most challenging retreat.ever.

Hello everyone! Sean Roche here from Encounter Team 2! I'm so glad that God permitted me to rejoin my team despite my knee injury before Christmas. Ministry has been wonderful as usual! Each time our team gets to put on an Encounter event I strive to constantly remember why our team has traveled all across Canada this year. It's for the youth. Plain and simple! Our team gets to invite so many young people to discover the personal relationship Christ has in store for them. I want to share with you a unique experience for myself. I can confidently say that recently I have experienced the toughest retest of my first year on NET.

    Almost two weeks ago my team and I put on an Encounter Day for almost 140 youth at a high school. On this day we had one team mate with the day off due to sickness. So there were eight of us and 140 youth to minister to that day. During the beginning of the day most of the youth in attendance seemed to be happy to be there. It was as the next few events of the day occurred that it was tougher and tougher to keep them fully involved. I was most challenged when it came to the part of the Encounter Day in which we invite the youth to pray and seek out their personal relationship with Christ. Despite the fact that we couldn't keep the gym quiet for our time if prayer, I still made the effort to pray with the 27 guys in my small group. Normally a small group has about 8-10 youth in it, so that day was a little different. 26 of the guys in my group let me pray with then! So awesome! I can honestly say I've never been more completely drained from a retreat. This year my team and I have out on over 100 Encounter Days so far and we've still got a few weeks left on the road. After that day the only thing I could think of doing was to go and spend some time in the high school's chapel. So I cried for a bit, then thanked God for the day and by then all of the gear was ready to go.

I still felt empty but next up on the days schedule was team prayer. It's basically a time for the whole team to be together and praise God. It's a wonderful gift. Today's team prayer took place in the vans as we drove to our next town. So we sang a couple songs and then prayed a Rosary. For some reason that day I felt truly recharged from that van team prayer. Usually it's tough for me to fully enter in to prayer while riding in the van but as we prayed that Rosary I honestly felt like our Blessed Mother was riding in the van right beside me :) It was so nice! God has continually been helping me see the joy in so many places. Yes that day was really tough, but if one youth encountered Christ in any way during that day then it was all completely worth it!

Currently our team is in Barry's Bay, Ontario and its lovely here! Thank you everyone for your reading and for supporting all of us here at NET Canada through prayers and it donation. I am truly blessed to be a part of this beautiful ministry.

Sincerely,
Sean Roche
Encounter Team 2 Massive Worship

YAY for families and community service!!

Hi Everyone!

Ministry in the last month of being here has been going strong!!

On Sunday we held a family retreat, and over 18 families came! It was really beautiful seeing all these children running around and having a great time! The day consisted of lots of skits, dramas, and games, and talks for each group (highschool, Jr. high, parents and elementary aged!) All of the families also heard a main family talk in the Church, and were given time to pray together as a family! It was a really great day!

We also had a community service night at PULSE, Jr. high youth group. We went to a retirement home here in Lethbridge, and spent 2 hours hanging out with the residents! We had 30 youth show up, which is an awesome number, considering we did not meet at our normal location!

The youth who came had a great time! 2 guys from PULSE spent the evening teaching these 2 adorable elderly woman how to play the card game, “cheat”! Whenever I looked at their table, I saw the faces full of joy! I walked over at one point and asked the ladies how the game was, and one said, “I don’t know how to cheat but this is fun!”

One resident said, “Hearing footsteps running in the hallways made my day!”

It was great how much the youth enjoyed reaching out to the elderly people, and how much the residents enjoyed us being there and spending time with them.

God has been working through us in so many ways! With only a month left here in Lethbridge, he is providing for us all the volunteers we need to keep this ministry sustained once we leave.

God Bless,
Amy ten-Bohmer
iNFUSE ONE
Lethbridge, Alberta

Drayton Valley - that's what's up.

Hello Canada!

Let's review a little of what happened in Drayton Valley last week. Our weekend started with an awesome night on Confirmation and the Holy Spirit. We used everything from a story board on the first Pentecost to "stirring up" chocolate milk to help the Junior High students and Confirmation class understand what the Holy Spirit is all about. Our High School youth group had a night on the Eucharist and joined us in the church for a time of Adoration which included music, a talk, testimony and Jesus. Then we treated them to Tim Hortons. Sometimes it's good to switch up the environment. Some of the youth must think we live at the church!

For Young Adults, we sent them out in teams to do a scavenger hunt of Random Acts of Kindness. We had fun handing flowers out to women, opening doors, writing nice things in sidewalk chalk and some of the teams even went to the LODGE, our town's senior centre, and joined the residents during lunch hour. During our discussion afterwards, many people noted how common it was for people to think we expected something in return for our nice deeds. We agreed that it was more satisfying to act selflessly, and we really made some peoples' days!  Modifying our schedule to include the young adults group every week, instead of every two weeks as it was, proves it's never too late to adapt this ministry to fit the needs of the parish.

