Awesome Sauce!

Happy Holidays!!
We find ourselves in the first week of advent, preparing for the birth of Christ and the return home for Christmas with great anticipation.
We are presently in Merickville, a beautfitful little town only a short drive from Ottawa. We spent all of last week in Windsor doing retreats and getting spoiled rotten by our host homes and contact people. We continue to be amazed by their immense generosity.
In the past week and a half in Windsor we had the rare chance to spend 4 nights in a hotel, swimming in the pool every night and eating all our meals in restaurants, all paid for by the school board! We also had the amazing opportunity to be hosted by NET Alumni, all with inspiring stories and a great idea of exactly what we needed at the end of the day. Awesome Sauce, as Melanie would say :)
In our past several retreats, God has blessed us with students who have an absolute craving for the Rosary. Without fail, during prayer time there is practically a mob of young people coming to take one of these treasures from the bin and asking us how to with pray them. And then they pray with them! By the grace of God, they have a desire for this beautiful devotion to our Blessed Mother Mary.
Also lately, a kind of message I've seen God giving our team is that everything that happens in our lives He will use for good. A member of our team recently lost his grandfather, and it's been difficult for him, but with the grace of God he seems to have found peace with it. Only a few days after, he was able to really help a student who had gone through a similar experience. I've also found that sharing our past experiences as a team has helped us to grow and learn from one another. God works in incredible ways...
Team life has been good, as we find joy in the little things each day. We built a snowman, we go to Timmy's 2-3 times a week, and we're constantly building our repetoir of inside jokes. We've really gotten to know each one's strenghts and weaknesses, what makes us happy and what drives us crazy. We are truly like brothers and sisters! God bless you all as we enter the most awesome season of the year!!!
Love from Les Equipes NET!
Julie Godin

Nova Scotia Bound!

Hello Fellow Inhabitants of the Worldwide Web!

So, Encounter Team #1 currently resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia! The scenery here is absolutely breath-taking!

On our team day we went to Peggy's Cove - because you can't visit Nova Scotia and skip out on seeing Peggy's Cove. It is unbelievably beautiful. We chose the perfect day to go, it was a pretty windy and cold, but super sunny and gorgeous at the same time! We made sure to hit up the gift shop there and get some souvenirs.

Ministry life has been going well, we had retreats in Enfield, Dartmouth and Timberlea thus far. We have had some really hard days, but also some really awesome ones. Last weekend the youth came into the retreat totally not wanting to be there, but when the day comes to a close, they didn't want to leave! It's amazing how God can change the hearts of the people we minister to in just one day, or even a couple hours!

It's finally SNOWING! A bunch of us were so excited for the first snowfall of the year, we had a big free-for-all snowball fight in the empty parking lot outside! It was a blast, even though a lot of us didn't have a our winter gear since our Supervisors are bringing it on their next visit. Unfortunately our retreat for this evening got cancelled because of the snow, I guess we get a snow day!

Anyways, there's a little update on the things we've been into the past week!

God bless!

-Silken Neutelings

Encounter Team #1's Official Blogger!

P.S. WE GOT TO VISIT THE HALIFAX TEAM!!!!! It was a short stop, but it was soooooooo nice to see them! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!

Hello from Alberta!

Here we are, NET team two, traveling around the Edmonton Archdiocese. Recently we were in the heart of the archdiocese, right in St. Joseph's Basilica basement. We had a couple of retreats there last weekend, and returned to the facility once again to host an Encounter Day for several grade elevens.

The students were great, but one girl in particular caught my attention. She was friendly and kind, and though she wasn't in my small group, I found myself able to connect easily with her. At one point we were talking and it sounded like she was going through some struggles in her life, and that school wasn't her top priority at the time. During prayer ministry we had the sacrament of confession available, and this girl chose to stay behind in line after the group had moved on with the retreat schedule. I was talking to her about it afterwards, and she shared with me how awesome the experience was. She explained that she wasn't Catholic, so she didn't go through the actual Sacrament of Reconciliation, but she took the opportunity to go talk to the priest and talk about her faith. As I stood there talking to her after retreat, she expressed her gratitude over and over again for the day, especially for the opportunity that she had to talk to the priest. I don't remember her exact words, but in talking to her I realized that the work of NET is not in vain. People are being led deeper in their faith all the time through this mission. To God be all the glory!
Katie, Team 2

Life is a NET van

Hey everyone! We find ourselves at the end of our time in Toronto doing english ministry. It was an unforgettable experience for the whole team. During two weeks we personally met over 250 youth preparing for their confirmations. Most of them already have a relationship with God and an understanding of the sacrament. It was inspiring to see so much faith in the young people, it gave me alot of hope for the future!

At every retreat we had a time of prayer and a chance for the confirmands to recieve the sacrament of reconciliation. So many of them went that we had to lengthen out prayer time every day so that everyone in line would have the chance to go. Even some of those who didn't want to go at the start changed their minds and received all those awesome graces that confession brings us! It was great to see them open up to Christ!

Now we're spending a couple weeks in southwest Ontario. We're visiting several cities, moving every couple days in the area between London and Windsor. It's nice going back to our ministry in french. Please keep praying for us, prayers are vital for our mission!! Thank you all so much :)
Julie Godin
Les Equipes NET

Who is ..The Whole Family?

Hey Peoples

It’s Infuse 2 here once again to tell you about how our ministry’s going.

One word.

GREAT!!!

It really has been. We’re having our first family fun day coming up in a couple weeks. Jeopardy theme. Awesome! It’s an

afternoon event that we set up that is (hopefully) an attractive idea for the whole family. We’re going to be pitting family against family. Friend against friend. Cousin against cousin. Basically, whoever shows up is competing together as a family. It’s going to be really fun.

Also, in earlier news, from before, we’ve had a lot of fun with our past couple of Equip and Unchained nights. We didn’t have them this past weekend out of respect for Remembrance day, but before that we had a Myth-busters-based Equip night, and an Unchained night that was basically a great big explanation of some ways to pray. It was really cool. Rachel did the talk and she talked about stuff like Praise and Worship, traditional prayers like the rosary, and most importantly, the prayer of the Mass. Afterward, in small group, we had one grade ten guy who told us one of his amazing prayer experiences and how God really answered his prayer. It was really cool. For equip/Myth-busters we went through a whole bunch of myths that are generally believed about the Catholic Church and explained the truth about them. For example, one misconceived notion that we discussed was the belief that we as Catholics “worship Mary”. We explained how this was just a misunderstanding, that really Mary's whole goal is to get us closer to Christ. In small group at the end we had a person, a high schooler who was volunteering, not even one of the middle school participants, ask about a myth he had heard that he had always believed, and we discussed that as well, it was really cool!

Also, there’s something I never knew about Alberta, or maybe just Medicine Hat, that I want to share with you.... The deer walk the streets and sidewalks just like everyone else. It’s crazy. It’s not weird to see a deer on a main street just walking(there's one in the picture. sorry about the poor quality..). It’s CRAZY, but awesome.

Ok, I don’t really have anything else interesting to bore you with, so I’m gonna sign out now. It was nice talking to you all. I love you!

God Bless

Isaac Sullivan

p.s

Christ said, "I am the Truth"; he did not say "I am the custom." -- St. Toribio

(Photo above) MASSIVE WORSHIP CAME TO VISIT!!!!...Sorry. I just had a "MASSIVE" happy moment. They were having a team day, so they drove two hours and visited us. I LOVE THEM!