Massive in Montreal

Massive Worship had an amazing time in Montreal!

We drove up from Ottawa, stayed for the weekend, and had a Youth Rally.

During the rally there were about 5 priests available for confession, and we had no idea how receptive the youth would be to this because youth rallies are quite new to this area. The whole time the priests were available, though, there was a steady stream of participants going to confession!

Before the rally started, I had sat down and was talking to some of the youth and I met a group of about five 14-16 year olds. They were musicians so it was really cool to hear their excitement about the rally (I also told them they could be the future Massive Worship team). They were wondering what was all going to be involved in the night and I told them that there would be confessions going on during the rally. They had a “no-reaction” reaction, you know? Like "oh, that’s cool…." It was kind of what I was expecting from a group of teens, because I used to be the same way about confession, but I really wanted them to see that it was a great chance to receive the mercy of Jesus.

After the rally was over I got the chance to talk to them again and one of the boys came up to me and said that he was really glad that there was confession and that if there hadn't been the worship music and the rally it he wouldn’t have gone to confession. He said that the worship music made it much easier for him to get into it. It made us so happy to know that what we are doing, our ministry, and our worship is leading people to sacraments and the grace that maybe they wouldn’t have experienced in any other situation.

There was also a group of girls that came up to us who really enjoyed the rally. They were inspired by the music and how it creates such a great environment for retreats and for the youth. They were planning on starting up their own worship band to play at Mass and to also play music for confirmation retreats in their parish.

It’s these kinds of things that give me a lot of hope.

We are very excited this week to start our trek out West!!

Keep your eyes out for events in your area!

God Bless!

Brandi Olson

We Are Blessed

Greetings from iNFUSE Team 3 Wetaskiwin! Cecile here- it’s a pleasure to be writing for you this week!

Well, life here in Alberta is swell. We are so blessed to be living in Wetaskiwin and serving God in such a tangible way this year. Maybe that’s the theme of this week’s blog – we are blessed. Well, let me tell you about some of the events we ran this week:

We had a junior high girls' sleepover this past Friday night, and let me tell you, it was incredible. We had 15 girls hand in registration forms throughout the week, so we never guessed that almost 10 extra girls would show up the night of, with registration forms, sleeping bags, and open hearts! We wanted to keep the night very fun and girly, and it was! Nail painting, face masks, and a fashion show were just some of the fun, spa-like activities we offered, but the most incredible thing was the prayer time we had in the church around 10 PM that evening. We had a living rosary, where we made a rosary of candles and as we said each prayer someone would light a candle. Afterwards, we had a time of quiet personal prayer and reflection, and we offered prayer ministry. It blew me away how the young women totally invested in this time of prayer. A few of the girls were in tears – the Holy Spirit was moving! Throughout the free time over the evening, girls would wander back into the church and just sit in Christ’s presence!
The ladies of our team, and our female volunteers helping that night went into the church at 3am and lit all the candles from the rosary again, and sang the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. It was an incredible night to say the least!


On Sunday we had a social high school event – we went bowling! We had a great turnout mostly drawing from the grade 9 demographic as the teens in grades 10-12 all had finals this week, so needed to study. But, it was still a fantastic bonding opportunity with our younger teens! Now, I’ll be honest, I’m a terrible bowler, but that afternoon I came in second on my team!! After bowling for an hour we headed back to the church and played Mafia (our favourite game!), and just chilled with the teens who came out. We had a great afternoon!

Tuesday we had our team day, and we went to a local trail aptly named “Chickadee Trail”. We would stop walking and put a bit of birdseed on our open palms, and the chickadees would land right on our hands and peck at the seed! It was incredible! Because of the snowstorms we have had in the past few weeks, the trail was covered in about three feet of snow, so we had a few slipping episodes (mostly accomplished by yours truly). Anyway, afterwards we headed into the nearby town of Camrose and chilled at a local coffee shop and attempted to dry our soaking jeans (due to the snow on the trail). The amazing thing is the weather here! This week the temperatures have hovered around 0 degrees Celsius, today its up to 6 degrees Celsius! Its so weird, it feels like the beginning of spring!
This coming weekend we are bringing some of our youth to a Face to Face Retreat that will be held at the OLVC (Our Lady of Victory Camp). Pray that their hearts will be open to whatever God has in store for them!

God has truly blessed our team this past week with the incredible weather, the amazing girls' retreat, and some beautiful affirmations from our Parish!

