The end of the year is the perfect time to look back with gratitude. We asked our parents to share some faith-related victories their families experienced and we’re delighted to be able to share them with you here.

Mass and Adoration

• Our family is attending Mass more often.
• Our family has been going to adoration more.  We’ve been able to schedule it each week!
• We’re taking our older children to Adoration and everyone enjoys it!
• We listen to homilies again on the church website.
• We’ve been preparing for Mass by looking up the readings ahead of time.
• We’ve been reading the Mass readings in the car on the way to church.
• I volunteered to be a Eucharistic Minister.  This has helped our entire family to be more reverent and to pay more attention to what’s going on in the Mass.
• Church is more relevant for our children.  They can follow along and enjoy church more.
• This year we are getting through Mass without tantrums or having to pull anyone out to the back!
• Just getting to church and Family Formation as often as we did was a victory for us!
• We’ve been able to attend regular daily Mass as a family.
• We started talking more about Jesus and the Eucharist.
• Our kids have been helping each other mark their Bibles with colored ribbons in preparation for Sunday Mass.
• We’re going to church more.
• We are finally attending Mass regularly.

Prayer and Scripture

• We’ve been consistent in our morning prayers.
• We pray with our children at night and it’s nice to see what they’ve picked up.
• We’ve been scheduling time for worship and adoration with candles and praise songs on Friday nights.
• We’ve been better at a more focused prayer time this year.
• We set up a family altar for the first time.  This has led to more family prayer.
• Holy Week and extra prayers have been such a blessing for us this year!
• We participated in a prayer meeting against abortion and Planned Parenthood.
• We’ve gotten better at praying the Rosary.  This seems to be leading to a deeper faith even in our younger kids.
• This year we found that Family Formation gave more structure to our family faith and prayer time.  It was focused family time.
• When we couldn’t get to Stations of the Cross at church this Lent, we did it at home.
• My older kids got better at praying the Rosary and they’re getting the younger ones involved in it too.
• My kids had an increased willingness to work on Scripture memory this year.
• My 6th grader wants to continue to read the daily readings even though we’ll be done with Family Formation.
• We made a prayer center and started praying the Rosary in English even though it was difficult as English is not our native language.
• We started bedtime prayer.
• We’ve been reading a chapter of the Bible together every week.
• We established a routine to read their picture Bible every morning.
• We’re reading a daily verse via an app.  (Kids LOVE technology!)
• We’ve established a family prayer time each night.
• We’ve been praying travel prayers since last Lent.
• We started praying a couple’s Rosary now and then.
• Our 3-year-old has been leading a decade of a family Rosary.
• We started saying prayers before meals.
• Saying prayers at night has become a routine this year.
• We’re praying together more.  Also, my kids are independently leading prayer when they hear/see police, ambulance or fire trucks.

New Traditions and Celebrations

• We’ve moved closer to church for more fellowship.
• We’ve been involved in more church activities this year than ever before.
• We celebrated kids’ feast days using the red “You Are Special” plate.
• Our older kids have left home with a solid faith foundation.
• Feast day activities have become traditions for us this year.
• We’ve been reading the lives of Saints and performing skits about what we learned.
• We started a new Lent tradition of a Good Deeds jar.
• Our faith is stronger!

Learning more and going deeper:

• Deeper questions are being asked by our kids as we do the lessons together.
• My kids listen to the Saint audios over and over.
• We’re bringing holy water to day care.
• We figured out that doing our Home Lessons right after dinner is a perfect time for us.
• The Holy Spirit is really leading our kids!  They have great questions about the Faith.
• The audios are sparking great conversation from our “deep” 7-year-old.
• We are having strong spiritual discussions during our Family PowWow time.  We’ve been looking up more teachings in the Catechism.
• We went to a vocations open house.  Our kids now know more about what it means to be a nun.
• We loved learning together as a family!
• As parents, we have been able to re-educate ourselves in the faith.
• We’re only two lessons behind!
• We had some family friends come over to help teach Family Formation lessons.
• Our kids learned the mysteries of the Rosary this year.
• Our 7-year-old learned the Lord’s Prayer.
• There’s a lot of talk at meal times about the cross on our table.
• Our whole family is coming to Family Formation this year.

A few families took a Faith-based vacation/pilgrimage:

• We took a family pilgrimage to several places in Wisconsin.  Instead of bringing Disney movies for the trip, we watched Marian-themed movies and The Ten Commandments.  It was great!
• We took a trip to the Shrine of the True Cross in Texas and also visited many religious sites in San Antonio. 
• On our family vacation we prayed the Rosary each day and the kids understand it better than ever.

And several mentioned other resources that have been a blessing to their family:

• EWTN kids’ channel
• Holy Heroes CDs 
• Schoenstatt family groups
• Watching the AD show together

I really want to thank everyone for sharing.  This started out as a way to use a few minutes during our parent meeting and it turned out to be one of the best things we’ve done this year!  It was so encouraging to hear all the creative ways your families are growing in Faith.  Glory to God and hat’s off to all of you parents for your good work this year!  It’s a tremendous blessing to work with you.