“Come with us to celebrate and enjoy the God of life. We are waiting for you!”

Dear Friends, we are very happy to have the opportunity to be part of the Fraternity of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in the UK. We are one of the 64 houses of the Cenacolo communities around the world. One of our missions is to spread love, hope and joy and it is a pleasure for us to share with you what has been happening since the last year.

Nativity preparation and Don Andrea’s visit. By November, there were 13 of us in the house; Tommaso, Chun Fu (Patrick), Bruno, David, Reece, Kapil, Kamil, Jason, Eoin, Sean, Lukasz, Andrea and Tiziano. We were very busy preparing the Nativity play. It was good to share the value of prayer and our experience of faith at Christmas time with the guys who had recently joined us. At the end of the month, Don Andrea visited us. He and some other members of the Community had been to Knock in Ireland to reopen the house there which had been closed for the summer season. It was good to hear from him the most recent news from the Community in Italy and about our Mother Elvira. We had three days in a charismatic atmosphere during which we walked around the countryside and received confession from him.

Moves.   Early in December two of our brothers, David from Scotland and Jason from Ireland, were transferred to Italy.

Advent 2016.   In Advent, there were nine of us and we had profound moments of prayer, times of reconciliation and deep sharing in order to prepare our hearts to welcome the infant Jesus into our lives. On Christmas Day, we received the “gift” to go to Preston to visit Fr Chris. It was good to spend New Year at our house with friends of our Fraternity. We played bingo, ate pizza and after Holy Mass and Adoration we had a bonfire to burn our New Year resolutions.

Latest news from Dodding Green .   In the meantime Tommaso and the other brothers had the spring planting and digging well in hand. The elderly boiler had been condemned in February but was thankfully replaced and working in order to give Tiziano a warm welcome home. All the brothers are very grateful to all the benefactors who have enabled them to keep warm and clean. When the heating engineers were working at Dodding Green they were curious about the reasons for a group of men being there and why they were living the sort of life they observed. Opportunities for testimonies are not only at Cenacolo events!! “Now we are preparing for Easter, our Open day at the beginning of May and several young men are about to join the Cenacolo Community. Please hold them and us in your prayers.”

Christmas gifts for Romanian children.   Also in November some of us helped the local community load a lorry full of gift filled shoe boxes for Romanian children. Each year a collection is made and shoe boxes are covered in festive paper and filled with gifts to send to Romania. We are always pleased to be able to give our help with this act of generosity.