Merry Christmas from Encounter 2!

Ryan being epic

G’day! This Is the guest blogger Ben Walsh, for another awesome update on  Encounter 2’s life on the road.

We recently finished up a seriously awesome time in Kamloops and Kelowna in beautiful

British Columbia, kicking it off with a energy packed Youth Rally in Kamloops with over 50 youth attending the event, it was so great that by the end of the rally they were jumping up and down with excitement!

The past week or so after finishing up in BC we traveled to Winnipeg and again we were blown away by how open they were to God and a lot of the youth had experienced NET before, so it was great to see how excited they were to have NET in their town.

Our team was fortunate enough to have an awesome team day which involved seeing a live version of the nativity, along with big mascots and actors who played different parts, it was really cool and the team had a lot of fun.

Rianne and Emma baking!

Our team is now heading back to Ottawa for December retreat and our 2 week break, but thanks all for reading and catch you In the new year!

Blessings and prayers,

Ben Walsh,

 

Massive Worship/ Encounter 2

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

It is with joyful anticipation I write this blog. The smell of Christmas is in the air, probably from the CWL bake sale, and all of the youth are getting excited for the holidays! Before we bring in the new year, let's take a few minutes to reflect on our ministry here in Drayton Valley so far. I asked the team about their favorite ministry events. Here's what they had to say...

Joseph: They are all equal, but I like family Fun days and getting to know the families.
Colin: I like interacting with youth at school visits because we're hanging out with youth on their own turf.
Alex: Host home ministry. We build relationships with the families (we stay with) then we get to see them every weekend at Mass. It's really beautiful!
Rachel: We get to hang out with jr. high students at youth events and the schools and be a part of their lives.

Nic: We get to witness the slow transformation of the hearts of youth.

We're getting all packed up to go home for a few weeks. There is no doubt that this community has had just as much impact on us as we hope to have had on them.

Merry Christmas!

God Bless

Stephanie & iNFUSE 3

First Half: Finished!

First half the year: DONE! Wow, time has absolutely flown by down here in Medicine Hat! Maybe it's because since we're the sunniest place in all of Canada our Sun Dials just move faster cause we never have clouds getting in the way of it? I don't know but God is surly providing the graces to be able to do His will constantly in all that we do, even with time flying by. 

So Equip this past week has been a gong show and a half (in a really good way)! We started the evening with a Santa Clause Rely where the youth had to run around to multiple stations, doing such activities that Santa enjoys like Cookie Eating and Milk Chugging to name a few. After each activity they received a piece of clothing that Santa would fit into to fill up with balloons to make yourself look like the jolly old man. Then the rest of the team mates of the youth had to get down and be the reindeer taking Santa to the "North Pole." Good times were had by all the youth and they were very excited to see what we had planned next. 

Well, I'm sure you're interested to know what happened next right? So the grand finale was the teens got to go crazy with whip cream, candy, chocolate sauce, and a Netter. It was supposed to be a Gingerbread man/woman decorating contest but that got a little out of hand and lets just say many people found sprinkles the next day behind their ears and whip cream on their Q-Tips later that evening. Yes, our team and volunteers are amazing troopers and we say thank you for putting your hair and face on the line for the craziness we managed to come up with here in the Hat. 

With all this said, this is the last blog for 2012. We are all very excited to come back to Medicine Hat for more ministering in the new year. Thank you to all our family, friends, host homes, volunteers and community for making our first half so amazing and unforgettable. God bless you all and Merry Christmas! May it be filled with many blessing! We will be praying for you! 

From the Worlds Largest Teepee

Med Hat, AB 

Infuse 2

Matt ten-Bohmer 

Encounter 1 - Video Blog #1

Watch our First video blog here on YouTube

Time to Prepare!

