Serving with the Bishop and visitor excitement

Ben, William, and Margaret were scheduled to be altar servers at Mass this morning. The boys were trained by some other servers last weekend, and this week they were all anxiously anticipating getting to serve together. Fortunately, they’d all been well trained and had lots of experience at our home parish in California.

Once we arrived at the Cathedral and the kids had gone to vest, we learned that the Bishop would be saying Mass. We were a little concerned that they wouldn’t have had enough training, but they were able to pick up the few extra duties with no problem. There was no worry about the Bishop’s mitre or staff, since he didn’t use them at this Mass. The tricky parts were knowing just when to ring the bells during the consecration, and knowing where to stand. They did a super job, though, and I doubt if many people noticed the problems they had. William did say he was a little nervous about serving with the Bishop because he wasn’t always sure what to do.

Our other huge excitement today was that Caroline and Susan Irving arrived from Redlands!! Right after church we went to the airport and waited just a short bit until their flight from Auckland arrived. We were delighted to see them finally come through the security area. They had been travelling nearly 16 hours, but were fresh and ready to begin a busy week; I don’t think Margaret and Caroline have stopped talking yet! It was fun to catch up on the “local” (Redlands) news, take a walk up the hill to the Supernova, and spend an easy day talking about what we will be doing for the rest of the week that they’re here.