Glass Alabaster

Hey!

This is Marissa from Team 4!

I get the honour of writing the blog this week and sharing with you some of the continued goodness that is happening in Wetaskiwin.

A few weeks ago, Erica and I began Glass Alabaster. Glass Alabaster is a women’s chastity group for girls in grades 9-12 that meets every Wednesday night. On our first night we only had one young lady show up. We were a bit discouraged, and couldn’t figure out how to get more women out. You see, in Wetaskiwin we seem to be getting more men to our Life Nights.

There is an abundance of men at our events but we are having trouble finding the beautiful ladies of the community. I am simply delighted that the men in Wetaskiwin are rising up, and choosing to follow Christ. Our hope is that the men would begin to bring out their women friends to our events.

For our second Glass Alabaster meeting it was getting late and it seemed like no one was coming. We were surprised to see two girls show up for the night. I really enjoyed the night! We had a talk on being a Bride of Christ and even made wedding dresses out of toilet paper. By the third night we were getting more confident in having a few young women out. We ended up having six young women show up! I could not believe my eyes and I was secretly dancing with joy when they weren’t looking (seriously). Last week we had a movie night and a whopping 9 girls came!!!

It seems that every time I doubt God and the work He is doing, He gently shows me that He has things under control. It’s so easy to become discouraged if things are not going the way you had planned. I’ve come to realize that God’s plan is way better and more exciting than any plan of my own.

Say a quick prayer for all the young women in Wetaskiwin that God would touch their hearts and put a desire into their hearts to come out to our Women’s Group

This past week we had our Supervisor visit with Ian and Sarah. We went to Lacombe (an hour away from Wetaskiwin) to put on a retreat for grade 7 and 8’s, spent Sunday night playing dodge ball in our 80’s get up for our Life Night, and we even had great swap lunches ( The ladies went with Ian and the men went with Sarah. We had a chance to ask our supes about anything). Our supervisors encouraged us to keep on giving our all into the ministry until the end, and we as a team are ready to give all we have, and then a bit more.

Godspeed,

Marissa

Team 4

Tu sais que tu es sur NET lorsque tu t'es couché dans deux différentes provinces dans l'espace de 24 heures...

Eh bien voici de retour votre bloggeur fidèle, Kevin Prada, qui vous propose encore une autre mise à jour sur nos périples de la route, avec Les équipes NET!

Voilà plus d'une semaine que nous sommes à Cornwall, à l'exception d'un bref séjour dans une communauté anglophone de Montréal samedi.
Ce fut vraiment toute une semaine! Le tout a commencé lundi avec la dernière visite de nos superviseurs. Comme ils viennent nous visiter trois fois par année, ils sont revenus une dernière fois, pour nous rappeler qu'il reste à peine cinq semaines à notre année sur la route! Juste un peu plus d'un mois! C'est fou! Nous sommes tous stupéfaits de la rapidité avec laquelle cette année est passée! Tant de moments si forts qui vont sûrement marquer le restant de nos vies, et la fin de cette expérience se voit déjà à l'horizon! Mais nos superviseurs se sont aussi assurés de nous pousser à garder notre attention sur le présent, et de ne pas s'emballer sur nos plans futurs... parce que c'est le moment présent qui est un don que Dieu nous propose maintenant. Le cadeau de demain viendra, mais si on pense trop au cadeau de demain, on manque celui de maintenant. Et le Seigneur nous offre tellement de cadeaux sur la route! Cette mission qui nous est confiée est très spéciale. On se rend vraiment compte dernièrement de comment nous sommes chanceux d'être appelés à cette mission.