Winding down to the last two weeks of ministry has had many mixed feelings before we head our separate ways for Christmas. Many are excited to be seeing family and friends while others just want to stay, to keep ministering to the amazing people of Medicine Hat. Everyone wants us over for dinner which is lots of fun and keeps the schedule jammed pack till we leave on the 17th of December (who doesn't love an amazing turkey dinner 4 times a week?! Ok, that was a bit of an over exaggeration, but our host homes do love to feed us and we say Thank You!!) Then there are those amazing Grandma's of the church, who just love leaving us 1,498,725 dozen tarts and cookies on any day to feed our youth after the nights and events (ok… that was a huge over exaggeration again but they do love making huge quantities of sweets for us! God bless their souls).

Medicine Hat has been getting ready now for the Christmas season and as the city does that we are preparing the youth for Unchained and Equip as well! This past weekend for the Unchained group we did a night on Advent given that it was December 2ed so there was no better time to talk about it! We talked about the 4 different weeks, the meaning behind it and all the ways we can prepare our own hearts for the Lord's coming at Christmas! We then finished the night with a game that Jimmy headed up. It involved 4 brave volunteers, 3 purple candles, 1 pink candle, a lighter and a couple water guns. Do I have to explain? Needless to say I (Matt ten-Bohmer) got soaked from the youth and my team mates trying to put our candles out! It was a hilarious activity that the youth and team thoroughly enjoyed! 

 

God bless you all! Happy Advent! Prepare your heart of the Lord's coming! 

Infuse 2 Med Hat, AB

Matthew ten-Bohmer





Yes, it's our photo with Santa. 

A typical office day starts at 9 am for us. We like starting our days off with team prayer, complete with music and often scripture. Most mornings include work time, where we work on our individual tasks, usually to do with upcoming events. This is where we make posters and videos, write talks and testimonies, choose games for our events and pick music for Mass. Sometimes we even squeeze in a team meeting or two.

Some afternoons allow us some creative time where we practice dramas and skits, or music for the worship band. We've now recruited some youth to play music with us! Evenings, after dinner, are when we hold most of our events. This is where all our time in the office is made worth it. For the first time this month we held a parish wide adoration event. One youth told his mother that he'd probably only stay for twenty minutes, but ended up staying the whole two hours!We plan to host another on next week.

 The exceptions to our evening events are our Family Fun days. Last week we held one with a trivia game show theme which also included Minute to Win It, and some wreath making for the..uh.. kids.

When we don't have events, usually our nights are spent in host homes, or we do whatever our host families are doing, like participating in the Christmas Parade, for example, singing carols and waving to the crowd (that's right- we were IN the parade!). Look at the wonderful float the church made!

After such busy days, there's only one thing let to do; get a good night's rest!

God Bless

Stephanie & iNFUSE 3

iNFUSE 3 Drayton Valley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g1u2CQ2KQo

and we are growing!

Hi Y'all!

This past week was wonderful! Something exciting happened in our ministry! At our Jr. High youth group PULSE, 44 youth showed up! Our turn out yet!

This week for PULSE we had a movie night! The week before the night we handed out these super cool movies tickets we made out to youth we met during our jr. high school visits that we do every

 week. 

They intrigued many youth to come out and check out what we do! So many new faces were there, which was a great sight to see!

We watched one of my most favorite movies ever, Megamind! So funny! After the movie we had a large group discussion about the movie and the good morals we found in it!

For the high school youth group called ARISE, we all attended a Mass of Angels together along with the All Saints Parish here in Lethbridge. This Mass was to honor all unborn babies and it was a Diocesan wide event that night. It was a moving and beautiful Mass, and it was great seeing many people show up. We had a chance to meet more members of our Parish at the reception we had afterwards by serving tea and snacks!

All in all, it was a solid week! I can't believe Advent starts next week. The first half of our ministry work here is almost complete!

I hope you all have a fabulous week!

God Bless,

Amy ten-Bohmer

iNFUSE 1, Lethbridge, Alberta

Somehow It Just Works Out

Coming at you (almost live) from Medicine Hat, the next blog! 

