Celebrate Catholic Family Conference

Dear Friends - Welcome to CELEBRATE 2007 !

CELEBRATE is a Holiday Conference for Christians of all ages, and our vision is to offer you a spring event which combines good Christian teaching and celebration with an opportunity top relax and enjoy a short break after the winter – in other words refreshment for body, mind and spirit for all the family.

This is our fourteenth CELEBRATE and the organising team have been praying and working hard for our week together, sensing God’s guidance along the way. We are committed to doing everything we can to make the week as relaxing and refreshing for you as possible, and should any problems arise we will do our best to resolve them. The staff at John Fowler Holidays are also totally committed to helping us, and have as always, given us excellent service during the preparations. Likewise the staff at Ilfracombe College have been most helpful to us, trusting us with the full use of their premises.

It promises to be an exciting week, and we’ve assembled a team of gifted people to challenge us with the Good News, to inspire us, and to entertain us with their wit, wisdom and God-given artistic talents. It certainly isn’t boring to be a Christian today.

Most of us at CELEBRATE are Catholics, but we are delighted to be joined by those from other Christian traditions, including a number of our speakers. We have much to learn from each other and to share and celebrate together. Sadly we will be reminded of our history of division when we come together for the Eucharist, but our desire is that as we experience even more acutely the pain of division, we will commit ourselves to praying and working for unity with even greater conviction.

May the Lord bless us all this week, and please pray for everything He wants to do in us and through us at CELEBRATE 2007. After all, as I write each year – it’s HIS Conference.

In the Peace and Joy of our Risen Lord and Saviour

Charles Whitehead, Conference Chairman