eMatrimony Newsletter
 
Supporting, Encouraging and Challenging the WWME Community
2010 WWME North American UpdateMay 17, 2010
Greetings! ,

Some important messages in this email include:
  •  An invitation to complete a survey
  • Some interesting WWME history  
  • An invitation to attend the upcoming convention
  
Love, Joe and Linda Oppelt
eMatrimony editors 
ScottandKaren and Fr Tom WWME Community Survey
 
Dear couples and priests of Worldwide Marriage Encounter,
 
God's blessings to you all! 
 
As manyof you are aware, Worldwide Marriage Encounter has been enriching marriages for over 42 years and has touched hundreds of thousands of lives.  And we all know firsthand the power contained in our weekend experience as we spent those wonderful hours in intimate conversation with each other.   Yes, our weekend is the catalyst that jumpstarts our marriages and turns our focus back to each other!  But as we also know, our mission of renewal in the Church and change in the world is not limited to only the weekend experience.  Rather, our mission includes ongoing support for the lifestyle we present on our WWME weekends.  This ongoing support is best provided through local sharing circles and communities.
 
It is important to us, and we know that it is important to you, that WWME continues to provide ongoing support that is relevant to today's couples and priests.  Therefore, our Community Pillar has put together a survey to obtain the feedback of those who have already attended a WWME weekend or experience.  We invite you to take a few minutes to complete this survey by clicking on the link in the next paragraph.  This is a very user-friendly survey and will take you only a few minutes to complete.  And it will provide us with the valuable information we need in order to assess the post-encounter needs and experiences of today's couples and priests.  Please be assured that your responses are completely anonymous. We ask you to share this survey link via email with all of your communities.  In order for us to get an accurate assessment, it is most important that we hear from everyone!  The results of this survey will only be as good as the number of couples/priests who respond to it.  We would like to have this information collected by June 15 so that the responses can be collected and collated.
 
So here we go!  Simply click on this link:
  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/wwmecommunity and begin!
 
            We thank you for caring enough for our already encountered couples and priests to take the time to complete this survey and for passing it onto your full communities.  In addition, this information will also benefit those couples and priests who have yet to participate in a WWME weekend.  We thank you especially for caring about them!
 
May God bless you and your family!
 
ScottandKaren Seaborn & Fr. Tom Griffith, SVD
U.S. Ecclesial Team Worldwide Marriage Encounter
Ruben & Martha Lujan_ Fr. Jerry Bouska  ME Remembrances from Ruben & Martha Lujan
 
Hello - we are Ruben and Martha Lujan and we experienced our weekend in January, 1972 in Santa Barbara, California.  Fr. Chuck Gallagher and two couples from New York along with a rookie couple from Ojai, California were our team.  We were invited to become team and were sent to NY for our team training weekend.  In looking through some of the articles in past issues, we noticed a request for information that will help fill in information on our history.  
 
First, how did we hear about the weekend? Well, we were involved with the Christian Family Movement - in Spanish, the Movimiento Familiar Christiano, and our 'leaders' invited us to experience a Marriage Encounter in Spanish by a team from Mexico.  It was a very nice weekend, but...   Then, being bilingual, we were asked to go to a National M.E. weekend, experience it and 'bring it back' to the Spanish speaking community.  Fr. Patrick Colleran was the team priest along with Dick and Cindy Pardi and one other couple.  That also was very nice but...     That was October, 1971.  Then in December, Fr. Colleran called us and asked if he could come see us. This was Sunday night and he wanted to come over the next night.  It was important, he said.  When he showed up, we thought something was wrong. He looked so happy but he didn't look like himself.  He came in, took his coat off, sat down and one leg went over the side of the chair as he loosened his collar and said, "call me Paddy." He then proceeded to tell us that our Cardinal, Timothy Manning, had asked him to go to Santa Barbara because "some people from New York are giving a Marriage Encounter weekend in Santa Barbara. Go find out what they are doing (because we already had National M.E)."  He went thinking he could 'observe' but Fr. Chuck Gallagher told him there were no observers, only participants.  He then told us that he got his name back on that weekend.  He said, "call me Paddy." He was a changed man.  He then told us that he was sending us on an M.E. weekend. We said "we've already made two!"  He said we hadn't made anything. We were going. We didn't know then that he had already paid for our weekend.  We went with Dick & Cindy Pardi to the second weekend in California.  
 
During our Team Training weekend, Chuck talked about the "discovery" of the difference between 'thoughts' and 'feelings.'  We were at The Nunnery (I think that was the name) at Saddle River, N.J.  That's where we heard the story of another weekend held there where the rooms were overbooked and one of the team couples had to sleep on a mattress on the floor between the stacks in the library.  During the 90/90, as the dialogue became more 'intimate,' the couple didn't hear an elderly nun come into the library.  When she saw the couple (and they saw her), she didn't turn around but instead, backed out carefully saying something like "excuse me, excuse me..."  
 
The following June/July, we accompanied Dick & Cindy Pardi, Judy & Al Gonelli and Fr. Paddy Colleran and flew to NY for the convention (1st or 2nd - don't remember) at Hicksville, L.I., N.Y.   That weekend was the beginning of a "landmark" awareness - we (WWME) were going to change the world!  Awesome! Flying home, we realized that our task was to begin to reach out to all of California! Little did we know that we would be commuting to and from NY giving weekends there and here.  
 
