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