Well, I pray you all have a wonderful week! You, our readers and supporters, are in our prayers!

Blessings!
Cecile Richard
iNFUSE Team 3
Wetaskiwin, AB

Massive Worship: The Root of it All

Ever wonder how a successful business got its start or what inspired a profound movement across the country or even what compels someone to do something totally radical and against the grain? I don’t know about you, but I love investigating and looking back to where it all started and seeing the original grassroots of magnificent things. They usually start pretty simple and unsophisticated, but it’s these simple beginnings that “wow” us later on.

Take for instance the Apple III from the 1980’s. Well, okay, it seems pretty archaic now, and most of these computers were recalled because they continued to detrimentally overheat- but hey, look at where it got us: these days Apple computers are pretty much the best computers ever and the most coveted of gadgets. Everyone wants a Mac!

But perhaps some more exciting roots to look at are those of the Saints. I always wonder, “How in the world did they become so darn holy?” Was it their blessed parents and a good upbringing, or their amazing parish community? Or are there just certain people that God zaps with incredible holiness? Just recently I’ve started reading about a more modern saint, Saint Gianna Beretta Molla. What initially attracted me to her was how normal and ordinary, yet heroic her life was. She was a wife, mother, and doctor, which sounds like any number of peoples I know, yet in Gianna there is something special about how she lived her life which I find so amazing and even attainable for me, and that’s inspiring.

Now perhaps Massive Worship’s roots don’t go quite as deep as Apple or even Saint Gianna, but these roots play such a vital role in what and who we as Massive Worship are today. One of the aspirations of Massive Worship from the start in 2005, was to bring together a community of Catholic musicians from all across Canada, creating a unique space for fellowship, training, and spiritual growth specific to musicians. Over the past few years, this vision and goal has expanded to include so much more, especially since our last Massive Worship National Conference in 2008. It’s been three years since then and God has fulfilled some pretty amazing plans for our ministry, including a hugely successful traveling music team. But after three-year hibernation, we are happy to announce that this spring God is bringing us back to our roots!

Great plans have been underway for this year’s Massive Worship National Conference, taking place this spring in NET’s hometown, Ottawa, ON. We’ve got some great speakers and musicians lined up, such as nationally renowned Franciscan University’s youth ministry expert Bob Rice, and talented Canadian singer/songwriter Joe Zambon. The Massive Worship conference is not just for musicians but also includes a great youth ministry and leadership component. Participants will hear and learn from some of Canada’s best when it comes to sustainable youth ministry, effective music ministry, young adult formation, liturgy, songwriting, sound mixing, contemporary instrument training and so much more. Massive Worship conferences have always been a great place to encounter growth for effective music ministry, be equipped and empowered for development in youth ministry and leadership, and experience amazing fellowship with other Catholic musicians and youth leaders from across the country. So join with us once again, March 25-27th, 2011 as we go back to the root of it all. Registrations will open soon so keep watch on our website www.massiveworship.com Stay rooted, and I’ll see you in Ottawa!

Mairin Bierer,

Massive Worship Coordinator

Info/Details:

Massive Worship National Conference

Until the Whole World Hears

March 25-27^th, 2011

Ottawa, ON

www.massiveworship.com

Back with Fire

Greetings fellow inhabitants of the world wide web!

So we are back in Yellowknife after a well needed Christmas break, and we are back into the swing of things with a fiery

passion.

Since being back, it seems as though God has been really present within our team. I believe He has revealed the beauty and importance of our team, and how much of a family we really are to each other. We have been thoroughly enjoying each other’s presence both in the office and in our time together as a team. This love for each other and for God is growing so great that we are finding that true desire to share it with those around us. We have a passion for this ministry like none we’ve had before.

Our first Ignite since being back was called the “Ultimate Challenge”, a social night where we had free pizza and set up a series of activities and competitions, and gave out candy for prizes... who wouldn’t want to come? It was tons of fun and actually had lots of new people, thanks to the promotions in the schools that Ben and Mylène created. It was a great success, and the new people said they were coming back.

This week for Ignite, we’re having a night on self-image, and the team's creative juices are really pumping, because we’ve come up with an entire night full of new material for the theme of self-image. Mylène, Ben and Kandace wrote a new drama, while Adele and Tyler worked together to write a two-person talk, and Adam and I focused on some great ideas for the environment. We are praying that the night will go well, and that God will touch the hearts of the youth.

