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