Living down here now for the last 7 weeks has been such a blessing for us and the community! Just our presence of living out our faith as modern day apostles has been changing people's lives which is so amazing! The one time we may have said "I'm leaving it in God's hands" or we helped clean something up without being asked is so counter cultural today with all the garbage that the media is showing us on TV. I've been told stories of ever since the parishes here have had us Net Teams, people have been dedicating themselves more to God. I've heard others say I didn't care to much about my faith before the Netters showed up but now I strive to serve God in all that I do, even if it's cleaning up a speck of dirt off the floor to helping out at Sacramental Prep (for confirmation and first holy communion) in the parishes. I just hearing how God is working through us even when we don't have a clue about what we did effected someone so deeply!

Quick ministry update: First off it was super busy weekend but nothing short of awesome as always. For the Equip crew we had a night on the movie reflecting "Why I Love Jesus but Hate Religion" but turned it around and made it "Why I love Jesus and Religion!" cause as Catholics we sure do love both deeply! It brought about some amazing conversation and realizations about our faith to the youth that night. Then for our Unchained youth we had the same night on Priorities as we did for the Equip nights previously. It's always so important to be reminded of how we need to make God our first priority in all that we do. Sharon did an amazing job talking to everyone on the subject and giving her personal testimony to how she made God her priority in life. Absolutely beautiful. 

With that said, We're closing in on the last month of ministry before the new year. Keep us in your prayers and we shall do the same! 

From the World's Largest Teepee

InFuse 2 Medicine Hat, AB

Matthew ten-Bohmer 

We love retreats!

Hello All!
Amy here from INFUSE One! This past week has just been amazing! Ministry work is going so well! Every Monday we help out at ARISE, which is the high school youth group here, and this past week there were 67 teens that showed up! How amazing is that?!

On Wednesday’s we have PULSE, our Jr. high youth group and we had 16 youth show up! This week, the theme was friendship! We heard a great talk about true friends by Chase, and about the relationship David and Jonathan, from the bible shared! We also played one of the best game ever, roaming pictionary!

Playing roaming pictionary at PULSE

It also has been another week full of retreats for us! We put on two awesome retreats, an encounter day for grade 7’s and an overnight retreat for all the young adult leaders who have been attending our leadership training series workshops for the past month.

The encounter day went really well! All of the students who attended really enjoyed themselves! 

One Grade 7 girl wrote, "I learned so much about God today. Thank you to everyone for telling me how much God loves me".

The leadership overnight retreat was really wonderful! The weekend was all about striving for greatness, and the cost and reward we get for following Christ! At the end of the retreat, we went around in a circle and shared what we each got out of the weekend. It was so inspiring to hear how God had worked in their lives that weekend, and all the things they had got out of the retreat! One of my favorite moments was during a praise and worship time we had. I glanced towards everyone at one point, and the looks on their faces was one of joy and love for God! So beautiful!

God Bless You All!!

 Lots of Love, Amy and INFUSE One

Lethbridge, Alberta

Lights, Camera, Action!

Ministry has been going so awesome out here in the Hat. Our Unchained and Equip Nights have been nothing short of solid and truly all for God. We've had nights on different ways of praying, finding our own way to support the community just like Mother Teresa, and making God our first priority in our lives. All the youth have responded with great enthusiasm to every event and night we have done so far! We are also excited to just build up the relationships we make with them to help them in their journey of life and faith.  

This past weekend we had a good old traditional Movie Night for the youth of Equip and and the following weekend for Unchained. We had a huge amount of popcorn, candy, pop, chocolate covered marshmallows and cotton candy!  I always love seeing the joy of the youths faces as they walk in, see a giant projector screen, smell popcorn and cotton candy and having them feel like they've just stepped into a good old movie theatre. The feature presentation for the Equip night was "The Lorax." Such a classic Dr. Seuss story! Then for the Unchained group the classic movie of choice was the "Princess Bride." Inconceivable!! 

One of my favourite things to do as a Catholic is take part in Adoration of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the weekend we were able to celebrate the beautiful prayer of adoration with the youth and it was most defiantly a powerful night. Confessions were available and the opportunity was taken up by many. We had it in the chapel in one of our churches (Holy Family) so it was a very up close and personal experience to be hanging out with Jesus with the team and youth.