Another exciting event in the life of Yellowknife Infuse is that it was recently Adam’s birthday. We had an awesome night out at Trappers Lake that consisting of an excellent supper, present opening (Adam’s family sent him a parcel full of fun), and a bannock cake covered in northern light candles. We had great fun, and even ventured out onto the lake and saw some real northern lights. A perfect way to finish the night.

We have lots of exciting events coming up, and we would appreciate your prayers for all of them. We have a high school overnight retreat coming up on January 28th and 29th called “Encounter”, we are still hoping for more registrations, and we are praying for a good turn out and for God to really move throughout the retreat. We also have a rally for around 230 grades 5 & 6 students on February 1st, which we are really excited for. As well the week later we have another overnight retreat with students from a community called Behcoko outside of Yellowknife. We are enthused by all of these events, and hope that you will keep us in your prayers as you will be in ours.

We hope that you are all doing well, and that God is blessing you this New Year, and cannot wait to tell you more of God’s amazing work here in Yellowknife.

Until then,

April Fogle

Yellowknife iNFUSE Team 1

P.S. We are currently experiencing the lowest temperature yet here with a bone chilling -41 degrees celsius! Brrrr!!!

Dinner Is Served!

Hello from Wetaskiwin!!!!

Things here are busy as usual! Friday called for our EDGE night.The theme was on the Epiphany. Our youth minister, Peter, gave an amazing talk and the youth were so engaged by him. We are so blessed to work with him this year!

Sunday was amazing! First, our team came for the coffee social after the morning mass to visit with the parishioners. I can't even begin to talk about how amazing everybody is here! Cecile and I had a very good chat with a family of Sacred Heart Parish. We sat down and talked for a long time about each other. We talked about events coming up and how the two youth (one male and one female) should join our CREW (to help out at EDGE nights). They were so amazing, and I am glad that I finally had the chance to get to know them. It really taught Cecile and me to be bold and to continue to invest in the families of the parish. Sunday night was our Lifeteen Mass. Fr. Marc came to talk about Lectio Devina, but the night really took an unscheduled turn... for the best! It was extremely Holy Spirit inspired! One of the youth (who was new to Lifeteen this year) started to ask questions, and the discussion just started flowing! Praise God!

Yesterday was our team day! It was filled with lots of fun stuff. Cecile and Marcus told us to dress up, but we were really unsure why. Our first stop was IKEA! Oh my goodness, we had so much fun! We explored the show room, and pretty much just played a big game of house! When we came accross the office part of the show room, we all pretended to be NET staff at the office. It made us laugh. Our next stop was the West Edmonton Mall, where we did various things. You seriously can spend FOREVER in that mall. Next, we went to the Basilica for Mass, and reunited (unexpectedly) with NET alumnus Lydia Cristini. The next thing was a big surprise FOR ME! We got into the van, and everyone pulled out a piece of paper with the "Be Satisfied With Me" prayer. This is my MOST favourite prayer ever! So we found out that everyone had to dress up for my birthday! We went out to an Irish Pub and listened to Celtic music! It was so great. All in all, it was a great day! Thanks team for making my birthday so amazing!

God is really helping us to see how truly blessed we are this year. Yes, we are extremely busy, but God is telling us to take a step back and reflect on how He is working in the hearts of everyone in Wetaskiwin. I am so glad that God has called each one of us here this year.

Please keep our team in your prayers in the upcoming weeks. We have a lot of events coming up that we are very excited for. We have a Face to Face retreat for high school students on Jan 29/30. We are helping out with confirmation classes, starting up our chastity groups for young men and women (Glass Alabaster & Real Men), Theology on Tap for young adults, along with EDGE and Lifteen. We are so excited for all these things! We hope to start our leadership training series soon, so please pray for that as well.

Thanks for being such amazing readers! We always keep the supporters of NET in our prayers. Well, I am off to eat Shepherds Pie and Birthday Cake! Yummmm. My favourite birthday meal ever!

God Bless,

Katie Doyle

iNFUSE Team 3

Wetaskiwin, AB

Hello everyone, so after a nice christmas break our team has all been able to return nice and safely and get back out on the road. Since getting back on the road we have been able to have a lot of fun as a group as we travel around Ontario. The other day we went tobagganing as a group. We had a blast trying to combine all our crazy carpets and going down in one long line as everyone else on the hill watched.