This morning we were pleasantly surprised to find the grade 8 class at St.Anthony's doing a little service of their own. They are doing a fantastic job of cleaning up the church grounds for the spring (as our snow has finally melted)! We went out of our office and cheered them on... and gave them a few cookies.

Please, everyone take a moment to pray for those attending our High School retreat this weekend. We're expecting a good turn out, and this is the only overnight retreat we're running this year. This is also the last retreat our team is putting on. Pray for a deeper conversion in these young people, and for us to deliver the Gospel to them effectively, or how God wills.

May the good Lord bless you,

Stephanie & iNFUSE 3
Drayton Valley, AB

Be Not Afraid!

WHAT UP Y’ALL?!?!  Chase Crouse here subbing in for Amy tB just for this week! This week has been awesome! But of course good ol’ Southern Albertan weather kept us on our toes with it being plus ten one day then dumping a foot of snow the next!

This week at PULSE (our Junior High youth group), our night’s theme was FEAR FACTOR! We had 8 different stations set up with a bunch of different activities. My personal favorite one, because I was on it, was called Puzzled Face. This was a station where 2 teams of youth would come up and pick one person from each team to participate and then those people would compete by taking a little dollar store puzzle and racing to see which one finished it first! The trick to this game however was if you lost then I would take a paper plate full of Cool Whip and pie them in the face! It was hilarious! Partly because who wouldn't want to pie someone in the face and also because every single person that won still came up to get Cool Whip on their face!

One of the coolest parts about this night however had nothing to do with the activities. We decided to make this night a “come and see” night for the 5^th graders who will be in 6^th grade next year. We had 15 5th graders come out so all in all we had 53 youth show up! Praise God! I love how nights like these give us the chance to reach out to youth who maybe wouldn't come out to a night on the Eucharist or Confession but if you tell them they get to do gross stuff for free it’s a way we can potentially get them interested in coming back and checking out some other nights! Oh my goodness God is doing such awesome things in Lethbridge and I’m super stoked to see what this last month holds!

Chase Crouse

iNFUSE ONE

Lethbridge, Alberta

"God looked at (Drayton Valley), and He found it very good."

Rachel Hargrave, guest blogger here, with the latest from our past week in Drayton Valley - and man, what a week it has been! After the break for Easter, we’re back into ministry and fully into the swing of things. This past weekend, we had a Survivor night for our junior high youth group. That’s right, Survivor!! We had various challenges going on – challenges for the mind, the strength, the will, the stomach…I’ll leave you to imagine that one, as I don’t particularly desire to describe it! The team and all the youth got decked out in facepaint and bandanas, which only intensified the “Survivor” feel. A ton of youth came out, and as a special event, we invited grade 6’s, to give them a sneak peek of what they get to expect next year!

However, Survivor night was only the beginning! We held our junior high retreat, a highlight of the year for me. Through the day, we did lots of crazy skits, heard a talk, played games, and culminated with prayer ministry. It was amazing to work up to prayer throughout the day, and then give everyone attending the opportunity to actually talk to God on a personal level. One youth especially has been seeking God and faith-related activities over the past little while, and the opportunity to pray with her and encourage her in her search was truly a blessing.

Her story has really struck me and reminded me of the impact that love has. I’ve been learning about how God can take the little things that we do, and transform someone’s life through them. The past month has made this more and more apparent, as I see more people desiring and seeking Christ as a result of seeing His light and realizing how GOOD He is. Even the little things that you may think would be insignificant, such as repeatedly seeking someone out and spending time with them can really show the face of Christ to them and help ignite a desire to know Him more. Please pray especially for all those in Drayton Valley who are realizing this desire and beginning to search for its fulfillment.

We’re learning a lot about God’s love and providence here, and I hope that you are too, wherever you are! May God pour out His blessings on you abundantly especially in this coming week!

Rachel & iNFUSE 3

Drayton Valley, AB

Catching Up

Greetings NET blog world!

This is John Lim of Encounter 1 reporting in on your latest update of our team. Since last we wrote, we have gone to the Archdiocese of Calgary, putting on retreats all over Southern Alberta. We had an awesome time at this one school for two weeks in Calgary, Clear Water Academy. Clear Water Academy is a private Catholic school in Calgary, with students from Kindergarten to Grade 12. We were able to either do a retreat or a classroom visit with every single grade at CWA!

Say hello to Mr. Hohmann's new tractor!

After spending a month in Alberta, we started making our way to beautiful British Columbia. Our team was very fortunate enough to have a week off of retreats during Holy Week at Quesnel, BC, the hometown of our very own Tanya Hohmann! We were so blessed to have the whole team stay over at the Hohmann's family ranch during all of Easter. As a guy who was born in a city of close to 6 million people (Seoul, South Korea), I am very much a city boy and spending a whole week at a ranch was quite an experience.