Ensuite, vendredi passé, je me réveille, sans rien savoir, le jour de ma non-fête. Comme j'ai expliqué dans plusieurs de mes anciens messages, on fête toutes les personnes de l'équipe, mais comme pas tout le monde a son anniversaire durant les dix mois sur la route, on leur prépare une fête surprise, et vendredi, c'était à mon tour. Comme Subway est clairement mon resto de choix, mes coéquipiers m'ont payé la traite avec mon sandwich préféré, et par la suite, comme je suis amateur de films, on a pu visionner l'un des trois films de la série du Seigneur des Anneaux. Et en soirée, c'était le départ pour Montréal, vers la paroisse anglophone Saint Thomas à Beckett, là où on a animé une retraite samedi.

Finalement, nous sommes revenus dans le coin de Cornwall, et cette semaine, nous animons des retraites partout dans la commission scolaire du coin. Comme nous animons des retraites pendant deux semaines au sein de la même commission scolaire, cette commission a décidé d'écrire un communiqué qui parlait un peu de notre séjour, donc si ça vous intéresse, voici le lien: http://www.csdceo.ca/vm/newvisual/attachments/423/Media/com19avril10equipesnetfr.pdf.
Veuillez continuer de prier pour nous, pour que notre ministère continue à avoir un impact chez les jeunes que nous rencontrons, toujours par la grâce de Dieu. Nous aussi, comme toujours, on vous garde dans nos prières, vous tous qui nous supportez! C'est en grande partie grâce à vous que ce ministère nous est possible! Union de prières!

Kevin Prada

Team 2 sees God at work!

Hello all you blog readers! This is Claire here to give you another update on the doings of Team 2.

First I'd like to share with you an experience that I had on our Encounter Day last Monday. After I finished praying with one of my small group girls, who was also my host sister, she started crying and thanked me for helping her become better connected with Jesus. This was one of those moments in which God reminded me that He really is touching lives through us. I was so happy that God used me to be an example for this girl and lead her closer to Christ. It made me realize why I'm on NET and how much I love it! Sometimes it can be discouraging when we can't see the results of our work, but it's little reminders like this that keep us going!

Riane had a similar experience on our Encounter Day on Wednesday. They were a bit of a tough group to reach and one of the girls in Riane's small group said that she doubted if prayer was really effective. When Riane was praying with her later, the girl was a little hesitant about it but still allowed Riane to pray. Afterward the girl started crying and asked Riane if it was okay that she was so emotional. Riane assured her that it was fine. God was certainly working this girl's heart, praise Him!

After the retreat, we greeted our awesome supervisors, Pat and Meaghan, who arrived for our last supervisor visit of the year. We had a great time with them; they joined us on retreat with running small groups and participating in the skits.

On Friday, we did a Confirmation Encounter Day in Alymer and then on Saturday we had the privilege of attending their Confirmation.This was a first for us; it was a beautiful Mass and we were very glad to be a part of it. It was great to be able to connect with the students again, since most times we don't see them again after the retreat.

On Saturday we also had our final team day with Pat and Meaghan. We did a "Team Timeline" in which we discussed the highs and lows of our year. It was a good time for us to look back on our year and see how far we have come as a team and in our ministry.

So that's a little bit of the recent happenings on our team.

Have a beautiful week!

Till next time, I remain yours in Christ,

Claire

"We saw real live dinosaurs......skeletons!!"

Gooooooood morning CANADA!! It's 0600 hours. What does the "0" stand for? O my goodness, it's early. Dominique from team 1 here, reporting from Okotoks. Wow! What a week! Where to begin?

When we last left off, we were in Kamloops, BC and we had put on a retreat for the gr. 7's of OLPH. After the retreat some of us were able to meet up with some NET alumni: John Crichlow, Andrea Faliszewski, Pat O'Donovon, and, Mike Magliocchi. It was great to hang out with them and to share stories from their year(s) on the road. It was great encouragement and quite hilarious. It was a great honour to see them! Then we packed up and headed up to William's Lake. Home of the amazing Mikulasik clan! We fell in love with them all and the whole community; what an amazing place! We stayed Wednesday and Thursday and spent most of our time at Sacred Heart Parish, or at one of the Mikulasik houses! On Thursday we had a confirmation retreat for the students of Sacred Heart School. We started the day with adoration, then Mass with the youth. The whole day they were really responsive and invested in everything! They were a great group! The prayer time went well too - Fr. Andrew and Fr. Clinton were there throughout the day and had confession open for the students. We ended off the day in joy of how the Holy Spirit led the day then had some time to hang out with the priests. To start the ending of the day, we had adoration for team prayer, then had all the host families together for a final dinner. It was a lot of fun! It was a hard goodbye, but it was time to go, so with pick-ups at 6:45am we headed out for our 11 hour trek to Airdrie, AB!