A very touching part of the prayer time at one of our very recent retreats was that the school had organized for all the parents to write their kids a letter. During prayer time they all recieved letters from their parents. It was amazing to see just how much of an effect all the letters had on the retreatants. If I were to guess I would say at least half of the kids there were in tears after reading the letters from their parents.

Currently we are in Burlington Ontario but coming up we will be heading to Hamilton and London Ontario where we will be putting on our first family retreats.

That is all for now but stay posted for our next updates.

God Bless You

Patrick Pringle

Welcome Back

As the second half of iNFUSE team two starts we are so excited to get back to work here in beautiful, snowy Steinbach. It has been a whirlwind of a first week back, but we have enjoyed every moment of it.

On our return to the office we found some lovely chocolates as a “welcome back” gift. It has been wonderful reconnecting with parishioners here, finding out how their Christmas season went and seeing how much they missed us (which was just as much as we missed them!).

The week was filled with the final planning of our event-filled first weekend. We had our first ever youth Mass with visiting priest, Fr. Rene Chartier. The youth of the parish performed the duties of sacristan, readers, altar servers and Eucharistic ministers. We have had some great feedback and are looking forward to many more to come. After Mass, we held our first REACT (grade 6/7/8 youth group) of the New Year. We first cooked up some hot dogs and had a meal together. This was followed by some life-sized games. We played giant “Guess Who?” with the youth acting as the game characters, giant “Dutch Blitz” – a fast-paced card game, and giant “Foosball”. We all had a blast and from what our high school leaders told us, they really want to play some of those games with the high school youth group sometime.

We also had our first Family Fun Day of the new year at which we sat down to watch “Meet the Robinsons” with bags of popcorn and glasses of punch in hand. The movie was incredibly funny and really focused on how important the unconditional love of family is.

Coming up for us in the next few weeks are the first of our leadership training workshops for our volunteer youth leaders, and our high school retreat entitled “Open the Door”.

We hope you all are having a good start to the New Year and we cannot wait to share more of our time and ministry here in Steinbach.

God bless

Elizabeth Fitzmaurice and the Steinbach iNFUSE team

Back in Action

Massive Worship is back in Ottawa! After a great Christmas break we all came back together for a week of January training.

During training there was a Host Home Appreciation dinner on one of the nights and we were able to play music for Mass. It was so great to serve God in that way again, especially after two weeks apart.

We are also excited about our CMW 101 Workshops, which are happening every Monday in this month of January (It’s not too late to come! You can sign up at the door any of the nights. More info at the bottom of this post)

CMW 101 is Contemporary Christian music and Worship training sessions. Basically any musicians who are interested can come down and receive personal training with their instruments on how to use contemporary music for worship. The first night was very good we had mostly keyboardists and acoustic guitarists. It’s a great opportunity for fellowship with other Christian musicians and also a great way to learn a few new things about leading worship. I encourage anyone reading this in the Ottawa area to come out to our next sessions!

Also our team is breaking some new ground. This is actually the first time a Massive Worship team has continued into January, as last year's team was a pilot project and only ran for four months. Woo! We are thrilled to have the opportunity to take Massive Worship places it has never been in the past, especially Western Canada next month!

Another thing that our team has found very exciting is that we have the chance to spend some time in a real recording studio, not to put out an album or anything but to just get the overall experience. We get 6 days to spend time recording and mixing and learning about the recording process. We went for two days last week and had so much fun! I guess it’s basically a musician's dream. I loved putting on the headphones and looking through the glass window at the people on the other side talking to you with a mic. It was just like you would imagine it would be. We were able to record 4 songs in the two days, this week we are going to record a bit more and then learn how to mix the recordings. It’s definitely a highlight for our team.

We are off to a great New Year and look so forward to everything that is to come in the months ahead with Massive Worship. Keep your eyes open for events in your area and also keep an eye out for our blog as I will let you know what we are up to. Have a great day and thank you for all of your support! You guys rock!

As mentioned above there are still Sessions for the CMW 101 workshop! They're for any musicians from Grade Nine and older, it's $25 per night, and the next ones are on the evenings of Monday January 24^th and 31^st. Beginning at 7 until 9:30. Please bring your own instruments and join us!

Good Shepherd Parish

3092 Innes Road

Gloucester, Ontario

Hope to see you there!

