By SHEILA OJENDYK
GREENWOOD Barbara Vaudreuil, synod implementation coordinator at Our Lady of Lourdes, leads a valuable workshop, “Stewardship and the Gift of Time.”
She has presented this workshop three times in 1998 in Greenwood at Our Lady of Lourdes. A participant at one of her recent workshops described it as being life changing.
Vaudreuil defines stewardship as “ how you live your life in response to God’s gifts. Everything we have is a gift from God. How do we use it? What return do we make?”
She describes good stewardship as offering God’s gifts as “first fruits (not leftovers)” and giving them freely by choice.
Vaudreuil emphasizes that stewardship is about more than donating money and volunteering time.
Vaudreuil’s faith-centered workshop puts participants through a course of careful and prayerful discernment to help them identify their roles in life and the talents that make them unique.
As a tip, she tells them to imagine being honored by others on their 90th birthday and then defending their lives before God.
One of the key elements of the workshop is development of a personal mission statement. Vaudreuil says, “If we fail to set our own course, by default we empower others to shape our own lives.”
The mission statement helps a participant determine what is truly important in his or her life and how to separate what is important from what is merely an urgent reaction to a problem.
Participants learn how to prioritize not only for efficient management of time, but also for effective use of talents. Once personal priorities have been acknowledged, it is easier to make judicious choices.
Vaudreuil ends her workshop emphasizing, “Don’t lose sight of the reason you are doing this to respond to God’s love by becoming a better steward of the gifts he has given you.”
Vaudreuil holds a master’s degree in analytical chemistry from Georgia Tech and began her professional career as a research chemist.
She worked her way into management and soon discovered that human problems very often complicated technical problems. That insight turned her into the direction of organizational systems and eventually led her to a totally different second career.
Vaudreuil practices what she preaches.
She serves her home parish of Our Lady of Lourdes generously in several capacities, teaches quality systems and management courses at Piedmont Technical College, serves as a volunteer Spanish translator and is active in local civic affairs.
Vaudreuil’s next workshop is scheduled for Saturday, March 6, at Greenwood Civic Center.
To register, call the office of Our Lady of Lourdes at (864) 223-8410.