Vocation’s Report – Casting Into the Deep – InTouch Newsletter

By: Fr. John Roche, SDB

It is very clear from the mandates of the June Provincial chapter that Vocations will be one of the top priorities in the coming months. To keep you up to date, I will give a small report for INTOUCH to let you know some of these efforts and to seek your help. First of all, the Vocation and Youth Ministry Department are in touch with a number of people to head various committees to cover the vast amount of vocation ministry needs. I will include here these committees by attachment. I am also asking you to help by either volunteering of asking others to volunteer for these committees. We have had great interest, but unfortunately, people are so busy these days that trying to conduct regularly planned meetings is becoming more and more impossible. So, your suggestions are very helpful! A core planning meeting will take place at De Sales Hall after the next Province Youth Ministry Meeting scheduled for Saturday, September 28. This meeting will take place from 5PM to 8PM. Dinner will be provided, so if you are interested, be sure to call the Youth Ministry Office and let us know. The Principals, Directors, Pastors, CYMS, and other leadership have already been contacted to get on the agenda at all of our ministries for the first week of November, the National Vocation Awareness Week. I will be traveling north to south to meet with CEPCs, Students, Faculties, and Administrators. I will also set up a vocations table on the campuses and the parishes throughout that week. Please pray for these efforts. In the past month, we have had five young men explore their vocation with us. At the moment, two men are very promising and have begun their applications. They are both advanced in education and would be able to come in as soon as January. Please pray for Rosendo De La Mora and John Tomac. A wonderful young man finishing his studies in San Luis Obispo at California Polytechnic School getting his degree in agriculture, Rafael Pinto, is actively discerning as well. Please pray for him as he finishes his degree work. Many of you met Rafael at the First Professions and you also found him to be highly intelligent and serious about his discernment. In the coming months, there will be the National Vocation Awareness Week and I will see most of you in the province that week. Later that month, we may attempt another Pilgrimage hoping to bring young people down from the north to see the central coast and southern California works. Pray, also, for this effort. We will be out at the National Catholic Youth Convention in Indiana and then follow that with a presence at the SLS Convention in Tucson. In the process now is a folder that will be handed out at these events with three words: Dream, Discern, Do (Discipleship!) and new posters with our young men in formation will be forthcoming soon. The photos are being gathered now.

Finally, I am asking Andres to printout here in INTOUCH a worksheet to be used by any of our reader and members of the Salesian Family to identify young people to be invited to various Vocation Events. These sheets for September through November are just the first three of 12 months trying to seek those to invite and identify potential vocation prospects. Please use these sheets. They have been sent to the Province Leadership in all of our works already. After these three sheets, you will find the logos and the descriptions of the Vocation Committees and I invite you to consider helping wherever you can. Keep praying, keep witnessing with joy, and keep inviting! More soon!