God Bless,

Brandi Olson

NET Encounter Team One is back on the road and ready for the New Year! We have so much to look forward to: we are in Ontario for this first month then will be starting our trek out West. We will be doing retreats in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and my very own British Columbia.

Our first week of retreats has gone really well. Our first retreat back was our second largest, and was in Lindsay, Ontario. The youth were very interested in the rosary and we gave away quite a few at the end of the day. On Thursday we didn't have a retreat, but had a couple unique events. In the morning we helped to put on a Spirit Day at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Lindsay. There were around three hundred youth there, and we had Mass, did a skit, testimony and drama, and had a time of reflection. Later in the day we got to hang out with some members of CORC. CORC starts for 'Catholics on the Road for Christ,' and they describe themselves as 'mini NET teams,' which is quite accurate. They are youth aged 14 to 25 who put on retreats for Confirmation, First Communion and Reconciliation around the Diocese of Peterborough. We were very impressed and inspired by the zeal and hard work that these young people do. It was great to hang out with them and get to know them :) They'll be in our prayers. We also got to meet Cynthia Francavilla, who was on Team One last year! So awesome! :D
Our retreat on Saturday turned out to be an all girls retreat which has never happened to us before. It was different, especially for the guys, but all in all was a great day and a really awesome retreat.
It felt so good to be back with my team after Christmas break and I realized one thing that I missed a lot was team prayer, which is when the whole team gets together to praise God through music and prayer. I feel so joyful and close to God and unified with my team brothers and sisters when we have team prayer, and I realized why when listening to a song by Joe Zambon. The line, “This is what I was created for” stood out to me. This is what we were created for; we were created to praise God, and we were created to evangelize, to bring others to Christ. That is why being here with NET Canada brings me so much joy, it is a taste of heaven here on Earth, to be living out our faith and spending an hour a day doing what we will spend our time in Heaven doing, praising God with a fellowship of faithful.

I thank God for this new year. This second half is going to be filled with so many amazing things, and I thank God for calling us to NET to use us in this way. Please keep us in your prayers as we continue our mission to challenge young Catholics to love Christ and embrace the life of the Church all across our country.

Till next time,
Yours in Christ,
Maria Kalin
Encounter One

My Name is Katie, and I am Not the Mafia!

Hello to all our faithful blog followers! It is me, Katie Doyle reporting for duty here in Wetaskiwin. Unfortunately before Christmas break, Emma Wynker (our previous blogger) had to leave the team because of personal reasons. Please continue to keep her in your prayers.

We all had a wonderful Christmas break spent with our families. It felt so good to be at home for a little while. December retreat and January training was spent here in Wetaskiwin with the Yellowknife team. We had lots of time spent in worship together. NET alumnus Suzi Maclean came to do music for us during Adoration one night during January training. It was absolutely beautiful! Thanks Suzi!! Our time with the Yellowknife team also had its fair share of fun and laughter. A game called "Mafia" became something played very frequently during our retreat/training. When we meet next, I'm sure we will probably play the game again. We became extremely familiar with the way that each player plays the game. Each of our teams had some time during January training to spend seperately as a team. While the Wetaskiwin team was playing games inside, the Yellowknife team was playing a giant prank on us! At the end of the day, we went to go out to our van, but it was no where to be found! They parked our van beside a snow bank, and burried our entire van in the snow!! We ran over to it to find the words "Yellowknife buried you" written in the snow. Don't worry folks, we will get them back!

Being back in ministry has found the whole team very busy. To start off, our whole team has come down with a sickness! We are nearing the end of it, but we needed a couple days to recuperate. We have a lot of events coming up. As always we have our EDGE (Jr. High) and Lifeteen (Highscool) youth groups every week. God is working very powerfully though both of these youth groups. Also, staring on Feb. 2, we will be starting weekly chastity groups called Real Men for the young men and Glass Alabaster for the young women. We have heard many stories from last year and our very excited to start with this year. For our young adults, we will be starting Theology on Tap. We will get together once a month at a local pub for fellowship and to discuss theology and other topics.

We are so excited for what God is doing in this community, especially with our youth. Thank you so much for faithfully reading our blogs and for praying for our ministry. It makes me so happy that there are so many amazing people that support the work of NET.

Until next time...

God Bless,

Katie Doyle

Infuse Team 3

Wetaskiwin, AB