With that said everything is still going strong out here in Medicine Hat. We are excited to see what else the Lord has in store for our team this year. God bless, lots of prayers.

Infuse 2, Med Hat, AB 

Matthew ten-Bohmer   

Infuse 2 Video Blog #1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkCcKl77QGk

Before the East Coast Sun Rises

Hello everyone,

Sharks Unite!

It's great to be back on the internet again.  My team and I have had a blast these last couple of days proclaiming the word of God.  We have just finished two weeks of retreats in Scarborough ON.  It was so much fun hanging out with the teens and we feel so blessed that we got to know them and the wonderful host families that housed us.  

During our time in Scarborough, we put on 9 retreats for one school, Blessed Pope John Paul II Secondary School. We did 3 retreats each for the Grades 10, 11 and 12s. During those 9 retreats we met so many amazing youth. With the Encounter ministry we don't usually get to see the seeds that are planted from these retreats and so we don't see the fruits of our work. However, during the end of the week we invited all the youth out to a Holy Spirit Mass for the school where we participated and played music. It was so great to see so many familiar faces greeting us, saying hi to us and what an awesome time they've had on the retreats.

Holy Spirit Mass

We are currently in Simcoe and will be here till the 12th of November. We have been putting on retreats for grade 7's and 8's that are preparing for their confirmation.  Please keep them in your prayers as they prepare to receive this sacrament. From here we will be heading out to P.E.I. till the beginning of December.  We have been hearing its quite cold this time of year so we are all breaking out the winter clothes. Since the majority of the team has never been out there we are very excited to be going.

We are all loving the work that we are doing for God and his church, and its such a reward to see the ways that He is working in the lives of the teens that we minister to. 

Thank you for the continued prayers and support, stay tuned for more.

In Christ,

Matt Bliault and the Encounter 1 Team

How about we have a little fun!

It's wonderful after so much planning to be able to see our plans go into action. This week we were all about serving and growing as a community. We had our first ever family fun day on Sunday complete with pumpkin carving, apple bobbing, a donut line and crafts for the kids. 

For Halloween we rounded up some youth volunteers and trick or treated for canned food items. Alex and Nic were able to put in a plug for our event on the local radio station. As a group we collected over 270 food items and fund-raised $850 for our local food bank!

 Coming into an office routine has allowed our team to relax a little and open up our creativity. From writing talks to recording video dramas, we are constantly finding ways to engage our youth. We've had topics recently on "Does God Exist?", "Superhero Saints", "Identity", and "Camouflage".

We celebrated another birthday last week. Happy Birthday Nic!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCTbfAb8sRA

Thanks for checking in!

God Bless

Stephanie & iNFUSE 3  

Let it snow!

Hello beautiful people reading this blog,

At the Corn Maze!

This is Natalie coming to you straight from Lethbridge!  I hope all of you are keeping warm and happy - the snow is finally melting over here… Oh ya, did you hear about how we got 27cm of snow?  It was beautiful, but the roads were pretty slick… Chase, the Texan on our team, got a lesson on "how to drive in the snow."  The first night that it snowed, we were hanging out with the High School ARISE group at a corn maze - it was a lil' chilly.  After we got back into town, we stopped at Tim Horton's and had the snow ball fight of the century!  Chase got his first face wash in the snow!

Things here have been busy but amazing all at the same time.  On Halloween, we had planned our second youth night to be on Saints!  Unfortunately only two youth showed up… fortunately we had an amazing night with them!  We played Werewolves (my own on-the-spot version of Mafia - great game), Daniel gave a mini spiel on what Halloween means, and for the rest of the time we played Sardines in the dark basement of St. Martha's Parish, and ate a lot of cupcakes.  The two that came had a great time, and so did we - God provides!

