"What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.  It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings..." ~ Pedro Arrupe

A year of service had been on my radar early in my college career.  The stories of current and former volunteers who came to my school to speak inspired me to consider being more than I had ever imagined.  I spent four years at Le Moyne College, studying chemistry and physics, but in the fall of my senior year, I realized that it was the people that I was able to serve that were getting me out of bed in the morning, not the promise of another biochemical pathway or quantum mechanical approximation.  Some of those people that got me out of bed in the mornings included guests and others that I had met at the St. Francis Inn, where I had served on alternative breaks with my school.  And that's more or less how I ended up with FVM.

I sign off on all of my emails with a quote, one that is the hallmark of everything I hope to achieve this year and all the years of my life: "In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."  Thomas Merton's words have stuck with me ever since I read them almost two years ago.  I hope and pray and am convinced that this year will be full of wonderful people with whom I can be in relationship.