My husband and I have been tossing around an idea for a while now of creating a searchable database of communities to help women more easily find a compatible community.  It would be a free tool for both the communities and the women who are discerning.  I sketched out some criteria to start with, but I’d like to hear from you what you would find helpful.

The criteria I’ve listed so far are:

• Habit
• Type of Order (contemplative, apostolic, monastic)
• Size of order as a whole
• Size of communities within the order
• Communal prayer
• Primary ministries/work
• Age Limits
• Education requirements.

What other criteria would you find helpful to have in a database?  I’ve thought about location, but not sure how to do that.  But programming it is my husband’s job.

If you are active on other vocation boards or e-mail lists, please share this with others so we can get as much input as possible.  Thanks in advance for your help!

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Community Database

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Theme Update

Update:  Finally fixed.  Thanks for your patience.

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Thank you for your patience

Consecrated Life has been around now for almost 9 years.  It’s been a labor of love, and all I’ve wanted out of it was the satisfaction of helping women find their path in this life.

Things are a little round in our household at the moment, though.  I was laid off from my job two weeks ago, and while I’ve applied for everything that will stand still long enough, I haven’t gotten so much as a phone interview in response.  My husband is in the immigration process, so he can’t work until he gets his greencard, which could be anywhere from next month to some time next year.

On top of all this, a month ago one of our three dachshunds ruptured a disc in her back and is partially paralyzed.  Between vet visits, medications, x-rays, and her brand new doggon wheels, our savings have been sorely depleted.

My chief concern is losing my health insurance.  I have multiple health issues which require medication.  In addition, if I’m without my health insurance for more than 62 days, when I finally do get a job, they can hit me for pre-existing conditions for a year and wouldn’t’ cover my meds during that time period. And I just can’t afford to COBRA my insurance at this point.

I’ve always hated asking anyone for help.  When I was in community, my novice mistress was always on me about my refusal to ask for help.  Well, she’d be proud of me today, because I’m asking for help.

UPDATE: First, I’d like to thank the two people who have donated. Every little bit is a blessing for us right now. I am so grateful for every little bit of help we receive, and we are keeping our donors in our prayers.

Now for the update: I am still unemployed. I’ve had a number of interviews but no job offers yet. We’re getting to the point where our savings are depleted and we only have unemployment to rely upon. That will pay our rent and utilities with nothing left over. In addition, the hosting for this site is due in November. It costs about $60 to host this site for a year. At the moment, we just will not have the money to pay for the hosting in November. So there is a possibility the site will be down starting in mid-November if I don’t get work. We just won’t have the money to continue to pay for it.

However, all news isn’t bad. I told you all about Amber, our middle dog, who was paralyzed from a ruptured disc in her back. Well, Amber has made almost a full recovery. She still doesn’t have full feeling in her back legs, but she has regained most of the movement, and she can walk unassisted if she is on even ground. She still requires daily medication, but we are just so happy with her progress as is our vet. She was astounded last week when Amber walked unassisted into the clinic. So, thank you for your prayers. They have definitely been effective for our little girl. I have a bunch of videos that we shot over the course of her recovery. I’ll be posting them on YouTube later and will link them for anyone who wants to see her.

If this site has been of assistance to you over the years, and if you have any extra money to spare, we’d appreciate any assistance you can give.  Rest assured that you will be in our prayers.  If you wish to donate, just click on the button below:

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Can You Help?

• I finally brought in the old Discernment Resources and Nun Blogs lists.  You can access them now on the menu at the top of the page.
• Updated various e-mail links that were out of date and a few links that were still pointing at the pages from the old site.  Hopefully all internal links are now pointing to the right place.
• I finally went out and deleted all of the old pages from the previous site.  If you have those bookmarked, you’ll need to go to the new page and bookmark it.  The old pages aren’t being updated anyway.

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Site Updates

Well, I thought I’d highlight some of the information I’ve been sharing with you for the last….how long has it been?  8 years?  Somewhere around there, anyway.

So, here’s the format I’ll be using.  I hope to update 3 days a week.  Monday will be video day.  Wednesday will be discernment day, where I share a website, book, or other information on discernment.  On Friday’s I will highlight a randomly chosen community.  I’ll be contacting the communities chosen so they can add to what I post, but until I start getting responses to inquiries, I’ll just post the link to the randomly chosen community.

Which brings me to my question.  If you could ask a community that you know nothing about anything, what would you want to know.  Leave a comment, and I’ll work the replies into the information that I ask the communities when I contact them.

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So, what can you expect?

The retreat pages have been deleted as I just don’t have time to keep it updated.  I still need to transfer over the links pages, but all of the community links pages have been transferred over.  Some of the data may have been garbled, so if you see something odd, please let me know.

Stay tuned for more changes in the near future.

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Welcome to the updated Consecrated Life!