@dbungo
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Registered: 7 years, 7 months ago
• Cuyahoga Falls Team Leader • Started with SPSE in 2021 Please tell us a bit about yourself I am a mother of 3 and grandmother of 2. I have been divorced for 16 years. I pray constantly for my family, most of whom are away from the church. I spend my time praying, studying, helping in my parish and community. I am a spiritual book junkie and buy more than I can possibly read. I also enjoy cooking, especially Hungarian foods and belong to a club to learn the recipes. My favorite hobby is photography! I did not complete college but have classes in speech, communication, theater, Scripture and pastoral ministry. I attend every webinar and conference I can online. If I knew then what I know now my college major would have been different. I have lived a vastly varied and unusual life. I’ve danced on a television show for a few years, made a second audition for the “Young Americans” singing group, been in many stage plays and musicals, gave the postulants (beginning nuns) at my school convent tap and ballet lessons, and have 100 years worth of craft supplies and projects to finish. I’ve been a convenience store manager, school secretary, personal secretary, bank branch manager, and a cable television sales person. I suppose all these jobs have at least two things in common: helping people and sales. It’s a natural progression to “sell Jesus” out on the streets. Tell us a little about your team Our team in Cuyahoga Falls is just starting out with two of us fully committed. Please pray for us. We hope to evangelize at the abortion clinic, a farmer’s market, in the downtown retail district and eventually we’d like to go door-to-door. We hope to go out every other week once we have enough people. This is a great opportunity that I am excited about because we have about 50,000 people in this city. There are three Catholic churches in our city lines, and none of them are to capacity. What led you to SPSE? I was originally with the Legion of Mary, and felt a strong calling to go back to the original roots of its founder, Servant of God, Frank Duff, who with his team of legionaries closed an entire red-light district by visiting the women in boarding houses and bringing them to conversion. The Legion of Mary has largely become a great source of personal prayer and sanctification, but it has somewhat lost its evangelistic drive. Through the Legion, I first took the Saint Paul Street Evangelization basic training with a group of friends. The idea kind of simmered, and at the closing of our chapter of the Legion of Mary, SPSE in Cuyahoga Falls was born. I believe, like so many have said, that we have failed to evangelize the past two generations. They’ve been sacramentalized, maybe even catechized, but they have not been evangelized. Many parish leaders complain about apathy and lack of participation. Until you get people to fall in love with Jesus, you will never get the participation in your activities that you want. Love of Jesus, belief in the Kingdom, faithfulness and love of the Catholic Church, drive people to community, service and prayer. In this world of so many idols and choices, without the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, parish offerings become just another set of “activities” on the menu. I hope by going door-to-door, training evangelists, and working quietly in the parish, to help people get excited about Jesus! I also hope that, in turn, someone will evangelize my family!! What is the relationship between evangelization and your spiritual life (prayer)? The more I read and study Scripture and listen to great homilists, the more I can see how “the Kingdom of Heaven is here, but not yet.” And so my role is to make the Kingdom present. Through prayer, daily Rosary, and Adoration Jesus has become alive for me. I’ve seen His miracles and His power, and this helps me speak about Him with love and enthusiasm. Sometimes, I am even blessed to see two levels of what is going on. So, if you sometimes feel like you’re living in an alternate universe, you know you’re doing it right. Is there a scripture passage that you turn to often, or a favorite part of Mass? John 17:14-22 “I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth. I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” What words of commissioning, consolation and empowerment! My favorite part of the Mass is the offertory, where my meager effort, my small gift of time and talent is multiplied, blessed, broken and shared. As Dallas Jenkins of “The Chosen” says, “you don’t have to feed the 5,000, you only have to bring the fish and barley loaves!” Can you share an “elevator speech” version of your testimony of God’s work in your life? A cradle Catholic, I went on to “do my own thing” during college and returned to full participation in the church as a young married mom of three children. We fell away from the church, got wrapped up in careers and ended up divorced. When my grandson was baptized, there was no one in our family to be his sponsor. Two years later, he was making his First Communion, and “The God Who Pursues” told me, “you know better, you know what is true. Are you going to let your grandson go to Holy Communion by himself?” I went to Confession, and was there at the Eucharistic Table with my grandson. I have not looked back!
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