During Holy Saturday, our team got to help out at a retreat for St. Anne's R.C.I.A. candidates by doing music, dramas, and testimonies. Another fun fact is that I also went through the R.C.I.A. program 7 years ago, when I was in Grade 8, and was baptized at the Easter Vigil Mass in 2006. As our team attended the Easter Vigil Mass later that night, and seeing the retreatants/candidates get baptized and/or confirmed, I really appreciated my baptism and entrance into the Catholic Church, 7 years ago.

The Brotherhood looking out over the BC mountains as we prepare to go to Vancouver

The words "Welcome Home" echoed from my baptism, to this year's Easter Vigil Mass, and continued to follow our team as we entered the Archdiocese of Vancouver (There is a big "Catholics Come Home" evangelization program all over this diocese, welcoming back Catholics who have been absent from the Church). We're loving our time here in the home diocese of our regular blogger, Matt Bliault, and are very excited for the few months we still have left on this mission year. A big thank you for all the sponsors, host families, and retreatants we've met so far on the road, for all of the spiritual and financial support that we've received!

Until next time my blog peeps, this is John Lim of Encounter Team 1 signing off!

Igniting the Future

Time to kick it into high gear because we are rolling into the last 5 weeks of ministry here in Medicine Hat, Alberta. It is absolutely ridiculous to think we've been here since October 5th of last year doing events every single weekend for middle school, high school and families for both of our amazing parishes: Holy Family and St. Patrick's. The amount of work we have to do in these last couple of weeks are going to be some of the most crucial times of being here. We're getting volunteers trained and already working with us in almost all of our events which is really exciting because we can truly see one of our main goals taking place: Getting ourselves replaced with awesome people for youth ministry! Another huge part of us leaving is bringing closure which is most obviously going to be one of the hardest but necessary actions to take place with everyone who has been so heavily involved with us. This is why we are going to give it all we got for the next 5 weeks cause our community is going to be greatly missed! 

Besides that life is going good out here. I really enjoy how we get so many unique opportunities as a team to do different things around the city. Just last week we went to the Fire Station to check things out there. We had an opportunity to check out all the trucks and gear that they use on different missions they get called out on. We even had a chance to try on a full fire fighter kit from the boots to the helmet which was really cool! Just being in the Fire Station just gave us such a deeper respect for what they do, putting their life on the line to save others. It kind of relates to us as missionaries, putting our life on hold to evangelize to the youth of Canada while fire fighters put their life at risk to save the people of the world. Saint Florian, Pray for us (Parton Saint of Firefighters). 

I'd like to ask for prayers for the next 5 weeks because every week is jammed packed with year end retreats (Unchained, Equip, Confirmation, First Holy Communion, and Family) and many more appointments to be had before we head back to Ottawa for the year end wrap up. We as a team are excited to just give it all we got cause we know God is going to work wonders in ways we can't even comprehend. God bless! 

Matthew ten-Bohmer

Infuse 2

Medicine Hat, AB 

From the World's Largest Teepee  

Going Back a Few Years

This past week has involved a lot of time to rejoice in our Lord Jesus Christ being risen from the dead which is always amazing in our faith and truly one of the beginning stepping stones of Catholicism. This Easter was great with attending services and mass all weekend, having some of our feet washed, and welcoming the newly baptized into our catholic faith. Jesus has resurrected Alleluia!! 

Something I've been very passionate about my whole life and our whole team is music! We were able to reflected on Christian music being an alternative to the secular music of today's world. Not that we want people to delete their iTunes libraries because of songs deemed inappropriate and not having Christian values but rather,  to be open to songs that can lead you into a closer relationship with our Lord. We started with the humble beginning starting in the church 2000 years ago with Gregorian Chant to modern Christian music such as Skillet and Matt Maher. It opened many of the youths eyes to the world of Christian music which I hope is going to have an awesome effect on their souls! As guessed to be quoted by St. Augustine is "Singing is praying twice" which I truly believe is so true in our faith. Doesn't matter if you are the best singer in the world or you have troubles staying on key, singing is singing and when it's towards God he just loves it. 

We also had Jimmy's Un-birthday this past week which was defiantly a blast from the past. We had the opportunity to head out to Drumheller, AB to the famous Dinosaur Museum! We saw fossils that were millions of years old, dinosaur fossils as small as birds to the famous T-Rex which was absolutely ginormous!!! It was defiantly a good time had by all, despite waking up at 5am but that's what you do for the love of Dinosaurs (and we'd all do it for God of course!) 

That's it for now, God bless! 

