Author Archives: Lizzie

Give Up Things

By | March 27, 2012

Quite a few months ago, a group of missionaries were driving home from Mass at St. Mark’s in Clarkesville and couldn’t find anything good on the radio. No one had an ipod connector in the car, but luckily we found a stack of CDs in the center console. After some discussion, I picked out a mixed CD with “You Are Loved!” written on the front in black sharpie. The first couple tracks on this CD were the basic Christian songs you hear on the radio, some Chris Tomlin, some Third Day, etc. I really

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Say Yes

By | March 5, 2012

In February, I traveled to St. Louis, Missouri with 6 other missionaries to meet and pray with the community there about the future of Life Teen Missions. It was a blessed road trip with many laughs and glory stories along the way. While there, we visited the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, the St. Louis Arch, and Incarnate Word Parish in Chesterfield, meeting a variety of people who would be involved with the future of missions there. One of the most impactful parts of the mission for me was

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Discipline and Discipleship

By | February 25, 2012

The Latin root of discipline is disciplina meaning teaching or instruction, but disciplina is derived from the Latin word discipulus which gives us the English word disciple. You cannot arrive at disciplina without discipulus, just as you cannot be a disciple without discipline. Let me try to explain myself in English. In college, I lived a pretty strict life of discipline. As a division one swimmer, most of my decisions came back to the question of what would make me faster in the pool. What

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Take Heart

By | February 21, 2012

At the beginning of January, the missionaries here at Covecrest did an eight-day retreat. Not just any eight-day retreat, but an eight-day silent retreat. We’ve known about the retreat since the beginning of the year in September, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that the day before our two-week Christmas break, we began praying and talking about it as a community. The retreat is a combination of meditations taken from St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, personal spiritual direction, and nightly conferences

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One Church

By | January 9, 2012

I believe in the Catholic Church. I believe it what it means to be truly “catholic”.  In fact, as I say every week in Mass, I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I don’t think I ever really understood what it meant for the Church to be one until I went on foreign mission. The first time I went to Mass in another country was on mission in Ghana last summer. The liturgy was beautifully influenced by the culture of the Ghanaian people. Far from a pipe organ and a 70-year-old cantor,

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Mission Haiti: Our Lives Will Never Be the Same

By | December 19, 2011

Last week, the Covecrest missionaries spent eight days in Haiti on mission. The week included a prayer night on chastity and a work project for a Catholic mission group and orphanage called Movin’ with the Spirit. Ultimately, our mission was to show the people of Haiti the love of God and the freedom He offers each of us through Christ. “We’ve come alive in You, set free to show the truth. Our lives will never be the same.” (“Go” - Hillsong United) As missionaries in Tiger, Georgia, we’ve focused

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Sainthood is for Us

By | December 15, 2011

We’ve been reading Story of a Soul, the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, in formation recently. Now St. Therese knew she wanted to be a nun at age 2, asked to enter religious life before she was ten, and actually did enter the carmelite convent as a novice just after her fifteenth birthday- only after asking special permission from the Pope himself. At 15, I had my first boyfriend and was more interested in Seventeen magazine than The Imitation of Christ (a spiritual work Therese had memorized

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It Multiplies

By | November 12, 2011

There’s a new album out by one of my favorite bands, Leeland, called “The Great Awakening”. The first single by the same name simply repeats the next few lines over and over again.’One man wakes, awakens another. Second one wakes his next door brother. Three awake can rouse a town and turn the whole place upside down. Many awake will cause such a fuss it finally wakes the rest of us. One man wakes with dawn in his eyes, surely then it multiplies, surely then it multiplies.’ It’s a great song with

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