2010 NA conference - one person's experience - please share yours

I am still digesting everything I heard at the conference.  It was a wonderful weekend.  Even though I didn't sleep much and was walking around like a zombie, I enjoyed every minute.  Greeting people at the beginning was so much fun. I rode with Frank to the Framingham bus depot to pick up Deborah S. who was from Richmond VA.  I had not recognized her name when she registered but thought she might have been in a fraternity for years and had not been at the conferences.  It turned out that she had learned about the fraternity on a trip to Africa where she met some Little Sisters of Jesus.  She found our conference on the web and decided to come to learn more. What a great surprise!

Alain B from Montreal was another new face at the conference.  Frank had known him many years ago.  Alain is a member of a lay fraternity in Montreal. Three of their seven members are bilingual so we hope to see them at future conferences.  

Stella and Gloria came from Mount Vernon NY.  They had been at the conference in Brooklyn last year just after their fraternity had been formed. Their enthusiasm was contagious.  That's a good kind of contagious!


The first day was mostly fellowship.  Friday night in the chapel we held the Foucauld Prayer Vigil from the Beatification celebration. Each day was bracketed with morning and evening prayer.  Adoration was available during free time.


Saturday was a busy day, as it usually is at our conferences.  At our morning session we had an opportunity to share our reflections on selected writings of Br. Charles. In the afternoon Fr. John Doyle, a Jesus Caritas priest who had spent many years in South America talked about the call to Social Justice. We are still reflecting on his words, "the kingdom is now". We had mass after this presentation. In the evening Janet C from New York spoke to us about her trip to the 2009 Americas Conference in Chile.  As an added, unexpected bonus Stella, also from New York, told us about her trip to the 2010 National Conference in Brazil.  Stella was born in Brazil, has relatives there, had heard about the conference and decided "why not go to the conference and visit relatives at the same time".  Both Janet and Stella shared what they had heard about the environmental concerns and poor treatment of employees.   After this we had time for refreshments and more fellowship.  We had so much more to talk about after attending these wonderful sessions. 

Sunday we had one session in the morning which was an interview of Fr Lenny about his personal journey with Br. Charles. I was interviewing him so I was able to see everyone's attentive face as he told how he first learned of Br. Charles from the Little Sisters in Boston while he was in the seminary, joined a Boston lay fraternity, met Little Sister Madeleine in Rome, traveled to Algeria to visit Charles' tomb and the places Charles had stayed. He also met Rene Voillaume on several occasions and corresponded with him.  Clearly, the time we had allowed was not enough to cover all the details and we will have to "interview" him again.

Saying good bye to everyone was so difficult.  Many new friendships were formed and we look forward to seeing each other at future conferences.   In the meantime, we promised to keep in touch.