“OH WHEN THE SAINTS…”

Ladies and gentlemen! I am proud to announce that the first ever Steinbach iNFUSE grade 7/8 youth night went incredibly well! Our youth group is called REACT (stay tuned for an awesome logo) and for our first event we learned about the saints, which was quite fitting as All Saints Day was just around the corner. The evening was full of candy, music, games, a skit, and of course information about the saints. We had four game stations, each representing a different saint. Andrew ran a balloon/dart station for St. Sebastian. The teens would get a candy every time they popped a balloon. Brenden ran a “find the Smarties in the M&M’s” station for St. Jude in which the teens would race each other to find two different coloured Smarties and one peanut M&M amongst the regular M&Ms. I constructed and ran a blindfold maze/obstacle course for St. Paul in which the teens would be paired up, with one person blindfolded and the other person having to verbally lead them through the maze and over (or under) the obstacles. Amy ran our Jeopardy station for St. Thomas Aquinas in which the questions ranged from fun facts about us NETters to facts about the Church and the saints.

At the end of the night we let the teens pick three saint cards (each of us had chosen three saints to research and write a short bio about so the teens had eighteen saints to choose from). The cards turned out beautifully and we were even able to laminate them. The teens really loved the cards and were asking a lot of questions about the saints we introduced them to. One of our youth helpers was so excited to find out that there is a saint you can pray to when you have a headache.

We continue to have fun and games as a team. One of our more memorable nights saw us invited to three different events and on top of that Amanda and Brenden had a meeting with our contact people. We had to juggle a few things but we managed to pull it off. I would like to thank Amanda and Brenden for their awesome leadership and delegation skills! We have also discovered that we have some “Bible Ninjas” hiding Bible verses around our office. These little tidbits of God’s word are truly inspirational and are bringing us so much joy. The only thing is we don’t know who it could be…

I find that every day we spend here we fall more and more in love with this parish and community. The families we stay with continue to amaze me with how they welcome and include us as members of their family. The family Amy and I are currently staying with got us dressed up in rocker costumes and took us around town to drop off popcorn balls to various families from our parish. It was so much fun to bring treats to others on Halloween.

So, what do we have planned for the next week or so? We have our first Family Fun Day coming up which is a Jeopardy event. We are also looking forward to have Matt and Caitlyn, our wonderful supervisors, come and visit us. Plus we have a parish-wide talent show to plan for.
Keep us in your prayers as we continue to do God’s work here in Steinbach.

God bless,

Elizabeth Fitzmaurice