Second Place Ribbons!

Our parish hosted the 2014 Midwest Parish Life Conference. It was a really great experience for us as it was the first Parish Life Conference that we have attended. But I'll talk about that in a later post and share some more pictures from the conference.

There was a creative arts festival amongst the parishes of the diocese of the Midwest. Evelyn entered the Poem and Photography portions of the competition. She wrote a poem all by herself (she's quite a good writer!) and she took a photograph on her own too.

On Saturday morning after Orthros the Awards Ceremony was held. Evelyn won second place for both her poem and her photograph! We were very happy for her! She got to go up and have Bishop Anthony place the ribbon on her! Getting a ribbon was made even more special because she just adores Bishop Anthony!!

Here is the poem that Evelyn wrote:

God Loves Us

God loves us,

So He gave us struggles to develop,

God loves us,

So He gives us His body and blood in a cup,

God loves us,

So He was crucified on the cross,

God loves us,

So we would not be at a loss,

God loves us,

So He was born as a person,

God loves us;

He is our light and sun.

And this is the photograph that she took:

Our parish had an iconography workshop that was taught by iconographer Brian Whirledge. Our priest showed the kids around the workshop so they could see some of the work of the students and get to watch the process of painting an icon. Evelyn snapped this shot of Brian as he painted some of the details of the icon. Beyond the obvious interest of the photo I think she really has a good eye for composition too - it's very visually balanced.

Congratulations Evelyn!