After giving weekends in NY and California for about two years, we received an invitation from Paddy & Dick & Cindy to start giving the weekends in Spanish. I said that my first language was English and I wasn't that confident in my Spanish. Ruben's first language was Spanish having been born in El Paso, Texas.  Paddy said, "I'll pray for the gift of tongues - in Spanish!"  We did the first team training in Spanish for San Antonio, Texas and couples from NY, Mexico, Texas and California were on that first weekend.  
 
Several of us who began working in the Spanish M.E. were invited to meet Fr. Gabriel Calvo (Spain) while he was visiting in San Antonio, TX.  What stories He told us!  We met with him for a whole weekend at the Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary seminary.  
 
(By the way, the Maryknoll priest that gave that first weekend at Notre Dame was Fr. Donald Hessler.  We met him before our weekend.) 
 
During the St. John's University convention in NY (1975), Ruben and I were asked to give a talk (I don't remember now what the subject was), we met a priest by the name of Fr. Ivan Betancourt.  Wonderful man. He told us that after the convention, he was going to be heading for his next assignment - in Central America.  I think he said Honduras.  A few years later, we heard that he had been murdered along with some catechists - their bodies thrown into a well and the well had been dynamited to cover it up.  Some campesinos later informed on where to find their bodies.  
 
It was the Holy Year and we received a telephone call about the beginning of September. We were asked if we wanted to go on the pilgrimage. We answered that Ruben didn't have anymore vacation days. They said "we didn't ask you that. Do you want to go?" We answered that our oldest son was starting high school and the tuition was high. We couldn't afford it." They said "we didn't ask you that. Do you want to go?" We answered that we didn't know who we could leave our kids with and of course they again said "we didn't ask you that...do you want to go?"  No more excuses. The M.E. community saw us like "grandparents" as we were one of the first teams on the West Coast. Last ones to get tickets.  First ones to land in France....Lourdes next stop.  God is Wonderful!  We still have our WWME pilgrimage book with pictures of our wonderful experience in Lourdes, Rome, Assisi.  2200 of us.  Our framed photo of our group hangs on our wall in our home for all to see.      Lots more memories but I think these are a few of the early memories from 1972 through 1976 - our last year as team.  After that, we began directing contemplative prayer retreats with a priest, another WWME couple, Bill & Joanne Browne, and a sister - all of us experienced the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius and as Fr. Chuck G. said, "we were all to take what we had learned and move - into all areas of the Church."  We did.    Feel free to share.  We now live in Aguascalientes, Mexico (retired three years ago).  
 
In Jesus' love, with ours - Ruben and Martha
 
(Photo above shows Ruben, Martha, and Fr. Jerry Bouska)
2010 Convention Logo Why Attend Conventions?
 
 We'd like to share our perspective on attending Marriage Encounter conventions, and why a couple would choose to attend. We think of it as attending a family reunion with (almost) total strangers - except that our shared experience of the common "ME" weekend might actually make us closer than some of our blood relatives.
 
We believe that one of the best things about conventions are the people we meet, the people with whom we travel, the people with whom we share meals and sometimes, homes. Conventions always have a program and a set of talks, which many people work long and hard to "get right" beforehand. They provide the structural framework that allow people of all walks of life, nationalities, ages, and family situations, to come together and share their basic values of love, marriage, and intimacy with others.
 
We made our Marriage Encounter Weekend in February 1987, in the Boston area. The community into which we were welcomed was in the midst of planning a section convention that was held in June at Bentley College outside of Boston. That was our first convention experience, and as neophytes, we really didn't know what to make of it. The auditorium was filled with couples and priests from all over the northeast, dialoguing, listening to talks, and being entertained by a "Musical Walk through the Weekend". But we noticed that in the background were couples, not necessarily participating in or listening to the talks but simply standing around talking to each other, reconnecting with each other after months and even years of not seeing each other. 
 
Since that first convention in 1987, we have been privileged to attend several more, including Section Nine conventions in Lincoln NE, Casper WY, and Colorado Springs. We have also attended national and international conventions -Denver CO, New Brunswick NJ, and San Antonio, TX. At every convention we make new friends and re-connect with old friends. Mostly, we enjoy the deep sharing that happens - both with each other as we are challenged by the talks, and with other couples in the scheduled times and especially in the spontaneous times for sharing the joys and struggles of our relationship with others.
 
The high point of a convention is the closing mass on Sunday, when tens and sometimes hundreds of priests process into the auditorium amidst a roar of cheers, hugs, and "I love you" signs. The love is so tangible at those times it gives us  goose-bumps just thinking about it. Here is truly the Mystical Body of Christ - laity and clergy united, to celebrate our sacraments with the true Sacrament of Love itself, that Christ gives us to take out into the world and CHANGE IT with the power of that love.
 
Marriage Encounter Conventions serve to remind us that our ME weekend was not just about us in our own little domestic church, although it is about that too. It is about using that love that has been strengthened between us to make the world a better place for everyone. How do we use our couple power to minister to the needs of this world? The conventions also remind us that we are not alone in our quest - we are part of a huge international family of lovers who are each involved in this quest. It's not easy - but it does not have to be lonely either. And we can ( and should) have some fun while we're at it!
 
Are you going? We hope so - see you in New Jersey! 
 
Click here for the convention web site. 
 
God bless,
Joe & Linda Oppelt
HyperLink Disclaimer 
Disclaimer
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Mission Statement
As an online publication of Worldwide Marriage Encounter, eMatrimony serves as a resource to support, encourage and challenge couples, priests and religious to live the values of the WWME experience and grow stronger in their efforts to renew the church and change the world.
Contact Information
For comments related to this newsletter, or if you have something to contribute related to WWME, send e-mail to the editors, Joe and Linda Oppelt.