Fairwell, Manitoba!

Hello everyone! So, it`s spring!! I`m so happy to see a little more sunshine!! May it not only warm your faces, but your hearts and homes as well.

We have slowly made our way back west. It was awesome being on my side of the country, but I love coming back to the Shield after being in the prairies for a while. We have just returned to Québec after spending a couple months out west, with Manitoba being most recently. It was really cool being there, we had several retreats that were all totally different from each other. One was at a school where all the students knew each other, and it was really awesome because they were very on fire for their faith and they wanted to participate to the max during the retreat. Our second retreat was to teach the youth about their upcoming confimation, and it was 5 schools together. We had a lot of fun with them, God blessed us with a gorgeous sunny day so we were able to spend alot of time outside. On top of that, almost all of them recieved the sacrament of reconciliation :) We also had a retreat for four girls, which was a huge contrast to the 96 students the day before. It was a nice change having smaller numbers, we did praise and worship with them and their families afterwards and jammed with them, which was really sweet! The moment that touched me the most was on our last day in Manitoba. Our team was doing the music at mass and as the final song we sang "How Great Thou Art," and for the final run through of the chorus, with no instruments playing, the whole congregation was praising the Lord at the top of their lungs! It was such a beautiful moment and I thought to myself, "God is sooo good!!".

During our stay in Manitoba, we had an Unbirthday for Andrew and for JF. An unbirthday is a crazily fun activity planned for the person in question, a couple hours with them as the star! For Andrew, we saw a movie, and for JF we had a popsicle-stick-bridge-building contest. Time spent just having fun as a team is super important in helping with team unity, which is a crucial for our mission. Over the past month, something that has kept us especially unified is the "Team Cold," which we`ve each taken our turn with. It`s hilarious but also annoying haha. If you could all pray for our health especially for Mel, who has Bronchitis :P We will continue to pray for you all in our daily prayers.

May God move in your hearts during this Holy Week as we reflect on Christ`s passion and death, and may we all rejoice at the resurection of our savior!

Peace and love,
Julie Godin
Les Équipes NET

Only -4 degrees?... Lets go get ice cream!

Hello from iNFUSE #1,

Okay, so I have to tell you guys about Sports Night last week. There were probably ten youth who were down from Deline who ended up coming to Sports Night and hanging out with us. It was awesome, and the funniest part was when a couple of the little girls who had come to our sessions came up to me and Anne showing us pictures of ourselves on their iPods. I didn’t mention it in the last blog, but the younger crowd who came to our sessions in Deline were always recording our skits and taking pictures with us! They were super cute, and it was so heart warming to see that we actually made an impact in their lives.

Well, our busy Saturday turned out amazingly… The family retreat was really great, four solid families came out and they really enjoyed it. Then it turned out that it was Palm Sunday (one of my FAVOURITE masses), and everyone is always braiding palms and making crosses… it’s always funny because it always ends up being a competition of who has the most leaves on their palm. Can I just say that my palms had 16 leaves this year… :o I made 4 braids on one palm – my own personal record! :)

I pray you all have a blessed Holy week, and Easter weekend! I look forward to telling you all about ours.

May God bless your hearts,

~ Natalie (iNFUSE 1's Blogger)

p.s. Check out our pictures; Mackenzie River before entering Deline, and group photo after Karaoke night at our friend Phoebe's house!

Rejoice, again I say rejoice!

Howdy from Halifax! Lots has been happening in over here and not just in Saint Benedict Parish! Our team just put on a Diocesan Youth Rally based around Palm Sunday with John Stevens, the Youth Coordinator for the Diocese of Halifax-Yarmouth and I have to say it was fantastic! Despite little things that tried to make things not happen like batteries failing, the projector screen put in some corner it never would be put, the church alarm going off during the Bishop's talk, and some interesting characters barging in during the rally, it really went so well! About 200 people came to the rally before Mass, and about 500 for the Palm Sunday Mass, which was a lot more than we planned for, but I guess that's a good problem to have, hey?

Probably one of the most powerful moments of the whole rally would be the Personal faith stories that were added into Mass. Kyley gave her testimony before Archbishop Mancini's homily. As I looked around the church, I saw how much people could relate to her story and how struck they were by her encounter with God. Erin gave her testimony at the end of Mass and it was very apparent that both of their testimonies connected with so many people in the congregation and it was truly beautiful.

Until next time, may God bless you and keep you always!
Lauren (iNFUSE Team 3's blogger)

"We cannot keep to ourselves the words of eternal life given to us in our encounter with Jesus Christ: they are meant for everyone, every man and woman...It is our responsibility to pass on what, by God's grace, we ourselves have received." - Pope Benedict XVI Verbum Domini 2010

NET In The North...Way Up North! ;)

Hello from iNFUSE #1, coming to you alive from Yellowknife! :)

I bet you’re wondering what’s been going on up here in the North for a while now… well, let me tell you… there was this big polar bear, and he had a coke bottle and well… I’m not authorized to tell you the rest BUT I can tell you that things up here are FANTASTIC!

