Confirmed!!

After a year of monthly classes, two retreats, a saint name paper, service hours and some complaining (just keeping it real), Peter was confirmed on Monday, May 1st!

We had a busy weekend filled with family.  Dan's uncle, who is a priest came in for the weekend as well as Dan's brother, Dick, who is Peter's godfather and sponsor and Dan's sister, Cathy.  My parents and my brother were also here.

There were 90 kids from our parish and 70 kids from a neighboring parish confirmed on Monday night.  The Diocese of Charlotte covers a lot of territory and the Bishop is always busy during confirmation season.  The church decided that instead of waiting until October when his schedule was free, we would invite the Abbot from Belmont Abbey to confirm the kids now.  Unfortunately, he had a death in the family and was unable to attend on Monday so he gave the faculty to confirm to our priest.

Our parish doesn't allow photography during the ceremony but they had a photographer on hand (who is expensive!).  These pictures are screenshots from the photographers website. 

Peter being presented as Columba. 

(Columba is a saint from Ireland - considered one of the big three after Patrick and Brigid.  Peter chose Columba because Dan'ss family is Irish and when we went to Ireland last year we visited Down Cathedral where all three saints are buried. And we also saw the Book of Kells which was written at Columba's monastery. As a side note, the director of faith formation came up to us after the service to hand us something we left in the pew and was asking Peter why he chose Columba.  She said that in all her years of doing this, she had never come across a Columba and they had to look it up to make sure they were making the name tags correctly!)

Here's Peter receiving a special blessing from his great uncle Bob:

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And here are some family pictures after the ceremony:

Peter and his sponsor, Uncle Dick

Peter and Aunt Cathy

Peter and Great Uncle Bob

All of us!