Vocations Event: Discovering God’s Plan for Our Lives
Date: Sunday 19 June, 2022
Time: Light refreshments at 1:30pm for a 2:00pm start
Cost: Free
RSVP: Tuesday 14 June 2022
You are invited to join with vibrant people from around the Diocese including an expert panel who will be discussing what a vocation is and how each of the four vocations are a call to love and holiness! What exactly does that mean? Come and see! This invitation is for both people who are living their vocation as well as those discerning their vocation. The event will include refreshments, good company, as well as the opportunity for anonymous Q and A. We hope to see you there!
Hi we are Joel and Elise! We have been married for three and a half years. We have one child and one on the way. We are both teachers and belong to the parish of St Therese West Wollongong. Elise has a passion for catechesis and evangelisation particularly in the areas of Theology of the Body, the Eucharist and the Old Testament. Joel has a passion for prayer, worship, catechesis and evangelisation with a particular focus on youth and young adults. Elise enjoys a flat white and Joel doesn’t drink coffee…I know, who doesn’t like coffee!
Bernadette Toohey MGL
Bernadette grew up in Adelaide, studied media, marketing, theology and secondary teaching and worked for four years as a high school youth minister before joining the MGL Sisters in 2012. As an MGL Sister, she has spent the last 10 years involved in youth ministry in parishes, schools, prisons and large youth events. Her highlights so far were taking her final vows in 2021 and a nine-month youth ministry road trip in 2018. She’s a passionate speaker and teacher about sharing the faith in our current times. If she wasn’t an MGL Sister she would have loved to have made it as a talk show host, rally car driver or high school RE teacher. Berna loves a good BIG cup of tea – white & none, or herbal!
James Arblaster – Deacon
James grew up in Albion Park Rail and went to Joey’s where, in Year 12, he experienced a rather inconvenient call to the priesthood. He went on to study Law and International Studies at UOW, hoping that a career in law/diplomacy might shake it off. However, God is both patient and persistent, even bothering him when James was living his ‘best life’* in Spain. In the end, James decided to give seminary a go for one year, give it everything, and then decide what to do at the end of the year. Spoiler alert: he was ordained a deacon in May 2022, and is on track to priestly ordination by the end of this year. James loves a good board game night, exercises begrudgingly, and enjoys a flat white (or double espresso if it’s ‘go-time’), or a leisurely pot of English Breakfast leaf tea (if it’s a ‘sit-in-chair-staring-into-space’ vibe).
*Narrator: “But, as he would discover, his actual best life was yet to come.”
Fr Duane Fernandez
As Vocations Director for Wollongong Diocese, Fr Duane is passionate about creating a “culture of vocation” (to quote St John Paul II). This passion flows from Fr Duane’s own experience of discovering how much better God’s plans are than his own – both in the big picture of life and vocation and in everyday life. Fr Duane is excited about the quality panellists for this event and will act as a facilitator, facilitating questions for the panel from the audience and drawing together some of the themes common to all vocations and vocational discernment.
Service Agreement
Definitions
Account means the account held at your financial institution from which we are authorised to arrange for funds to be debited.
Agreement means this Direct Debit Request Service Agreement between you and us, including the direct debit request.
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Debit day means the day that payment is due.
Debit payment means a particular transaction where a debit is made, according to your direct debit request.
Direct debit request means the Direct Debit Request between us and you.
Us and we and our means the Catholic Development Fund.
You means the customer(s) who signed the direct debit request. Your financial institution is the financial institution where you hold the account that you have authorised us to arrange to debit.
Debiting your account
By submitting a direct debit request, you have authorised us to arrange for funds to be debited from your account according to the agreement we have with you.
We will only arrange for funds to be debited from your account:
As authorised in the direct debit request; if the debit day falls on a day that is not a business day, we may direct your financial institution to debit your account on the following or previous business day. If you are unsure about which day your account has or will be debited, please check with your financial
Changes by you
If you wish to stop or defer a debit payment you must write to us at least 5 business days before the next debit day.
This notice should be given to us in the first instance.
Your obligations
It is your responsibility to ensure that there are sufficient clear funds available in your account to allow a debit payment to be made.
If there are insufficient clear funds available in your account to meet a debit payment:
you or your account may be charged a fee and/or interest by your financial institution;
you or your account may be charged a fee to reimburse us for charges we have incurred for the failed transaction;
you must arrange for the payment to be made by another method
Please check your account statement to verify that the amounts debited from your account are correct.
Dispute
If you believe that there has been an error in debiting your account you should call us on 1800 047 703 and confirm the details in writing with us as soon as possible so that we can resolve your query quickly.
Accounts
You should check:
with your financial institution whether direct debiting is available from your accounts offered by financial
your account details which you have provided to us are correct by checking them against a recent account statement; and
with your financial institution before completing the direct debit request if you have any queries about how to complete the direct debit
Warning: if the account number you have quoted is incorrect, you may be charged a fee to reimburse our costs in correcting any deductions from:
an account you do not have authority to operate; or
an account you do not
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We will keep any information (including your account details) in your direct debit request confidential.
We will make reasonable efforts to keep any such information that we have about you secure and to ensure that any of our employees or agents who have access to information about you, do not make any unauthorised use, modification, reproduction or disclosure of that information.
However, we may use your contact details to provide information about the fund. Should you wish this not to be the case, please advise the fund in writing.
Our diocesan logo is theologically rich and very succinct. As a hand, it depicts our mission as a diocese and as individuals within the diocese, of bearing (bringing, carrying) Christ’s love to one another and to the world around us. In this, we are the hand of Jesus Christ, and we are offering ourselves to him so that he might work through us.
We can be the bearers of his love only as a response to his call and in the strength of his grace. We are reminded of this in two ways—through the symbol of the dove (the Holy Spirit) also present in the logo, and by the incorporation of the cross that segments the logo. The presence of the cross is a reminder that bearing the love of Christ will inevitably cost us if we live it authentically. However, in the way that the Cross is the portent of redemption and life—an echo of the tree of life in the book of Genesis—so becoming bearers of the love of Christ will also bring us to life.
The four fingers of the hand also represent the four regions of our diocese. The first is bluerepresenting the beautiful water of the Shoalhaven. The second is a blue and green combination representing the waters and escarpment of the Illawarra. The third is greendepicting the hills and plains of the Macarthur. The fourth is dark green illustrating the forests of the Southern Highlands.
You are invited to join with vibrant people from around the Diocese including an expert panel who will be discussing what a vocation is and how each of the four vocations are a call to love and holiness! What exactly does that mean? Come and see! This invitation is for both people who are living their vocation as well as those discerning their vocation. The event will include refreshments, good company, as well as the opportunity for anonymous Q and A. We hope to see you there!
