coming up – the first of which was our REACT retreat for our grade 6-8 youth. We had a great group of youth come out for this overnight retreat and I cannot say who had more fun…us or them! Throughout the retreat we looked at our identity as children of God and how we can find our true worth in God. Prayer ministry was incredibly beautiful with our high school leaders participating in our drama. I am so proud of our high school leaders and what they have done so far in this ministry. As a part of the retreat we put the teens in teams to present skits about five different movies – movies that they would vote on for the next day’s REACT night. It was great having the teens keep asking us which movie had won the vote. In the end, the movie Megamind won by one vote!
One of my favourite team days of the year took place during these past two weeks! We drove into Winnipeg, with only Amanda and Brenden knowing what was going to happen, and arrived at one of the malls. It turns out they had planned a photo-scavenger hunt for us! It was great running around the mall trying to find all these different things. Plus we were in teams, Andrew and Amanda versus Brenden, Phylicia and I, which made it a race to find everything on the list. In the end we tied as our team had found everything, but Andrew and Amanda had gotten bonus points in others. We ended off with some well-deserved ice-cream...man had it been warm that day!Our last LifeLine for the year (the last couple of youth group nights are going to be combined
LifeLine and REACT), was one on communication entitled “Like”, and yes, the poster had the classic Facebook “like” button. We started out the night with some telephone-charades, followed by an excellent skit featuring our adult leaders about incorrect ways to communicate, such as not listening, talking too much, and bad body language to name a few. I am so proud of our one leader who from the start said she was not comfortable being in skits, but gladly took a role in this one! I then gave a talk about the different ways we can communicate with each other and how we have to use these tools to uplift others and be affirming. We all know how big social media is, but are we using it to glorify God? That was our question for them. I gave them a challenge to affirm one person every day using whatever form of communication they want. Let’s see what happens…
We continue to train and form leaders in the parish to help our program continue. In our last few weeks here we have a couple of workshops for our adult leaders. Plus we had a giant training session with our high school leaders. I am still so amazed by how much all of our leaders have grown since they started volunteering. We are seeing real connections that I believe will last. It makes me happy to know that we a forming a family and not just a team of volunteers. Please keep them in your prayers as they prepare for us to leave and wait in anticipation for a youth minister.
As a way to thank our wonderful host families, we put on a dinner in their honour. Phylicia orchestrated the cooking of some incredible chili…one regular, one with pineapple, and one vegetarian (all of which tasted amazing by the way). We got to share some photos of our year with the families in a slideshow Brenden had put together and Phylicia gave a moving thank you speech…I was tearing up it was so beautiful! One of my favourite parts of the event was the dessert…also prepared by Phylicia. It was a rainbow jello dish with ten layers of colour awesomeness and yumminess!!!! And to top the evening off we told our guests that they were not allowed to do any dishes…easier said than done. It just goes to show how much these families love to serve others. It will be difficult leaving such loving people.
And to end off this week’s blog, we celebrated both Brenden’s and
Amanda’s un-birthdays during these past two weeks. For Brenden, we made a cake – cat shaped in honour of his favourite animal – and presented it to him after our work day. We then took him off on a ride to a barn-turned-restaurant for a great dinner together. After that we headed off to Mass and then surprised him again with a bunch of teens from the parish ready to play some soccer. We had been worried most of the 
day as it was super cloudy and had started raining, but it cleared up beautifully during dinner which made us super happy. For Amanda’s un-birthday we took her to one of our parishioners' farms for a wiener roast lunch and horseback riding. It was a great experience for all of us as most of us have not done much horseback riding before. All in all it was great to celebrate our fearless team-leaders!Thank you again for staying connected to us through our blog! Your prayers and support mean so much to us.
God bless!
Elizabeth Fitzmaurice
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