We thank all of you for your generosity to the Community at Christmas, and for your willingness to help with the expenses of training the Malawians and also of our projected move to Albany. This year we have received several gifts of stock: yes, we are able to handle these.

Epiphany evening we received a special gift of a second annual lobster feast from our Healthcare System executive friends Burton Grebin and Libby Zimmer. They drove up in a snowstorm to boil lobsters and share with our interim Chaplain, Father Patrick Hunt, SSC (while Fr. Jeff was at Pecos Abbey) and Associate Carolyn Ross who was visiting.

The senior novice Sister Mary Catherine Malivasi left the Novitiate on the Feast of the Presentation to go back to her former life in northern Malawi. Her health was becoming a major concern. She had several chronic conditions that made living the full monastic life difficult for her. The three young ones, once they got over the shock of her leaving, are doing splendidly, reading lessons in chapel and refectory, helping in the pantry and kitchen, learning typing , beginning to get Vespers and Compline into Chichewa printed form for their own Monastic Diurnal in these slow months of winter.

Thanks to the Holy Myrrhbearer Monastery for the gentleman caller courting of our caprine ladies. Sr. Mary Elizabeth and Mother drove to Otego and packed “Junior” into the back of the Convent wagon early in December. He enjoyed a month of Malawian hospitality and, God willing, Lucy will have two more kids this spring.

Thomasina, unfortunately, developed a fatal condition of bacterial abscesses and had to be put down. Sr. Mary Elizabeth and the novices did a thorough disinfecting of the barn enclosure, and we wait to see if any of the other goats contract the disease. We are certainly seeing all the different challenges that go with goat-herding. Tamanda, the wetherling, and Chisomo, the youngest doeling, are now big enough to begin training to a face halter. Fwasani is slightly smaller, but agile enough to have jumped from window to window and get up on the Convent cloister roof shortly before Christmas

Monica and Maria will be clothed as novices at Vespers, Sunday, March 18. We are pleased that Bishop Jackson Biggers is able to officiate at this service. (While he was Bishop of Northern Malawi, he initiatedThe Malawi Mission.) He will be travelling from his new home in Pensacola, Florida, with a good friend of the Diocese of Northern Malawi, Mr. George Thatcher, and the Bishop-elect of Northern Malawi, Canon Christopher Boyle of Birmingham, England.

Sister Mary Angela was invited to give a Quiet Day for Clergy Spouses in the Diocese of Southwest Florida at Dayspring, the Diocesan Conference Center, in Bradenton, Florida, on March 3. She was also able to visit with Associate Marion Larsen. 

Libby watches the lobster pot, Fr. Hunt enjoys the result