NET Canada

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