To celebrate three years and 36 editions of mercy@live the Southern Province Communications team invited a number of sisters to the Provincial Offices in Cork on 21st October to revisit some of the earlier editions and explore the mercy websites – www.sistersofmercy.ie and www.mercyworld.org. Sisters present included Agnes Noonan, Eileen Coffey, Ena Kennedy, Kathleen Fitzgerald, Maureen O’Sullivan and Rose O’Donoghue. Our day began with the reflection for the day on www.todayismygifttoyou.com which happened to be a wish list including “I wish I was enthusiastic enough to get the really important things done each day”. As the session progressed we really did become enthusiastic about our websites. Monica, Communications Link Person, welcomed the group and then handed over to Ann Lenihan and Nuala O’Gorman to guide us through the sites. Rachel Porter-Hayes was on hand to ensure that everyone got on line and kept up to speed.
Communications Training Day, Provincial Office – 21st October 2010
We started off by submitting applications for Mercy E-News. We opened Mercy E-News 387 for 20th October. Sr. Immaculata Murphy’s article on Peru appeared on our screens so we all sent messages to Peru congratulating Immaculata on her publication in Mercy E-News.
Delving back into earlier editions of mercy@live we became aware of the richness of experiences and reflections recorded for us over the previous three years. We discovered that through mercy@live we have a real insight into the lived experiences of so many of our Sisters throughout the seven provinces of Ireland, US, Kenya and South Africa – and all available at the click of the button “more” under mercy@live in the members homepage in www.sistersofmercy.ie. It really is a wonderful means of connecting us all with one another as it raises our awareness of people and events in different places. The reflection from the CLT every month is life-giving and inspirational. Handouts with questions on various articles ensured that we had practical hands-on work to do and really helped to familiarise ourselves with the geography of the site. We were also shown how to print out the entire mercy@live or just print out individual articles.
Visiting www.sistersofmercy.ie opened up endless possibilities – we were able to look up long lost friends of yester year in the Directory and get addresses, phone numbers etc. Looking up the Obituaries was quite sobering when we noticed the number of Sisters who have passed away in recent times. It also highlighted for us the importance of submitting obituaries to Rachel in the office. We were enthralled at the volume of news items recorded in the News section going back to January 2008.
We then explored the www.mercyworld.org site – we posted prayers at Catherine’s Tomb and watched the lamps descend and take their place by the tomb. We did a virtual tour of Baggot Street, visited the shop, reviewed the resources and decided that we needed more time to really get to know the sites.
Communications Training Day
All present really appreciated the opportunity of being introduced to our websites and came away with an appetite to delve deeper and spend time exploring the richness and diversity of Mercy. The enthusiasm of the presenters was contagious and we all left eager to spread the good news among our Sisters and also to encourage all we meet to visit the sites and read and contribute to mercy@live.
Maureen O’Sullivan rsm and Ann Lenihan rsm
Southern Province
