But as I write this the last week in January, we are still very much in the grip of winter, a winter that has been more than usually cold. This is the quietest time of year—fewer guests and few newsworthy events.

Since I last wrote this column, we celebrated Christmastime—as always a very special season of rejoicing on many levels that, whatever darkness is in our lives and in the world, Christ is born, he is now with us, and he is infinitely more powerful than the darkness.

Christmas is also a time of visitors—and this year, due to the overlap of those leaving shortly after Christmas Day and others arriving, we had, for just a few days, a record number of Koreans. Including our two Korean staff, there were fifteen all together. They included five seminarians who were sent here by their seminary for three months, a longterm guest, a Christmas guest (a young woman studying English in Toronto), and two former longterm guests—blood sisters, who arrived with their brother for a second longterm stay.

The departure of the seminarians was an emotional one. Individually and together, to a few people or publicly to all of us, they told us what their stay meant to them. One said that the real grace of MH for him was having time, after a very full three years of compulsory military service followed by helping in a parish, to go into his heart, to find out what was happening there and to listen and talk to God there. Another said that he learned here that the most important thing is love.

The day they left, they all sang a Korean song and together made a deep ceremonial bow to all of us. When they were saying good-bye on the way out, there were lots of hugs and not a few tears.

After a very beautiful celebration of the feast of the Epiphany, we were all set to jump into ordinary time, but we ended up going into it with a bang. The day after Epiphany, during Mass, right in the middle of the homily, the power went out. Father had just said that we need to be flexible!

Though a power outage is not an unusual occurrence around here, it usually doesn’t last more than a day. This time it lasted for almost two.

Though we have a generator, it does not give full power, and we have to use what there is sparingly. Among other things we had Mass with flashlights and, like farm families of old, we went to bed with the sun.

Not too long after that, temperatures dipped to between minus 30 degrees and minus 40. For the most part, we bundled up, kept our wood stoves and furnaces well-stoked, and it was business as usual. But the cold did cause some complications.

The transmission went on the snow plough and it had to be sent for repairs.

At the farm both hot water heaters (one in the dairy and one at the house) broke, and though the one at the dairy was fixed right away, the one at the house was not. For ten days the farmhouse was heated only with the kitchen wood stove and its water was heated in kettles. Then the valve of the "cow waterer" froze, and water flooded and froze the cow yard. The windmill also froze and had to be repaired. (It pumps up about half the water for the farm.)

During this time of intense cold, the men doing snow removal and the bush crew continued working outdoors.

The renovation work on the men guests’ dorm also continues. Having recently passed the building inspection, Patrick McConville, Peter Gravelle, and guest Will Gaertner have completed the dry walling and are now "mudding" (sealing joints with plaster).

There is also sickness in our family. In the past couple of months, six people had surgeries, some of them minor. But two more people—Fr. Bob Sharkey and Donna Surprenant—are suffering from serious cancer. They are very much in our hearts and prayers.

Some young people from N.E.T. (National Evangelization Team) a group that is traveling across Canada, came, while in the area, for tea, a tour and input from our staff. They also joined us for Vespers and supper, after which they put on a couple of skits for us. This is becoming a yearly happening.

Among the visitors who stayed with us was Soad Haddad, a Palestinian Christian from Israel. She has grown ever closer to us ever since she was one of the young people who hung around our former house in Haifa in the 1960s and ‘70s. While here, she gave us a wonderful talk. Beginning with some of the geographical and historical background of the current situation in Israel, she movingly told the story of her own life and the deep part played in it by Madonna House.

Various staff have traveled elsewhere. Helen Hodson went to Vancouver and the Yukon to give directed Ignatian retreats. Andorra Howard, on home leave from MH Ghana, attended a study program in tropical agriculture, a program called ECHO (Educational Concern for Hunger Organization) for two weeks.

Our priests often help out at various parishes. Fr. Rowland went to Toronto to help out at the parish of one of our associate priests. Fr. Johnson covered Masses at a parish so their pastor could attend a funeral and also taught Fr. Pelton’s class at the Academy, a school of higher learning in nearby Barry’s Bay, while Fr. Pelton had his hernia surgery. He taught them about Gregorian chant.

Marysia Kowalchyk finished an icon of Mother Teresa she had been working on—a commission for a parish in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

And last, but certainly not least, as they say, Fr. Tim Hanley renewed his promises as an associate priest at an evening Mass.

Blessed, blessed Lent to each of you. It is such a graced time of year.