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