Palmerston North Diocese Catholic Women’s  League President’s report presented at National Conference in Hamilton July 16^th -19^th July 2008.
 

Greetings Ladies,
 

There are still 7 branches in our Diocese with just under 190 members. Membership has dropped slightly over the past year due to deaths but there has been one or two new members join with one branch having had an increase of 5 which is fantastic considering it is one of the more rural branches in the Diocese. Conference this year was hosted by Inglewood Branch which has only 16 members and was a great success. Several parishioners who did not belong to the League assisted with the cups of tea which enabled all League members to sit in on conference discussions. All branches were represented with 43 ladies present. Attendance at conference does fluctuate from year to year depending on where the conference is held. In Hawkes Bay we have 4 branches with a maximum of 1 ½ hours  driving time away and another 2 ½ hours away whereas in Taranaki  there only 2 branches in close proximity to each other and all other branches have at least 5 hours driving time and in one case 7 hours. Another factor is  that as our membership grows older the ladies while still happy to drive in their home town are often reluctant to drive on the open highway so this has an affect on our members attending. Our conferences still cover 1 ½ days mainly because of the traveling time mentioned.
 

Sister John Bosco Kendell our Chaplain was the main speaker and introduced the theme “Martha and Mary” and as always gave us much to think about urging us to question constantly and to spend time in our faith development to become disciples. Our relationship with God is meant to be joyful. Our motto of Faith and Service is discipleship and as such we should not be afraid to talk about our faith and what it means to us.
 

Raewyn Matheson was our first speaker and spoke to us on Dyslexia. Raewyn is a qualified teacher who has a son with Dyslexia and found the education curriculum at present was not working for her son so she stopped teaching in the classroom and set about learning as much as she could about Dyslexia and now runs classes to help people overcome their problems. There are 20 people in NZ who are trained to teach people with Dyslexia and to help parents learn to take over from them. She also gave a demonstration of some of the teaching methods which we all found most interesting and helpful in understanding more about this affliction.
Our final speaker was a young lady in her 50’s who is a major in the Salvation Army and spoke on our motto Faith & Service. This lady had a very dynamic personality. She began her address by giving us an insight into her traumatic up bringing, somewhat rocky marriage relationship until she became a born again Christian and how this changed her life and eventually her husband’s and led to her becoming dedicated to serve in the salvation Army Church. She explained the 2 SS’s on the Epaulettes of her uniform stand for “saved to serve” and this is now her mission in life. She interspersed her address with songs she had written herself which pertained to different times in her life.
 

Since the restructuring of the Palmerston North Diocese back in 1997 whereby we did away with Regional Reps and a  Diocesan Council meeting regularly, we have not had a person in the position of Vice President and there has been concern that this needed to be rectified in order to ensure continuity of the League in the Diocese. I am happy to report that at Conference this year Pat O’Connor of New Plymouth Branch was elected to this position thus ensuring there will be someone to take over next year when I complete my term and that in future years an election will be held at conference for this office.
 

All branches maintain a good relationship with their Mission stations and most have an annual fund raising event especially to finance their mission giving.
 

The theme for the past two years “Church Culture & Identity” was embraced by all branches at their monthly meetings the topic being covered in many ways. Since the launch of the present theme “Martha & Mary” at our conference in April, 2 branches have incorporated it into their programmes already with discussions on various aspects of it.
 

Catholic Women’s League is in good heart in the Palmerston North and I am sure we can look forward to many more years of Faith & Service in carrying out the many and varied tasks we do well in our Parishes.   Margaret O’Connell.