Our team just got back from an 11-day trip to the upper communities of the NWT. We took two big trucks, and spent around 18 hours driving the winter roads of the north. We crossed four ice roads, and only got stuck three times! Oh, and did I mention that Bishop Murray came with us?!

We started in Fort Simpson where we hung out with the community during their Beaver Jamboree. It was this awesome weeklong festival where they have daily outside barbeques, and they do fun activities. When I say fun activities, what I really mean is HARD CORE games. There were fire-making competitions, log chopping competitions, and log pulling competition. My favourite part was the moose and fish barbeques. Moose was a first for a lot of us, so that was seriously cool! The second day we spent some time at the high school with the students, it was a great day, and the students were all super welcoming! One of the best parts was that our whole team got to stay at the priests house and had the Eucharist present right in our host home!

After Fort Simpson we headed to Wrigley – this tiny TINY town with a population of about 100 people, actually, it’s said that there are more dogs than there are people. We stayed in a school, and put on a 2-hour retreat with the community on the night we arrived. Four little girls showed up! It was a GREAT night, and as my first being Event Leader I had to come up with some creative flow for the night and Rianne shared about what the Lord had done in her life.

Our trip to Tulita was the roughest of them all, but definitely worth it. There we had our first OFFICIAL event, and over 30 people came! A lot of them were Elders, but they really enjoyed watching the youth play all the game and participate.

One of the luckiest parts of having Bishop Murray with us was that we got mass almost everyday on our trip. In Deline, the last mass we played was really amazing. A lot of the youth that had been coming to our sessions ended up coming to mass, when usually they’d be sleeping.Albert, the music guy, played with us, and it was so much fun. At the end of mass, Albert closed with How Great Thou Art, and I don’t know why I enjoyed it so much, but it was truly beautiful – he put serious heart into music leading!

The last day we were in Deline, the community had this awesome gathering in the community center where they had a fish barbeque – Young got the chance to fillet a fish for us, it was delicious! The food was great, and the little kids were a lot of fun. Deline was definitely a once in a lifetime experience, and I think a lot of us felt very welcomed. One thing I’ve definitely taken from our trip there was their calmness. They truly live in the moment, and their culture is very important to them.

Though we were gone for only 11 days, I can vouch for everyone when say that we all got a lot out of it. Something that really stuck out was realizing that we have it way too easy down here… Up in the communities, water is something that’s not abundant, and heat is pure gold… I think our team lived in our snow pants the whole time. Even though it was the coldest place I’d ever been, and farthest place I’ve ever been, I would not have given up the experience to be up there for anything.

May God bless your hearts,

~ Natalie (iNFUSE 1's Blogger)

Howdy from the Hat!!!

Howdy from the Hat!!!

I have the honor this week to write for you, and what an incredible last couple of weeks we’ve had! Medicine Hat has kept us very busy, between Holy Family & St. Patrick’s parishes, McCoy High School, and Notre Dame Academy & St. Mary’s School. Three weeks ago, we got to go to McCoy’s production of Singin’ in the Rain. It was so much fun to get to see our friends and youth on stage in one of my favorite musicals. Now because we have been so busy lately, we wanted to make sure that you get all the possible information about what has been going on in the Hat thanks to our awesome, yet busy, God.

Two weeks ago, we had our Equip retreat for grades 6 through 9 held in one of the junior high schools, and it was phenomenal!

We had 38 students come out, What was most exciting was that some students brought their friends, and some of them didn’t even live in Medicine Hat, but they took time out of their visit to come to our retreat. It was really neat, because we got to deliver the Gospel to students, who don’t have the opportunity to come to our Equip nights. It was such an great day, that one of the students that lived out of town, came back the next weekend just in time for our Equip night on Reconciliation, where we not only got to talk about Reconciliation, but we also got to experience it, thanks to Fr. Long.

What an awesome witness of how powerful an encounter with Christ can be! During the retreat, we got to talk about how strong peer pressure can be, but how powerful still is the love of Christ. Gloria shared about personal image and defending against what other people might say. And Isaac was able to show exactly for whom and why God created each one of us.

The day was filled with

powerful dramas, and passionate personal stories. That ultimately lead to an encounter with Christ where we were able to pray with each of the retreatants and give them an opportunity to really open up to God. By the end of the retreat, one of the guys in my small group asked if we could share our favorite bible stories during our last small group, simply because he had a favorite and he wanted to know everyone else’s. We were very blessed during this retreat that we had the help of six volunteers, and we would not have been able to provide such an experience for the youth without their sacrifice and spirit. It was so exciting because after that very long day, we decided that we would just camp overnight in the school with our volunteers, and we were able to hang out, eat some food, pray a rosary, and then we watched the movie Courageous.

What an magnificent ending to such a great day! Please stay tuned next week, when we will talk about our Unchained retreat and how much God showed us what Real Love is! Keep us in your prayers as we keep you in ours. God Bless

From Your Humble Texan,

Kyle