Yellowknife Retreat Team???

Greetings fellow inhabitants of the world wide web!

It has been yet another busy week in the life of Yellowknife iNFUSE team 1. God has blessed us with a bountiful amount of outreach this past week, and has shown us what a true blessing it is to be here in Yellowknife.

Wednesday, Mylene, Adam, Ben and I attended and participated in the Remembrance Day celebration at Weledeh School, and were honored in a special way for being servers to the community. It was a great blessing to us, and while we were there we all were really inspired to see the great Christian leadership that there is within the staff of the school.

Thursday was our Sports Night which we were hardly able advertise for at all, but fortunately we had over 20 people come out anyway. It was great to be able to finally have an event for High School specific ages, and we all were very excited to be able to connect with the youth.

Friday was our Ignite night themed “The Bridge,” which Mylene lead amazingly. Also Adam gave a talk explaining how we are separated from God by sin, and how by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that gap is “bridged” through the symbol of His cross (similar to the analogy used by Catholic Christian Outreach.) It was a great success, and our prayer time was very powerful. We’re excited to dive deeper into the mystery of God’s incredible love further down the road.

Saturday was our team day where we had an amazing time. We were able to go out to Trappers Lake where Bishop Murray lives, and we all found ourselves some pairs of skates, and went skating. We all discovered our enthusiasm for pond hockey, and had a great old Canadian game; the girls obviously defeating the guys. We also got to drive around on his ski-doo which was a real treat for some of us. That night we had our first official youth Sunday Mass, for which the team band played music, along with a few other members of the choir. We received lots of compliments, and were blessed even more with lots of smiles.

Moving on to the Sunday and Monday is were most of my excitement begins. We were invited to attend and assist with the Christian Leadership Team spirituality retreat,

One of many beautiful sun rises we were blessed with this week

(May I make a note that this was taken at 9 o'clock in the morning)

put on for students who displayed Christian leadership within

their classes in the high school. Let me tell you, what an

amazing group of young men and women they are. We

had so much fun with all them, and the really showed us how they are so excited about life, and aren’t afraid to show it. Our entire team was able to connect with almost every individual on the we

ekend retreat, and it now feels as though we have 43 best buds in the high school. We enjoyed every moment with them, getting to have each person in our small groups at one point throughout the weekend, playing games, singing songs, having prayer time, and just having great fellowship (including the awesome jam session I got to have with a few of them.) A highlight from the weekend was near the end, when all the small groups had to come up with ways they wanted to go out and share their faith with others, and they had so many amazing

ideas and sincere intent to accomplish these goals.

Finally Tuesday and Wednesday the team put on retreats for the grades 7 and 8 classes of St. Joseph’s School. They too were very successful; we didn’t want the days to end, and neither did the students. We had a lot of fun singing songs (quite exuberantly), putting on skits and dramas, and really enjoyed the small groups. Our greatest blessing though by far was the response to the prayer time. Many of the students made comments on their experiences during it, and many of the teachers expressed that the students got a lot out of the prayer time and also their personal appreciation. Our team enjoyed the retreats so much that we taken into consideration becoming the Yellowknife Retreat Team instead. Unfortunately we have decided to decline, due to our great passion for parish ministry (our exhaustion is also a possible contributing factor.) Nonetheless, God is SOOOO good.

So that is the conclusion of our ministry filled, God saturated, week. But we’ve got tons more coming up, and we don’t plan on slowing down. Tonight there is Sports Night which is now a set time of 6-8pm every Thurday, Movie night at Ignite on Friday along with the beginning of our Supervisor visit, youth Mass on Saturday, and a much anticipated Family night on Sunday. God is truly at work here. Thank you so much everyone for your thoughts and prayers, and I am so excited to tell you what more excitement God has for us next week. Praise the Lord!

God Bless,

April Fogle, Yellowknife iNFUSE Team 1