"You Always Make Me Smile"

Greetings fellow inhabitants of the world wide web!

I have replenished and used my creative juices, combined with excellent film documentation efforts by my fellow teammates to bring to you Vlog #3 of iNFUSE Team 1 of Yellowknife.

Click on the link, we hope you enjoy, and God bless!

http://www.youtube.com/user/aprilfogle?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/z96HEtcU9Xs

April Fogle

iNFUSE Team 1 Yellowknife

Don't Stop Believing!!

Don’t stop believin’ hold onto that feelin!!!!!! This blog is absolutely marvelous because it is co-written by Marc Moreau and Maria Kalin! Marc here, coming to you presently from a basement, when we look up there is a roof and further up the sky, but that doesn’t really tell you where we are…. Here’s a hint, there’s mountains here and the sea and the home of the Vancouver Canucks!!! So we are presently in Vancouver and it was actually the 125th anniversary of this beautiful city.

So to catch you up on the life and times of this absolutely marvelous team, we will have to fill you in on where we’ve been….

Hello, Maria here, before leaving Alberta, one of the last places we went was Chestermere. The host families there were amazing and we love them so much. On one of our last nights there, the priest, Fr. John, had the whole team over to his house, as well as our host families and a couple other families for dinner. We had such a great evening hanging out, talking, playing Wii ‘Just Dance’ with the kids, (Jacob is a dancing CHAMPION, by the way.) At the end of the night, Father told us how much they appreciated us being there and our host families thanked us for being examples to their children and blessing them, but it was really them who blessed us. The families there made us feel like we were part of their family and the weekend we spent with them was treasured. I am so happy to be back in British Columbia and I am looking forward to the many retreats we have here. The weather is beautiful, the mountains are beautiful, the sky is beautiful. Can you tell I’m happy to be home? I got to see most of my family on our way to Vancouver. My sisters and youngest brother were able to meet my team which was a surreal experience; having both my families together in the same place. It was so good to see them, and to see my Mom. She has been so important on my NET journey. She did NET herself, in 1986 in the states, and has been super supportive and helpful on my own adventure with NET. I will be seeing them again in a couple weeks. Love you, family!!

Marc again. Leaving Alberta was sad as we left behind many new friends, but the road ahead was totally awesome. Our last destination in AB was Banff, the home of the natural hot springs, a ridiculously amazing hotel and the most beautiful scenery we have seen to date. It’s truly awesome to see God in everything especially nature, whether it be in the trees or the mountains, birds, sunshine or wind. God is all around us, He is always there for us, to protect, guide and equips those who seek him.

Maria again. Going off of what Marc said up above about God in nature. Before we left Alberta, one of the Sunday homilies we heard was on invitations by God. The priest talked about how things in our life that are beautiful, or things that we take for granted everyday are really a call to evangelize, a call to love, and a call to serve. The beauty of the mountains, the soaring in our hearts when we look on something truly amazing, the laughter of friends. These blessings are given to us from God and should remind us to follow Him always, and to help others recognize God in these things. For myself and many of my team, the beauty of seeing the Rocky Mountains, and the beauty of BC has been a call to marvel at the infinite power and love of God, and to thank Him for giving us this beauty.

Retreats so far in BC have been going really well. Besides being really enjoyable and full of energy, the youth seem to have a real grasp on their faith and a desire to learn more. We have had some really powerful and touching prayer times, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the Vancouver Archdiocese. The other night we had the honour of celebrating Mass and having dinner with Archbishop Michael Miller. He is an amazing man, and we had a great time talking with him and the awesome staff at the ArchDiocese Office.

BOOM! Marc here again. Next on the agenda is our final Supervisor visit which starts this week! And well we’ll be in BC for awhile so it’ll be sweet! We’re definitely going to meet Maria's family again which I’m stoked for!!!!

Till next time,

God bless,

Marc Moreau and Maria Kalin

Encounter Team One

iNFUSE Team 3 Has Made a Video Blog!!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy1_58TqdBY

Hey everyone! We would just like to show you all our video blog that we have created! We hope you like it! God Bless,

Katie Doyle

iNFUSE Team 3 Wetaskiwin, AB

The blog of everything

Hello beautiful blog readers!

There is so much to share from the past few weeks I almost don’t know where to start! Well I guess I will start at the beginning (or at least where Phylicia left off last time).

LifeLine, our high school youth group, had its first sports night entitled “Go My Favourite Sports Team! Go!” The night started out with a warm-up from Hans and Helmitz Skitz-Velvitz (one of our volunteers and Amanda), and then continued with game after game. The teens were really having fun and getting into every game we threw at them. And I have to say that we played the most intense game of freeze tag ever!!! People were strategizing and everything! Super cool!

The next weekend we put on a retreat for our leadership team. Being able to see our leaders form relationships with each other, and sharing their relationships with Christ with each other was so beautiful. Plus we had so much fun playing games, doing skits and sharing in a night snack of tea and crackers. We were also able to plan our next LifeLine with them. Actually we didn’t do too much as most of the ideas came from them. More on how the night turned out later. I am truly confident in our leaders and how they will work together in the future. We are still looking for a youth minister though, so please keep that in your prayers.

