And so it begins...

October 2nd, 2011
Bonjour from Les Équipes NET!
We have now completed all our english training in Ontario and our team has moved to Terrebonne, Quebec to complete our french training, ministry practice and put on retreats and classroom presentations at the local school.
While we were in Ottawa for the last few weeks of training, God absolutely showered his blessings on us! For starters, we stayed with an amazing host family that had the generosity, courage and space to take in our whole team. What an adventure! Supper was always so much fun, with our 9 team members and our 2 hosts all around one big table. Their love was beyond compare. They payed attention to the needs of each person on the team, made us fabulous meals, and even made us a cd for all our long van rides. We hope to be staying with them again later on this year.

Our first Encounter Day and our first two classroom presentations were last week, both went well. We were excited and nervous but we know God worked through us even with our insecurities. During the Encounter Day, we had many students who arrived not wanting to be there, and by the end of the day they said they didn`t want to leave. Prayer time went amazingly and afterwards many people asked for rosaries and how to pray them.
The classroom presentations also went well. The students were open to us and asked lots of good questions concerning the Church and NET. One of the students took aside one of our team members and told him how much his talk and testimony meant to him. We were all so thankful that God was able to work through us in our ministry.

On October 1st we had our beautiful Commissioning mass at Notre Dame Basilica in Sussex, Ottawa. Surrounded by our family, friends and fellow Netters, we gave our year to God in servicce of His church as missionaries to the youth of Canada. It was a bittersweet moment, being excited to start our mission, but sad to leave all the friends we made during training. We trust God to work through every team and keep us all safe.

Now, from October 2nd until the 20th, we will be in Terrebonne. St. Louis` parish has welcomed us with open arms and we already feel very loved and welcome in this beautiful french community. It`s wonderful to see God working in our own lives through other people, always giving us examples of holiness to follow. We are surrounded by generous and caring people and we are constantly humbled by their great love for God. Please pray for us and all the other NET teams as we take the first few steps of our journey :) May God bless you!

Julie Godin - Les Équipes NET

And our Adventure Continues...

Greetings from Woodstock, Ontario!

So last week we were in Scarborough to do a retreat for an all guys school. We were warned beforehand that the boys had to be approached a certain way, and learn to trust us before they would open up or participate at all, but we were up for the challenge. Though, it was a little bit nerve-racking for the girls, considering we had never had boys small groups before, but we were all pleasantly surprised with the outcome. The boys were so respectful, and they all took part in the activities throughout the day. Our team had such a good time with them! It was one of my favorite retreats thus far. Some of the boys even told us they want to apply for NET when they are of age. Hurray for a successful encounter day!

Shortly after the retreat ended, we went to the all girls school nearby to talk to the students involved in putting on retreats for younger grades. We just told them about NET, what we do and where we come from. Then we presented a skit for them and had some question and answer time. We got a really good response from them too, perhaps they'll be netters one day!

Our Thanksgiving weekend was super awesome too. On Saturday we went to Niagara Falls for our team day. Most of us hadn't been there, so it was quite the experience! I was in awe of how beautiful God's creation is. Coming from BC, Niagara Falls is a really big deal! It's one of those places you hear a lot about, but never imagine that you'll get to see it in person!

That's all for now!

God bless,

-Silken Neutelings
Encounter Team 1

Getting Settled In Yellowknife!

Hello everyone, iNFUSE Team One here,

For the first blog I have decided to talk about our first few days in the awesome city of Yellowknife! After all of the plane switching and plane rides we made it to Yellowknife with no problems at all. Once we arrived we received a very warm welcome from Fr. Ben, Susan, Gerry and some other members of the incredible staff at the Diocesan Centre. We spent most of the first day getting to know our office, parish, and some of the people we will be working with this year which was very fun!

A few days later we were welcomed by James, Christine, and Phoepe, though some call it - pranked. They decided to welcome the new NET team with dish soap on our van, which was

forgotten after they fed us some fantastic spring rolls. James, Christine, and Phoepe are just some of the amazing youth in Yellowknife. We were privileged to visit all three schools, and meet a ton of the youth! It has been a blast laughing and simply getting to know them. The ladies of St. Patrick’s CWL also welcome us on Saturday night with a delicious pasta dinner and cake (insert picture). We spent the rest of the night just talking, laughing, sharing stories, and getting to know the incredible people of Yellowknife.

