God's Booster...Encouragement!

A BIG hello from everyone on Team 5! All of us here are doing great. This week was full of little moments of encouragement; it started off with the Knights of Columbus from Smiths Falls and Perth holding a dinner for our team. I had a great time. It was a good chance for us to get to know the community a bit better, and it also gave us the opportunity to say thank you to the Knights of Columbus who are a huge support for our team! I really enjoyed talking to many of the people there, it was really encouraging hearing everything they had to say about our ministry, and we received many thanks for being here for the youth.

The meal was awesome! There were some ribs and roast beef, vegetables, and mashed potatoes skillfully mashed, I must say, by the awesome hands of our own team member, James Richmond! The Knights loved him for doing that! For dessert we had a cake with our names on it. At the end of the dinner, the head Knight gave a speech and basically thanked us for being here and for giving up our time. Then the best part- they gave us these little maple leaf-shaped bottles with real maple syrup in them! I can't wait to use it. That night was very encouraging because we were able to witness the enthusiasm of the community for the work that we will be doing.

Wednesday night we had another dinner, but this time it was with the priest of St. John's Parish and the people who were interested in volunteering for core. It was a chance for us to just get to know each other, and a chance for them to ask us questions. The dinner was filled with laughs; I had such a great time! The best part was just knowing how God is providing a core team for us. A couple of them are very young which is amazing because this area doesn't have many young adults.

After the meal the potential core were full of great questions, and I really felt the Holy Spirit moving in our answers. It was weird, like we didn't have to think before answering. God was with us the whole time even though I thought some of the questions were a bit of a challenge to answer.

Lastly, our team helped out with some Grade 9 retreats that the schools put on. We went to a cabin at Foley Mountain, and joined the retreats for the lunchtime, we did a skit, a talk, and then had small groups. This was encouraging because we were able to see the excitement of the youth again! The youth were so enthusiastic; They would ask awesome questions about God during small groups, mingle with us as if we were their friends, and they just really loved us. After the retreats this week, I felt so happy and excited for the rest of the year. It's going to be awesome; it is awesome!

Team 5 will be back soon!

God Bless,

Shayla