. While we were able to remove some information that allowed us to drop temporarily under the memory limit we realized our days on the shared server were very limited. The news is in many ways exciting. There is a feeling that Our Lady is preparing us for what is to come and readying us to accommodate even more groups and display many more meetings of children praying around the world. Given our rather immediate need to move to a larger server and the cost associated with the migration, we are humbly asking for donations to help with this effort.

We see this move as a way to update some functions on the registration and provide the site many more years of growth and functionality. This site is a multi-lingual site integrating English, Spanish and French information and interactive functionality on the View from Heaven map. As the numbers of visitors to the site has also grown we have experienced the site crash do to the number of people visiting the site. This new home for the Children's Rosary website would allow us to accommodate high traffic to the site. This will allow Our Lady the resources to reach more souls including many children.

If people are able to help us we would be most grateful. We are hoping to raise $7,000. 
Donations are tax deductible in the United States. 

Donations can be made out to Children's Rosary and mailed to:
PO Box 271743
West Hartford, CT 06127 USA
Donations can also be made online HERE

Thank you for your generosity. We are excited to see where Our Lady is leading us. 

May Our Lady and Our Lord bless you and your families.

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