On every Thursday, we attend Little Saints - this is the youth group for the little ones on their way to Sainthood.  This group goes from Pre-K to Grade 5, and they are SO GREAT!  It's only an hour, but it's extremely entertaining - they say the best things.  Last week, the topic was Genesis and what happened with Adam and Eve.  When the group was asked "What are some consequences of what might happened when you sin?", one little girl answered "Maybe sometimes… we might have to eat dirt!"  Uh, love em'!

I myself have now been placed in a new role of leading music at Little Saints, and for the past two weeks, Jillian and I have been teach them songs.  I play the guitar and sing, while she teaches them the actions!  They're not such a tough crowd, so it's fun AND easy!

I hope this blog made you feel more apart of the team, thanks for reading!

Have a great week and don't forget to check in next week to see what other shenanigans we may get into!

May God bless your hearts,

- Natalie

iNFUSE #1, Lethbridge, AB.

Carving out Time for Ministry

Ministry has been so amazing out here in Alberta for the last few weeks. Event after event every weekend has been nothing short of amazing! Unchained and Equip has been going absolutely awesome with big numbers coming out. A bit of a glory story to come out of the weekend was we were anticipating about 20 youth to show up to our first Equip night last weekend based off of last years stats. We were in for a large surprise. We ended up having 70 youth show up to our night! It was absolutely incredible having that many youth show up who were nothing but excited to be there. Laughter and shouting were in huge supply that night which made for giant games of ballon stomp, sharks and minnows, and large consummations of Ice Cream (which we made by hand). The night ended up being a great success!
  

We have also kicked off our Family Fun Days which have been also been a great success for the families in both parishes. Being close to Halloween we had a Pumpkin carving as one of our activities! The families had lots of fun and many parents mentioned to us how great it was to see there children having so much fun with them and other families in the church through an afternoon of fun and fellowship! 

This past weekend we also had the 100th Anniversary of St. Patrick's Parish which was exciting to be part of. Bishop Fredrick Henry came out to celebrate mass along with many past priests, deacons, nuns and parishioners of the parish. It was so great to be part of such a huge part of history!

And as we all know yesterday was Halloween the team obviously got into the spirit of things. We had Jimmy the Pooh,  102 Ian puppies, and Kyley "Drachua" just to name a few of the exciting costumes we had! Good times, good times. 

Stayed tuned for more stories from under the world's largest teepee! 

God Bless! 

Matt ten-Bohmer

Infuse 2

What An Awesome Week of Ministry!

Hi Everyone!

Well, we have had a jam packed week! We had our first overnight retreat for grades 6-9 as a kick off to our youth group we also started this week, named Pulse!

Playing Ninja, which was a favorite game during the weekend retreat!

The overnight retreat was a really great experience! It was our first major work as a team, and it was cool to see how well we work with each other and help each other out when problems came up! A group of grade 7 girls asked us at the end of the retreat if we could put on a week long retreat for them, because they liked it so much!

Me giving the "Who Are You" Talk!

We also had an encounter day, which is a day retreat. This was put on for about 60 students in grade 7 at their Jr. High School here in Lethbridge. This ended up being a really fun day! The students heard a talk on “Who Are You”, talking about who we are in relation to God, and we learnt many fun games! We ended the day with prayer ministry, allowing them a chance to pray to God.  It amazed me how many of the youth enjoyed this part of the day so much, a few of them expressed how much they enjoyed the prayer which was awesome!

We also started our youth group we named Pulse! It was an exciting night of crazy Olympics! One game involved gummy worms tied to string, and the object was to get the candy into your mouth with out using your hands! Everyone that came out had lots of fun!

We can't wait to share more of our work with you!

God Bless,

Amy ten-Bohmer

Infuse 1, Lethbridge, Alberta.

Let the Groups Begin!

Alberta is just gorgeous this time of year. One week it's a glowing sunset, and now it's all frosty and white. Changes up, but keeps it exciting, right?

We have completed our first week of ministry events. Let me tell you all about it! Last Friday, we kicked off our first REACH jr. high youth group with a good crowd and good food. REVIVE came next, the high school youth group, once again with a great turn out for our first night.

