Letters

For about the past month, I have been working on getting support letters for the other Newman people going on the spring break service trip. The letters are very similar to the Palanca letters that we had at our Emmaus retreat in Albany (during my undergrad). I actually was able to send a Palanca letter to the travelers this year as a last minute thing and individual letters to my friends on the team (college and high school!). For those who have no idea, travelers are those students who are on the retreat for the first time and the team members are those students who traveled before and are helping run the retreat now. It was gratifying to be able to get the letters out to my friends, some of whom I haven't talked to in a year or more, and show them how special they are and that I still think about them. Anyway, I'm very excited because I was able to get some support letters from some family members of those going on the trip. I have a letter from Eric's parents, Eamonn's parents and two of his sisters, and Aldo's sister, parents, and someone else important (his sister helped out). I'm amazed at how well this whole scheme is turning out and how well people have responded to my request for letters, especially the family members who have no idea who I am (I just sent letters and e-mails not knowing how they would respond). Even though I wasn't able to get in contact with everyone's family, everyone going has at least a handfull of letters because Newman folk who aren't going on the trip wrote letters of support. I'll update later when everyone receives the letters. (NOTE: This post was written after everyone had received their letters so none of the surprise was diminished due to this blog post.)