Massive Worship gone West

After a long 5 days of travelling, we landed in St. Paul, Alberta and were welcomed warmly with a huge dinner, which was indeed a great welcome.

The community was anticipating our arrival; we were scheduled to do a three-night Parish Youth Mission. On the first day of the mission, we went into the Junior High School to do classroom presentations, they went well and we played some music in the hallway at lunchtime. We invited them all out to the mission and just had fun with them. They seemed to enjoy themselves and the teachers also enjoyed the music.

We were very encouraged when we did our first evening of the parish mission - some teens from the school actually came out, and the youth group of the Roman Catholic Parish was all there as were a lot of families. The small Church was packed; we were actually at the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which turned out to be very intriguing. It was the first time for almost 98% of the attendees, including us, experiencing an Eastern Rite Mass. Father Mark, the Pastor, taught us the responses and traditions and it turned out to be a great learning experience. I think it also really unified the two Parishes, or at least they got to know each other a bit better. It was a huge blessing having the Mission in the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Also something that was really cool was that the contact person put posters all over town even in a few Churches around town that weren’t even Catholic, and even in A & W. It was so neat to meet the people that came and find out how they ended up coming to the Mission. I even met a girl at Tim Horton’s and invited her out and she actually came!

The whole time we were in St. Paul was such a good experience. We learned how to rely on God a lot during our time there and we realized that God can really work through any schedule, even if it’s not one that we had planned. We did a lot of last-minute things, including spontaneous ministry in classrooms and things being changed at the last minute. The thing is, though, that God had a bigger plan. Everything that "didn’t work out" turned out to be for the best because when things changed, the people that came got so much more out if it than what was previously planned.

After St. Paul we headed out to Our Lady of Victory camp for a Massive Worship Encounter weekend. The people that came out were really great and very focused on learning a lot about music, which was awesome. It was our first time doing a three-day overnight retreat. It was very exciting and we had a great facility.

On Saturday we were fortunate enough to have Mass and Adoration. It was such a beautiful addition to the weekend, and it took all that we had learned and focused on during the sessions about liturgy and a heart of worship and applied it with a great opportunity to praise God.

The weekend was very successful and we met a lot of fantastically faithful people.

It has just been great being in Alberta!

We then went to Calgary and we were able to attend a progressive supper hosted by the young Catholic community, some with CCO and some with UCCC, and some just young and Catholic! We went from house to house having appetizers, a main course and people would give their testimonies and then we went back to the Parish hall for dessert and a talk and some praise and worship by our team.

There were 70 of us! It was so encouraging to meet so many people our own age that are into their Faith and focused on leading each other closer to Christ and motivating each other. We were very blessed and made a lot of friends. I would strongly encourage everyone to go to a progressive supper if you get the chance.

God has been doing such amazing things for us and we just can’t thank Him enough for the way our ministry has been going.

Praise God!

Have a fantastic day!

Brandi Olson

Massive Worship