Matt ten-Bohmer

Infuse 2

Medicine Hat, AB

Alleluia! He is risen!

Alleluia! I just wanted to get that off my chest. After all, we've been waiting since Ash Wednesday to celebrate, so I'm going to say it again and again, "Alleluia! Alleluia!"

As a team, we gave up interupting each other for lent, and I am happy to say we improved enough to stop using our talking spoon during meetings.

None of our regular events ran during Holy week, which allowed us a lot of time to pray and reflect as a team, especially during our team retreat on Good Friday. The Vigil Mass was awesome! Father Gary has found all sorts of ways to get youth involved in the liturgy including music, altar serving, reading and ushering. Unfortunately there weren't any RCIA candidates this year at St.Anthony's, but the good news is the fact that it was spring break and the church was still full!

This week we're back to ministry work with exciting nights on Mary (yo' mamma) and Catholic FAQ. Our parish priest is the featured speaker at this week's young adult meeting, and we plan to make our YA group a weekly event for the rest of the year. We have a bunch of new promo videos -check them out on Facebook.

Our team's time is coming to an end in Drayton Valley, but we plan to end the year strong with cool events, dedication to prayer and retreats for all of our youth.

God Bless,

Stephanie & iNFUSE 3
Drayton Valley, AB

PS Check out a cool new kitchen colour!

Encounter 2 Ministers in a Prison!

Check out our video on Youtube here!

Be A Man!

NET Ministries are sending their Male staff to help out and attend with the upcoming Be A Man conference in Ottawa on April 27th!

Check out the event on Facebook!

ARE YOU…
- a man who is searching for something?
- a man who wants to make a difference in the world?
- a man who has drifted away from the Church and wants to come back?
- a man who appears to have everything, but feels like he has nothing?
- a man who is strong for everyone else, but does not know where I can go for the source of my strength?
- a man who is really the spiritual leader of my household?
- a man who is struggling with addictions to drugs, sex, alcohol, or pornography and doesn’t know how to get out?

If you answered yes to anyone of these questions then YOU need to join us.
TAKE COURAGE, BE A MAN. 1 KINGS 2:2
Featuring Fr. Larry Richards, gifted speaker and author of "Be A Man"
Register: www.menoftheeucharist.com/index.php/registration

 

Hope to see you there!

A Holy Week leading to a Celebration!

Hi Everyone!
Happy Easter!!
I hope you all had a spiritual Holy Week, and a joyful Easter!

This past week for our jr high youth group PULSE we had a night about Holy Week and how Jesus died for our sins. The youth heard a really great talk given by Jill, and had a nice amount of prayer time in front of the Tabernacle. During this time we gave them the opportunity to come to front and hammer a nail to a wooden cross laid on the alter. This represented them nailing their sins to the cross Jesus died on for us. It was really beautiful seeing all of the youth take this opportunity.

As a team, we spent Good Friday together, and had a retreat for ourselves, including doing the stations on the cross, attending Good Friday Service, and watching The Passion.

We also went to the Easter Vigil together on Saturday night. It was such a beautiful 3 hour long Mass! The amount of joyful songs sung is defiantly one of my favorite parts! Afterwards we went back to the Church our office is at and had time to sing praise and worship songs together! What a great way to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord!

We wish you all a very Happy Easter!

God Bless,

Love Amy ten-Bohmer and iNFUSE ONE, Lethbridge,AB

Get Ready! He's Coming!

Let the Spring weather come! We as a team are defiantly ready to have some higher temperatures that don't involve a minus sign and snow (not that we really had all that much this winter, pretty mild for the most part). Anyways Palm Sunday was this past weekend which means that Easter and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ are soon approaching. This gives us a beautiful opportunity to prepare our hearts through fasting, alms giving, and attending reconciliation. 

Well as always a good old ministry update is in order. Sunday night was Unchained as always and we had an awesome night on our Mother Mary and how important she is in our life! We heard a talk from one of our priests which was so awesome and informative about our Mother starting in the old testament to the new. Michelle and myself (Matthew) had the talks afterwards for mens and women's session. Michelle's talk was about Marian titles and the ladies all got to pick out one for themselves which was really cool. I gave my testimony on how I relate to our Mother Mary through different events in my life and really emphasized how men can relate to Mary which is defiantly a need to know subject in our Catholic faith! 

It's crazy to realize that we've only got just under 2 months left here in Medicine Hat and we've already been here since October of last year. So many crazy/fun adventures have happened on the road, within the office, hanging with youth and in events that are constantly keeping us on our toes. I think one of the most amazing parts is that God is constantly giving us the grace to face these moments in our lives which is so tangible and noticed as a team. It's a thing of beauty! 

We shall catch up soon. God bless.

Matthew ten-Bohmer

Infuse 2, Medicine Hat, AB

From World's Largest Teepee