August 15, 2019
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I would have written to you earlier, but my luck, I lost the entire letter I was going to send to you, the other day on my computer.
My letter is about faith, hope, and love! Three years ago I came down with multiple myeloma, a blood like leukemia diseases. I contracted it many years ago ministering at ground zero at the World Trade Center in New York City.
My faith has keep me on the course of recovery with the help of many family members, friends, my brother Franciscans from my province and with the special care of doctors, nurses and firefighters in my life! Faith is the only thing that I had to get me through this time in my life. Sometimes I couldn’t pray myself so I had to depend on the care of others to do just that.
My hope in life, wanted to do more for God, and to keep me on target when it came to recovering from my illness. I also reflected on how lucky I was to serve God after my illness.
My love for life also gave me great liveliness and zest for life especially for the future. My love for God, family, community life and my firefighters gave me a more powerful force to thank God each day that I was able to stretch His love as much as I could for others and myself!
My vocation to religious life began in 1972, since then, God has given me so many opportunities to do ministry in many places. I was first a high school administrator that I worked with persons living with HIV/AIDS. I became a firefighter chaplain in 1994 and I have been doing that kind of ministry ever since.
My hope now as a member of CUSA, I can help others who may be having a hard time coping with whatever may be hurting you, mentally and physically.
I ask each of you to pray for me as I will pray for you each day with the friars I live with. Our fraternity at St. John the Baptist has five members and just so you know, Father Lawrence is part of my community; he helps us friars in many ways. One very important task that he does is he takes good care of our accounting books. We all have a problem balancing each mouths bills etc. He also has been a great help to me when it comes to prayer and refection ideas for us friars to work on when we have our monthly chapters.
Part of my job with CUSA is helping promote our Facebook page and I also try to do a BLOG on the CUSA web page. If you have any ideas for things on the web-page, please let me know! Photos are great with some kind of caption to go with the photo!
I look forward in hearing from you in the near future!
Peace and all good,
Brother Ed Arambasich, OFM