I'm lovin it...

Hey Everyone!
We've had a great past two weeks, travelling from Terrebonne to Thetford Mines to Montreal, and now home to Ottawa.
Our last night in Terrebonne we had an evening retreat with youth from our host families. It went really well and it was a lot of fun! It was a chance to show them the ministry we'd been doing while they'd been hosting us. At the end we had to say goodbye, after three weeks of ministry there. We can't wait to go back in January!!
In Thetford Mines, we put on our first weekend retreat, with the help of our awesome supervisors, Nicole an Kevin. We stayed with Fr. Robert Lebel, who is a very well known french musician and a wonderful host. The retreat went amazingly, and since it was for three days, we got to know people quite well :) One young man who came wrote us a letter afterwards, talking about his experience.

"I want to tell you all that what you're doing is really awesome! Also, you form a beautiful team. A team that's dynamic and alot of fun! You each have amazing talents, so keep it up. I wish you a happy trip and safe travels. Thank you all and take care. God Bless You!" It was very encouraging :)

The morning of October 31st, our team was honored to attend a private mass with Archbishop Terrence Prendergast. Afterwards we were invited to a tour of his residence and to breakfast with him. He answered our many questions and told us about the history of the Ottawa diocese. We were so blessed to be able to spend the morning with such an amazing man!
Yesterday morning we had an Encounter Day at St. Patrick's Catholic School for Grade 6 students - what an awesome class! They knew so much about God and the Bible, and they were super enthusiastic about every part of the day. God is really working in that school :)
Lastly, a quick "Hi!" to all the other teams, and to our families, friends and sponsors. We miss you and we love you! God Bless!
Julie Godin
Les Equipes NET

Minute-to-win-it!

Hey Peoples!

This is Infuse 2 here to tell you about how great our ministry is going so far.

We’re off to a great start. We’ve been visiting the high school and junior highs once a week. We show up just before lunch starts and we just kind of hang out with the students. At Notre Dame, the first junior high we visited, I met an awesome group of grade six guys and we hung out in the cafeteria playing an epic game of “ninja”. When their lunch is over we head over to the other junior high, St. Mary’s, and I got to join in a game of football, which was awesome! At the high school, McCoy, the team put on a popcorn survey. So, basically, we cooked up a bunch of popcorn in the front foyer and then we wandered around inviting everyone to help themselves because it was free. We also handed a little survey full of nonsensical, useless questions about their favorite colour, tv series, and stuff like that, and then (very very sneakily) snuck one innocent looking question in about what they do Sundays 6-9pm....(that’s when we have our high school youth night...Sneaky! ).

Our supervisors came down for four days, and they planned our team day and it was awesome!!!(We went CURLING!).

We’ve also been able to start our youth groups off with awesome first weeks. We’ll be running three youth groups this year. “Equip, St. Pats”,“Equip, Holy Family”, and, “Unchained”. Equip, which will be run as two separate youth groups at the two parishes, is for the junior high students, namely, Grade 6 to Grade 9. Unchained is for high school age students and is being mainly run through Holy Family Parish. (The reason for the name is Acts 12:6-17, where Peter is arrested, but then through the awesome power of God, his chains are broken and he is free to evangelize, and tell how he was set free).

We had the same awesome theme for all three opening nights.

MINUTE-TO-WIN-IT!!!!!!

We played some intense games like “A bit dicey” and “paper dragon”, as well as being able to finish the nights off (thanks to some volunteers from the parishes) with snacks. Overall our introductory nights went over really well and we’re absolutely STOKED for next weeks themes. Unchained is going to be based on the lives of the saints, and "what is the communion of saints?".. and Equip is going to be a “Mythbusters” theme. It’s going to be awesome.

God Bless!

LOVE(!!!) - Isaac Sullivan

P.s. We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials - St. Teresa of Avila (so don't lose hope)

A BANJO-IN' YOUTH RALLY!

Hello people!
These past few weeks have been filled with much music... I mean lots of music. Music practice, band practice, more music practice...etc. There is a well known saying "practice makes perfect". Although we practiced a lot I wouldn't say that our first Youth Rally this past week in Ottawa wasn't completely perfect, perhaps better, however, i am giving it the title of 'epic' and as a result I have decided to change that well known saying.
So for future reference... "practice makes EPIC".


The evening consisted of; praise and worship, a talk, drama and testimony as well as a fun musical moment highlighting a fiddle, a melodian, and a banjo. Yup, you read right, a BANJO... how EPIC is that. Not only was the music fantastic, the crowd of grade 7's 8's and 9's loved the different instruments and the evening itself. It was a great evening of music, praise and most importantly Jesus. I spoke to several teens after and they expressed that they were so glad that they had come!

The following morning we packed all of our belongings, instruments and gear into a trailer and we hit the road. It's really interesting traveling in a seven passenger van with seven fully grown people and multiple backpacks. I guess you could compare it to cramming the seven dwarfs into one of those red wagons you see kids pulling down the street. People look at it and wonder "how did you ever fit all of that in there"? The answer is simple. Only by the grace of God. :)

Well, it's late here in Saskatchewan where we are right now and my body thinks that we are in Ottawa, so I should probably hit the hay.

Many Blessings,

Erin

P.S. PRACTICE MAKES EPIC!

Scarborough!

Hello from Encounter 1!

We have been all over the Southern part of Ontario recently, now when someone tells me something about a place in Southern Ontario, I will not stare at them blankly! Hurray!

Last week our whole team got to stay at DJ's house in Essex, ON. It was a great experience and his family made all of us feel right at home. While we were there we did a couple Confirmation retreats in Tecumseh, then headed back up to Chatham for a Spirit Day on Saturday. Spirit Day is basically a rally for all the youth receiving the sacrament of Confirmation this year. Although our team wasn't running it, we did the skit to start off the day, then our team was divided into two groups to do three prayer sessions throughout the day, each with a different group of youth. We got pretty good feedback for our work.

On Sunday we headed to Scarborough, where we did four Gr. 11 retreats in a row. The students were so thirsty for God's message, so it was a blessing the at we got the opportunity to bring it to them. The retreatants got a lot out of everything we presented them. Their teachers were really impressed with how much their students invested in the day. They couldn't thank us enough for showing Jesus' love to these youth, many of which come from broken families, or just hard lives in general. I know God worked through us each day and I believe He will continue to work in their lives in the future. We got a picture taken of our team, and we were told it would be put in their yearbook! How exciting! We even got a tour of the school, then a bunch of the teachers and the principle took all of us out for lunch. Our team felt so loved by all the students who attended our retreats, and we really didn't want to leave Scarborough. The ministry has been going really well, but please keep us in your prayers!

In Christ,

Silken Neutelings
Encounter Team 1

A Massive Year of Worship

Yo peeps!
Erin here from Massive Worship. This year is going to be massive and full of Worship! Our team of seven can hardly wait to cram into the van and begin traveling across the country proclaiming Christ and his kingdom through music. We are still in the midst of Massive worship training and will have our first official youth rally in the next couple of weeks. So pumped!
Last week we did our first practice retreat. It went well! We had a full band setup in a church basement  for the retreat and as a result the church janitor, secretary and a bunch of random repair men had quite the musical day. The retreatants also enjoyed the prayerful tunes, they were singing and dancing along and by the end of the day they were Congo lining it up.
Prayer time with the grade six students was particularly moving. When we entered into the church they were reverent, respectful and prayerful. Many of the students wanted prayer and some of them were praying the rosary and reading the bible during prayer time. All in all, the day went really well and our team is looking forward to starting ministry full time.
For now, we are still training in Ottawa. More updates to come.
Many melodies,
Erin