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Family Group Travels in New South Wales - June and July 2005
A report from the Director, Mary Ingham
DUBBO
It has been a busy and interesting time for Family Groups in our country areas. Mary Ingham and Fr. Peter McGrath visited Dubbo in June for a regional gathering of leaders and interested people. We had people from Forbes, Dubbo and Cowra attending and sharing ideas.
BOORAGUL
The Newcastle Leaders’ day was held on June 26th . Representatives of many of our Newcastle-Maitland diocese attended. Fr. Peter McGrath was inspirational as usual and helped the people there to further the vision of the Family Groups and help all the leaders to remain committed to their members.
ARMIDALE DIOCESE - July 1st to 6th.
Our biggest trip so far this year was a week spent in the Armidale diocese. We traveled 2000km so Fr. Peter’s car had a really great work-out!
It was good to catch up with our people at TAMWORTH SOUTH, with our dedicated Co-ordinators, Trish & Grahame Tighe. Fr. Peter showed some of his slides, matching them with Family Group stories. We were welcomed by Fr. John Willis. It was good to catch up with him again.
After an overnight stay with Grahame & Trish, we were off to GUNNEDAH, traveling through a hail storm to the home of Gunnedah’s Co-ordinators Chris & Karen Mooney. Fr. Peter celebrated the 6pm Mass on Saturday at St. Joseoh’s church.. The Parish had just completed the Parish Assembly Feedback, and it was amazing how much of it could be met by Family Groups. We gathered in the parish centre to have a soup supper with some of our Family Group people. Fr. Joe Adriano had just returned from Bangkok & welcomed us for the Mass
On Sunday we drove to ARMIDALE where we met with the leaders of the Groups for lunch at the bowling club, followed by a very productive meeting with our leaders., Fr. Peter celebrated the 5.30pm Mass at the Cathedral where many of the Family Group people had gathered and this was followed by supper in the parish centre. A great time to catch up with our Family Group people. We were made very welcome by Mgr Ted Wilkes.
Monday morning saw us on the road again and we arrived at INVERELL to be welcomed by Fr. Bernie Frize, who had a lovely lunch ready for us. In the evening we met up with the leaders and some of the members of the Family Groups of Inverell and were really thrilled to find how well the groups are doing here. Every suggestion I made they would tell me “ yes, we do that already”.
Ideas such as weekends away, annual Family Group get togethers for all the groups, including new parishioners in the groups.
Home Masses, all were happening at Inverell. It was great to hear such positive news.
Congratulation to Bob and Gloria Baldwin, our Co-ordinators.
Last stop on our trip was MOREE where we were welcomed by the parish priest, Fr. Paul McCabe and the lovely Rose Humphries and her daughter, who provided a wonderful lunch for us. Later we met our new co-ordinator, Del Cordery who is following in Rose’s footsteps in looking after the Family Groups of Moree. We had a lovely evening with our groups, starting off with Fr. Peter saying mass for everyone in the chapel and then Peter showing his slides and encouraging the Family Groups to continue to love one another and to get some more people to join.
We set off for Sydney the next day and felt very happy to have been with so many committed Family Group people. Many thanks also to our Regional Co-ordinators, John Bolger and Maureen Armitage, who are both so helpful in looking after the Armidale area.
Mary Ingham
NSW Director
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