Another cool thing I just have to mention is that for the first couple of weeks the whole team was privileged to stay in the same host home! Our host family is amazing, they are extremely hospitable, loving and just down right amazing! Our host mom would say “We’re nothing to write home about” but I beg to differ. I have to say we are truly blessed to be place in such a welcoming community. We are ecstatic to be here and can’t wait for what’s to comes. Well that’s it for now, but keep your eyes out for our next blog. We are sure to have even more amazing stories to share with you next time!

So for now, farewell and God bless!

iNFUSE Team One

( Yellowknife )

Bolton!

Hey Everyone!

This is Encounter One's official blogger, Silken Neutelings.
Last Saturday before the Commissioning Mass one of our vans broke down, and therefore was sent to the shop for repairs. We were set to depart on Sunday morning, but without our second van in working condition, this proved to be impossible. Fortunately for us, we were able to kidnap Massive Worship's brand new van! Thus, after gathering our team, grabbing a few things at Canadian Tire and crashing at one of the host homes for an extravagant lunch and snacks (we were all blown away by their hospitality!) - we were off!
We had our first four retreats in Bolton, Ontario, for Gr. 8 students and they were all really awesome. Some of our retreatants felt really touched in different ways, it was so awesome to see God work through our words and actions. I can't wait to see what else God has in store for us and all the youth we meet this year!
God bless!
-Silken
Encounter One: Cristy, Daniel, Alex, DJ, Matthew, Sarah, John, Sydney, Tyler, Mary and Me

In the beginning....

Hey Everybody

This is Infuse 2, Medicine Hat, checking in to inform everyone about our recent progress as a team and as a ministry. We left Ottawa, Ontario at seven o’clock on Sunday, October 2nd. It was a pleasant four hour flight on which Joel and I finished a four hour game of monopoly(I won), and Kyle and I watched “Inception”. Lauren experienced her first flight in a plane, and we spent twenty minutes in the middle of the flight with our seat belts fastened on account of “severe turbulence”. Needless to say, it was an interesting flight. We arrived in Calgary around a quarter after nine, also October 2nd. For all those out there as confused as I was about a flight that took us four hours to fly, but which we landed two hours after we took off, I just want to clarify that the time difference between Ottawa and Calgary is two hours and that, yes, it is possible.

We spent our first Albertan night in Calgary, and drove to Medicine Hat the following morning where we received a tour of one of our parishes, Holy Family Parish. We were hosted by one of our contact persons who had agreed to host the whole team. It was a great experience to be able to be together as a team, especially during our first week here. We’ve spent most of the first week here settling in. We’ve had tours of the city, and we had a tour of Saint Patricks parish, which is the other parish we will be ministering to over the next eight months. We've managed to rearrange our office at Holy Family in order to better accommodate eight people. There’s also a lot of other rooms around our office (ei. conference rooms, staff rooms) which the staff here at Holy Family has been very gracious in letting us use whenever we’ve had a need.

Random Interesting really cool fact, One of our parishes is a consolidation of three parishes, St. Joseph Parish, Christ the King Parish, and St. Mary's Parish. They consecrated it as Holy Family Parish for this reason. How awesome is that?

On Saturday and Sunday we went to all the masses at Holy Family Parish, and introduced ourselves and explained NET a little bit, the we hung out in the foyer and talked to people after the masses. So we've gotten to know a little bit more about the community at Holy Family Parish. Next weekend we'll be doing the same thing at St. Patricks parish, and then we'll be fully integrated into Medicine Hat.

We've finished planning for our high school youth night, which will be at Holy Family, and our junior high youth night which alternate between St. Patricks and Holy Family so that each parish has two youth nights per month. We're planning to start visiting the schools next week and that's when we'll be starting our youth groups.

So, please, keep us in your prayers.

God Bless

Isaac Sullivan

p.s. To love God is something greater than to know him. -- St. Thomas Aquinas