New year signals a new beginning, a new challenge, a new perspective, with a renewed vigour and commitment to do better.  Today, the 24th of January 2010, is a very special day for Couples for Christ ( Australia ) Global Mission Incorporated for three reasons: (1)  The National Council (NC) of CFC Australia welcomes everyone to thank the Lord for giving us a new year 2010 full of  hope, faith and  love to share His goodness to others,  (2) To announce the new theme for this year taken from Matthew 10:7-8, and (3) to present a new-look website incorporating  significant changes to reflect this year’s message and more-user friendly features brought about by technological advances in web design and presentation.

The term of office of the previous national council team expired on Dec 31, 2009. As per our Constitution, we held an election and the new elected members will serve for 2 years from January 2010 to December 2011. We thank the CFC Australia Elders Assembly for choosing the following brothers to lead the CFC community in the next 2 years:  Ed Cablao (VIC), Tony Haber (WA), Joe Josue (NSW), Ronnie Masocol (NSW), John McMahon (SA), Noli Robles (NSW), and Gordon Walsh (VIC).  We take this opportunity also to thank Jun Castellon (NSW) for his faithful and dedicated service to the National Council for the last two years.   Let us ask the Lord in our prayers to bless these brothers for guidance and wisdom in making crucial decisions on behalf of the community.

After a lot of prayers, reflection and discernment, the National Council have chosen our theme for this year. It is taken from Matthew 10:7-8 “Go and proclaim the message: The kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, bring the dead back to life, cleanse the lepers and drive out demons. You received this as a gift, so give it as a gift”.  These theme clearly gives us the ways to build His house. Certainly these are action words, and action words demand a firm response from each and everyone of us.  The question is, are we all ready to respond to the Lord’s call?  St Matthew reminds us that we all have received gifts and these gifts we need to share to others. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are all endowed with special talents and gifts which we can use to do God’s will, and build up His kingdom on earth. In our reflection, may we become more aware of these gifts within us and recognize our responsibility to God and neighbours by means of these gifts. We need to take cognizance of the fact that God gave these gifts to all of us so that we can use them to spread His Good News of salvation.

Our slogan for this year is “GO! WITNESS! PROCLAIM!” GO and do God’s will regardless of our life situations. Witness by living out the gospel. Proclaim His Word to everyone in our respective parishes.

In line with our new theme and slogan, our emphasis on the work of evangelization will be in our respective parishes. In our meeting with the bishops and some parish priests, they affirm their support to this evangelisation work. At our AusPac conference last year, Bishop Julian Porteous gave us an inspiring message – to be the light of the world in our respective parishes. As families in the Holy Spirit, we are entrusted this special gift of renewing our parishes. We have taken up this challenge and Parish Retreats have already been conducted in Adelaide in the last quarter of 2009 and more are lined-up for 2010. We have Parish Retreats already lined-up in Perth and Melbourne in the first half of 2010. In NSW, we will be meeting with the parish priest to finalise the timing of these Parish Retreats.

Thank you for all the hard work that everyone has done in 2009. Let us pray that the Lord will continue to use us and use us even more in building His house. Last but not least, we give thanks to the dedication and commitment of our small team of  website coordinators from each state for their inputs and contributions to make this CFC Australia website a true vehicle of evangelization. 

May God’s blessings be with you and your family. May God bless our community and the work we continue to do in building His house.

The National Council
Couples For Christ (Australia) Global Mission Incorporated
24 Jan 2010