Following the leader retreat, we had our REACT night entitled “Man Your Stations”. The night was on the Stations of the Cross, what they are, why we pray them, and what we can get out of them. We had the teens break off into four groups (with three or four stations each) and come up with freeze frames and a meditation for each of the stations. Then we all went up into the church and prayed the Stations together with the groups presenting their freeze frames and meditations. I was so amazed with my group and the lessons they got from each of the stations. One parent told us afterwards that her son had come home told them that not only had he enjoyed the night, but that they too could learn a lot from REACT. How awesome is that!?!? And it doesn't stop there!

The next weekend was our monthly family fun day. We decided that since spring is in the air, it would be appropriate to make some paper spring flowers and take them to one of the local nursing homes and spend some time with the residents. The youth and families who came out to this event were so great with the residents and had a lot of fun making flowers together. Seeing them affirming each other in their flower-making abilities was wonderful! I probably could have spent another hour with them just making flowers! But the best part of the day was seeing the smiles of the residents as we gave flowers to them and played board games with them.

And now for the LifeLine that our wonderful leaders planned together at the leader’s retreat. We had wanted to do a night on the saints and in talking with our leaders we realized that want we really wanted was a night on sainthood and how we are all called to live our lives under the example of the saints. The night was entitled “Called to it. Can do it.” We started the night off with some Mariokart. Each teen was given three balloons (just like in the Mario game), and the aim of the game is to pop other people’s balloons while at the same time trying to protect your own. You want to be the last person with balloons. The game was a riot!!! I have to give a shout out to Phylicia who spent over an hour blowing up balloons! After this we presented a skit (co-written by Andrew and Amanda) that highlighted some well-known patron saints and how they can help us in our daily lives. Next we took a journey to meet a few saints face-to-face. The teens got a chance to hear the stories of St. Peter, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Gianna Molla, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, and one saint-in-the-making (one of our leaders). Each saint had their own room in our parish basement that they got to decorate to fit their stories. We ended the night off with some Saint Bingo, in which each teen was given the name and bio of a saint and a bingo sheet with clues. They then had to find the saints that matched their clues. It was a great night and the night with our biggest turn out! I keep hearing our teens comment on how much they got out of that night and how they had not thought of sainthood as something attainable.

Thank you for the prayers and continued support! Please keep them coming! As I mentioned before, Christ Our Saviour has decided to hire a youth minister for next year. We are still looking, so please keep that in your prayers.

God bless!

Elizabeth Fitzmaurice

“When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” – Romans 8:15-16

When in Rome!!

Hello faithful blog followers! Once again it is Bernadette and I am reporting to you from the BEST part of Canada.... THE EAST COAST! Our first day in the East brought us to my lovely home of Saint John, NB. Before getting there, I wasn't really sure what to expect but I am so pleased that it all turned out so well. My family loved my team. My team loved my family. What more could I ask for? WELL...our time out East began, what we like to call, Holy Spirit week. The Lord has just been doing really amazing things in our team. He has been calling all of us to holiness and He has been giving us all we need, and more, to do it. There has been a really wonderful transformation in our team and I just love Jesus! There is really not much more to say other than I can't wait to see what else He can in us.

Ministry has been going really well. Evening retreats were something our team had to get used to because, for the most part, everywhere else in Canada has us doing retreats during the school day but so far they have all been great and we expect them to continue being great. I have found that something really wonderful about this year is that even though we are the ones that go out to minister, it seems that more often, we are ministered to by the people we meet along the way. From the beginning of the year up until now, God has continually floored me with his generosity. People are so good to us and they treat us like we are family and they open up their homes, their hearts, and their faith to us and inspire us so much. Even though I don't deserve it, I am incredibly thankful.

Moving on.

You all know the saying "when in Rome, do as the Romans," right? Well, while we were in Sydney, we t0ok on this mentality. How could we possibly go to Nova Scotia and not have a LOBSTER BOIL!? We couldn't. The guys went and picked up the lobster while the girls started boiling the water and preparing everything else. When the guys came back, they had each named a lobster after themselves. Poor Patrick, our animal lover, couldn't stand the thought of killing/eating something named after him.. so he named his Andrew (Hamon). I'm sorry to break it to you Steinbach... Andrew didn't make it...

Our last two team days have been superb! When Pat and Meaghan came down for a supe visit, they took us to the Louisbourg Fortress. We got a tour of the whole Fortress, learned all of its history AND we even got to go geocaching. For those who have never heard of geocaching, its pretty much like a super intense scavenger hunt. You use a GPS and everything. I highly recommend it. More recently for a team day, we went to Peggy's Cove. I had never been there before, but let me tell you.. any doubts I may have had about the Martimes not being the best were smashed up against the rocks today, along with the insanely huge waves! HOLY MOLY! It is amazing. The day was pretty overcast and so when we got there, it was super windy and the waves were crazy! We were all pretty much soaked by the time we left because pretty much everywhere we went was a splash zone. It was completely worth it. I have never seen anything quite like it. I could have stayed there forever if they had let me; be assured that I will go back.

We head up to Newfoundland on the 8th. I hear it is lovely up there. You are all in our prayers; please keep us in yours!

Before I go.. I thought I should mention that I know this photo has nothing to do with anything that I have talked about tonight. But I am filling you in on the last month of our year we have definitely caught Bieber fever! hahaha.

God bless!

In Christ,

Bernadette Dobbelsteyn

Encounter Team Two