We have spent our lives for the past month surrounded by giants! It became the norm, so it was very different driving away and having them only in the horizon! In Airdrie we put on a confirmation retreat. The youth here, like in William's Lake, were very responsive and open, but prayer time blew us away! Six priests were there for confession! SIX! At first no one was really going, but there was a steady stream of them going to the front for Rosaries and Bibles. We went through the Examination of Conscience, prayed with them, then shortly after the lines for confessions were full! There was no one left spread out in the church, they were all in line! Praise God!! It was amazing! The Holy Spirit truly guided the day and it was nice to end with Mass!

To end off an awesome week we headed to Drumheller, AB to the Royal Tyrrell Museum...the one with the DINOSAURS!!!!! It was a great team day, running through the museum with giants of a different variety! Dinosaurs are huge and one of the craziest of God's creations! We were all trying to imagine what it would be like if dinosaurs were walking the earth now!! It would be crazy! "Don't go out hiking alone sweetie, there have been Triceratops spotted in the area!"...the day ended perfectly with team prayer on the top of a mountain in the badlands! It was beautiful!

We are currently back in Okotoks, AB at Holy Trinity Academy and have retreats for the grade 10 students for the next couple days! We are all well and fine; continue to keep us and this ministry in your prayers and we will be in touch in a week! God Bless!

In Christ,

Dominique Lanthier

Team 1

Another Testimony

Hello! It's Shayla again from Team 5. This week we have another teen giving her testimony. Her name is Cassandra, and she participates with Life Teen and is on our crew team for Edge.

"I'm only 15 years old and I have such a great relationship with Christ and it's all thanks to the NET team!

As I was growing up I have always known about God and Jesus and things like that, but I never could really understand the whole reality of it all. For a young person it is very hard to believe in something you don't fully understand - at least that's how it was for me. I did go to church every Sunday and went to a Catholic school, but I could feel inside that I didn't completely believe in it all, it was just way too confusing and way too much to take in for me.

So although I didn't believe 100%, I kept giving it a shot. I continued to go to Mass every week, prayed every night and kept my faith going. But when I was about 12, my little cousin died. She had been very sick for most of her life so after she passed away I had a hard time trusting God. I couldn't understand why He would just take her from us and make everyone so sad. I did find it in me to forgive Him though. I knew then and now that everything that happens, God has it happen for a reason. Now my family and I are closer than we were before. We see each other almost every holiday and send the birthday cards in on time. I see now that God had this happen so our family could grow stronger together and with him.

In October of 2009, NET team 5 came to our parish and I could not hold in my excitement. NET teams have come to my school a few times before for day retreats, but to have a team for a few months, I was so pumped. They came and really opened my eyes to what God and being a Catholic is all about. So many questions I had before are now answered and so many memories have been made. I am now so close to God because of the love and energy the team gave to me and showed me. I have so many loving moments with God now and I am even more involved in my parish. My faith is so strong now, I'm praying more at night and more than I ever have, I see the values of life and of being a woman (and a sister). I know that it'll be hard after they leave, but I know my faith will still be strong and I will continue to come closer to God and his family."

(Cassie is at the top at our retreat for the Edge, and she is in the bottom picture to the right of it at out lifenight 'What a Mess')

God Bless,

Cassandra and Team Five-Alive