First of all, we apologize for the delay in an update. It’s been a while since we checked in with you all! These past few weeks have been keeping us busy and on the move. Since our last blog we have moved all over southern Ontario – Hamilton to London to Kitchener to Guelph to Deemerton to Woodstock (hometown of our very own Trevor Hendershott) to London to Forest to Alliston and that brings us to our current location: Mississauga.
One of the really cool things that we’ve had the opportunity to do in the past few weeks is attend (yes you read that right – attend, not run) a retreat for university students. The University of Guelph chaplaincy runs a retreat for university students from numerous different schools every year around this time and for the past three years, a NET team has been able to join them. We were the lucky team this year since we we
re in the area, and I think our entire team agrees that it was an amazing weekend. Basically, we were there to mingle, meet people, play music and do the occasional funny skit, or as we like to call them on NET – AMEs (After Meal Entertainment). The weekend was full of talks, Mass, adoration, confession, and basically time to hang out and get to know everyone more. It was really amazing to talk to people our own age and share our faith with university students. That’s something we don’t have a chance to do very often, and it was a really neat opportunity. Of course, I speak for the team in saying that, as I was stuck in bed the whole weekend with strep throat. Apparently, as a team we not only share vans, clothes, and ministry, but we also share the common cold! Three of us came down with strep throat that week but I’m happy to report that we are healthy again!
Another fun thing we’ve been able to do as a team is go bowling. It was the first time five-pin bowling for our two foreigners – Tanya and Cristy, and both thought it was a little strange. They weren’t the only ones who thought it was strange. The jury is currently out on which is better - 5 pin or 10 pin bowling. Regardless of our different opinions, we had a great time getting strikes and gutter balls together, not to mention the victory dances that came after a good shot.
Since coming back from Christmas break, all of our retreats have been confirmation retreats with the occasional family retreat thrown in. Family retreats are new for our team. We’ve done three family retreats so far and they have all been awesome! At the end of one of the family retreats, we generally have a sharing time where anyone can stand up and say something they liked about the day or something they experienced or learned – basically anything they want to share with the entire group about the day. During one of those large group sharing sessions at the end of a family retreat, a father stood up and thanked us for the day. He said it was an amazing experience for his family and he particularly enjoyed meeting other families in the parish and just having fun together. He asked what he and the parish could do so that the experience of the day could last longer than just a one day thing. Together the families who were there decided they wanted to do more family activities in their parish and are now looking at starting some sort of regular fun day for families of the parish. It was really amazing to see the impact of the retreat and to see how God moved in their hearts that day! Praise God for His amazing work! I feel very blessed to be one of His instruments this year! [That's Jon and I to the left in one of our AMEs - the Vaseline skit].
Like I said earlier, we are currently in Mississauga. We have two retreats for the same class of grade eights, and are very excited for that because it means we get to spend a longer period of with the same youth. For the next few weeks we will be in the Toronto diocese and in and around the Greater Toronto Area. Next week our lovely supervisors, Meaghan and Pat, come down to visit us. Pray that they may have a safe drive to come see us! Please keep our team in your prayers, and know that you are in ours!
It was a pleasure writing the blog for you this week!
Until next time,
God Bless,
Danica O’Neill
Encounter Team Two
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