Let Me Start... Here is My Update

I am typing this from our cozy apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Mike and I moved here a few weeks after our wedding last April in California. You can say that a LOT has happened since I left Manila, so here's a quick rundown:

I left Manila for San Francisco last January, 2006. While Mike was finishing up his MBA program in Arizona that semester, I planned our wedding from Pleasant Hill, California. We had a very intimate and beautiful wedding last April 29, 2006 at the Carmel Mission in Carmel, California - also known as St. Charles Borromeo de Carmelo Mission. The reception was held at La Playa Hotel.

A week after our wedding, Mike graduated from Thunderbird Business School. Ten days after that, we packed up and began our drive to Washington D.C., stopping in Santa Fe, Denver and Chicago, among other places. We passed a dozen states and covered over 2500 miles.

In late May, Mike started working for the Grameen Foundation in dowtown D.C. where he is a program officer working on microfinance. He enjoys his work and hopes that it will bring him to the Philippines soon. Gina is hoping for the same. She is not employed yet (still awaiting her work authorization) but she stays busy doing household chores, errands and, lately, doing lots and lots of cooking!

We hope to hear what you are all up to these days!

A Prayer for our Family

Here is a post from Amando:


I would like to share with and offer a prayer for all the Borromeo clan families from the prayer book of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. This magnificent Shrine which we recently visited in Washington, D.C., is the Patronal Church of U.S. Catholics and America's preeminent Marian Shrine. It stands adjacent to the Catholic University of America campus. I thought it is fitting that we kick off the Borrometer Online as a clan project with a prayer for each of its families wherever they may be.

PRAYER FOR A FAMILY

O dear Jesus,

I humbly implore You to grant Your special graces

to our family. May our home be the shrine of

peace, purity, love,labor and faith. I beg You,

dear Jesus, to protect and bless all of us, absent

and present, living and dead.

O Mary, loving Mother of Jesus, and our Mother, pray to

Jesus for ourfamily, for all the families of the

world, to guard the cradle of the newborn, the

schools of the young and their vocations.

Blessed Saint Joseph,

holy guardian of Jesus and Mary, assist us by your

prayers in all necessities of life. Ask Jesus that

special grace which He granted to you, to watch

over our home, at the pillow of the sick and the

dying, so that with Mary and with you, heaven

may find our family unbroken in the Sacred Heart

of Jesus. Amen.

A history about the Shrine (from its information pamphlet):

In 1847, at the petition of the United States Catholic Bishops, Pope Pius IX named the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of her Immaculate Conception, Patroness of the United States. In 1913, Bishop Thomas Shahan, Rector of the Catholic University of America, presented to Pope Pius X a plan to build a shrine to Mary. The pope gave not only his enthusiastic support, but a $400 personal contribution as well.

Designs were soon completed and on September 23, 1920, James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, laid the cornerstone. The (lower) Crypt Church was completed in 1926 and has been in continuous use ever since. The Great Depression and Second World War delayed construction of the Upper Church until the 1950s, when the nation's bishops renewed the effort to complete the project under the direction of Msgr. Thomas Grady.

Catholics throughout the country responded overwhelmingly to a national fundraising effort, and construction resumed during the Marian Year of 1954. The Shrine's solemn dedication Mass took place November 20, 1959, and Pope John Paul II gave it the papal honor and the title "Basilica" on October 12, 1990.

A pilgrimage to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception should be one of the highlights during a visit in Washington, D.C.

Written by Amando Guilatco
Pleasant Hill, California

Welcome to our family weblog

For a long time, we all got our Borrometer newsletters in the mail (all through the diligent work of our beloved tito Rafaelito). In line with the times, we decided that an internet edition of the Borrometer can continue to keep all of us connected in a very convenient, efficient manner.

What do you think?

Every member can be an author and write about what we are all up to these days. Expect an invitation soon!

For now, you can post a comment (by clicking on COMMENTS, below) and let us know how you feel about resurrecting the Borrometer in this very modern of ways. Also, tell us what you would like to see on this blog.


Join in! We want this to be a very interactive blog.