We at StoryTel Foundation mourn the passing of Dr. Ronald McArthur and celebrate his life. Dr. McArthur was a co-founder of Thomas Aquinas College. Below is a video of him speaking to the students on March 6, 1996. This was one of our early productions, long before we were called StoryTel.

Bonus Video: 25th Anniversary Founder's Dinner

We also had filmed the 25th Anniversary Founder's dinner, given for the students on March 7, 1996. In this video the college's founders tell the stories of the college's beginning. 

Dr. McArthur's comments are at 49:00, 1:31:30, and 1:55:00.

Additionally, there are some wonderful comments from the late Dr. Thomas Dillon, the late Col. William Lawton, Jr., Dr. John Neumayr, the late Mr. Marcus Berquist, Mr. Peter Deluca, and Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz.

We finally confirmed the broadcast date for the premiere our latest film, Where Heaven Meets Earth, Restoring the Sacred at St. Peter Church. 

The film will first air in the United States on EWTN on April 30th. The first showing will be at 3 am, and the next at 6:30 pm Eastern time. It will be broadcast throughout out the week internationally through their various satellite feeds. 

This is our site for trailers and air-date information: www.heavenmeetsearth.tv.

Let's get to work on promoting this thing!

We're so pleased to report that we were recently told that Fr. Cook and team at St. Peters in Omaha have raised over 2.5 million dollars for their restoration effort and that the video we produced for them plays a key role in every fundraising presentation. Here's a quick update video we made about it and sent to our donor base for our Christmas appeal. 

We're really excited about how this trailer turned out and are looking forward to this documentary's premiere. We think it's our highest quality and most accessible film yet. Enjoy!

Here's our new video, shown this weekend:

We're excited to be wrapping up a ten minute video this week that will be played at the Qwest Center in Omaha on Saturday September 11th, as part of the event at which Fr. John Corapi will be the key speaker.

The event is to raise money for renovating St. Peter Catholic Church in Omaha and the video is a celebration of the parish, called "Restoring the Sacred in Omaha."

When complete we'll be sure to post the video on our youtube channel and in the screening room on this web site.

Don just told me a cool story about how our St. John Cantius video touched one of our viewers.

There was this nice lady in NJ who was having trouble sleeping last week and got up to watch some EWTN. It turns out that they rebroadcasted our episode at 3 am or so, and she told Don that it really lifted her spirits. Their pastor was trying to restore the sacred in their parish and feeling frustrated so she called us and asked for 2 copies of the DVD, one for them and one for the priest.

Don sent her four copies, and asked her to say a prayer to her guardian angel and then give the third and fourth away to whoever she felt inspired to give them to. 

Pretty cool.

UPDATE:As it turns out EWTN re-aired the program the next day at the more reasonable time of 6:30 pm ET. We received many calls and e-mails all requesting a copy of the program and offering donations, and we have been responding to those requests and sending out DVDs for several days now, more than 25 mailed already, with more to go. Thanks everyone for responding so favorably to our documentary on Saint John Cantius yet again.

The Corpus Christi procession went great! It was everything we hoped it would be. We've got some wonderful footage. Pictures coming soon!

In our last post we told you about the video shoot we had that day with Archbishop Raymond Burke. That filming went extremely well, so well that tonight the Miles Christi priests will be showing some excerpts at a fund raising dinner.

Here's what will be shown:

Well, maybe. 

This week Don and our film crew interviewed Archbishop Raymond Burke for a full hour for our in-progress episode of On Assignment about Miles Christi. The Archbishop, soon to be Cardinal, was recently appointed to the office of Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, a Vatican position equivalent to that of Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. So, just interviewing him at all was a big deal. 

The shoot went well, and he even gave us more time to interview him for our longer term project about the Real Presence, since he also happens to be a board member and spiritual director for the Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association.

Don told me that his mother made him promise to give the Archbishop a copy of our Saint John Cantius documentary, but Don decided to do one better. He gave him two DVDs. He asked him, if he thought it was good enough, to please give the second copy of the video to the Pope. Archbishop Burke said he would.

Cool, huh?