On our high school visit, we introduced ourselves with a popcorn survey. We found out the answers to questions we've always wanted to ask teens like "What is your favourite sport" and "if you could be any canned vegetable what would you be?"... The consensus was corn.

The parishioners enjoyed the talk series on parish mission with visiting priest Fr. James Mallon from Halifax this week. Our team was able to aid his talk to high school students by providing a game, drama, sharing our personal faith stories and a song. He knows NET well, as he had an iNFUSE team at his home last year! It was great retreat practice for us parish netters.

Our team is having a great time here, making the most of every moment. Even our day off, we spent learning about the production of sacramental wine, and the men on our team tested their carpentry skills making box drums. Aren't they talented! We also celebrated Joseph's Birthday this week. 

Happy Birthday Joseph!

We have our first family fun day this weekend, so check out next week's blog for all photos of fun.

Blessings

Stephanie & iNFUSE 3

Let Ministry Being!!

So much has happened in the last two weeks out here and it's just none stop here down in Southern Alberta in Medicine Hat. We've put on our first Unchained high school youth group, our first Equip middle school youth group which is happening tonight, and Family Fun Days are starting soon to! I've always loved Kick Off events, getting to know the youth of the area and get them pumped to come back to more nights in the future. It's going to be an exciting year watching everyone we encounter grow in friendship and our ultimate goal of bringing them closer to Christ. I've heard stories of people's lives being changed from having NET teams in the parish and that just makes us want to be able to work even harder for God cause He is truly the best boss to work for. 

We've been up to Calgary a few times in this past week to meet with other youth ministers from the area for more training regarding the Diocese of Calgary so that was very informative. Many challenges we're laid out for us and making us the best youth ministers we can possibly strive for. Nothing but good stuff for sure. Thank you to everyone who was there, it was great to build up our relationships with one another and share in our years of experience of youth ministry. 

One of my favourite things from going out to Calgary though was being able to see the beautiful Rocky Mountains. Most of the team (except 3 of us, Matt, Jim, and Kyley) had never seen them before so there was much excitement in the van as we saw them come into view. Being in southern Alberta is extremely flat if you didn't know. As in if you wake up in the morning early enough you can see the sun rise in the east and it's still pitch black in the west. Another example you can see a train from start to finish without moving your head. That is how flat is down here but man it is still unbelievably beautiful cause God knew what he was doing when he created the place we call home. 

So with this all said, stayed tuned for more to come. God Bless! 

From the World's Largest Teepee 

Matthew ten-Bohmer

InFuse 2 Medicine Hat

Encounter Team 2's First Video Blog

Bridges, Wind, Retreats, Oh My!

Hi Y’all!

Life in Lethbridge is pretty grand so far! We are starting to get to know the city a bit better, and we are taking less wrong turns now! (Having a GPS is super helpful as well!) One of the cool parts of being a part on an iNFUSE team is the chance to become familiar with a city and the people that live there!

 Fun fact about Lethbridge is that it is the home of the largest and highest steel trestle bridge in North America! It goes across the river that splits Lethbridge into different parts. There is a beautiful park by the river and bridge that we spent some time in as a team! We will defiantly be going back throughout this year!

Another fun fact is that it is windy here. I’m not talking about little winds that blow the leaves around in the front yard or blow your hat off your head. I’m talking about winds that blow your car to one side of the road while driving, or make you to feel the house swaying in the wind!

I wonder if flying around with an umbrella could work….If it did, I would definitely commute to work that way every day!

As for ministry work, we have started visiting the schools in the area during lunch time to hang out and eat with them! The students have been really welcoming and it is a pleasure to spend time with them every week! It can be a challenge to approach people you don’t know, but it is so rewarding when they invest in a conversation with you!

We are starting our Jr. High youth group this week with an overnight retreat on the weekend! We are super excited for it!   Updates on it will be on the next blog!! Stay tuned!

God Bless ,
Amy ten-Bohmer
Infuse 1, Lethbridge.