Anyone Speak French?

Bonjour tout le monde! (Translation: Hello everyone!) This is Shaina, and I bring you greetings from iNFUSE 1 in Montreal, Québec! We're super excited to be here at St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish. Although it was only a short car ride away, we know we're in for a big adventure this year!

On our first night here, our team had dinner with Fr. Mike, our parish priest; families that would be hosting us for the first couple weeks; and some of the people involved with the youth group already established here, called The Almighties. It was so wonderful to meet some of the people that we will be working and spending time with this year! We'll be attending and helping out with some of the programs that are already being run here, such as The Almighties youth group and the Faith First Program (a home-based Catholic education program).

Our primary mission right now is to build relationships with the parish community and youth. We are so excited to be helping out in any way that we can while we're here! By the grace of the Holy Spirit's presence in us we continue to strive, brick by brick, to rebuild the city of God inside the city of man.

Also, we'd love to learn some French while we're here!

Stay tuned for more from iNFUSE 1!

God Bless,

Shaina Wreede

We're here

Greetings Lovely people, Jonathon here reporting for iNFUSE3. I may or may not be keeping this short (I guess you will just have to read to find out)
We have officially arrived in Drayton Valley.  So far it has been amazing, the people here are super lovely and so welcoming to all of us.  The drive up was beautiful, I'm still trying to comprehend the beauty of our country.

We are so excited to get started with ministry this year. We have a lot in the works for our up coming events.  We got a chance to visit Holy Trinity Academy the new Catholic High School in town.  We will be going to an Archdiocesan youth rally in Red Deer on Saturday, October 19th.  After speaking with individuals in the parish, we have a sense of anticipation for this year.

Our Parish Priest Fr. Gary Lee is such an amazing man he gave us the full tour of his house and showed us his collection of different zucchettos (the "beanie-like" caps that Bishops, Cardinals and the Pope wears) he had ones from his Bishop in the Philippines, different Cardinals He has met, He even had ones from Pope Benedict XVI and Blessed Pope John Paul II(which he let us hold!)!

So all in all it has been a very productive couple days here in DV (Drayton Valley).  Well it seems as though that is all the time we for now, so until next time,

iNFUSE 3 singing off.

God Bless

We've Arrived!

Hi everyone, Katelyn here from Les Équipes NET; I’ll be our team’s blogger for the year. We arrived in the region of la Beauce, Québec this past Monday and discovered our new home. One of the first things we noticed was how incredibly beautiful it is here. There are lots of hills and all the leaves are changing colors and beginning to fall. We all feel so lucky to have the privilege of spending the next eight months here!

We spent our first week getting ourselves organized in our office in the village of St. Prosper. We've also been able to visit and meet some of the staff in 7 of the 12 parishes that we’ll be working with and everyone is so nice and welcoming and excited that we’re here. We’re already starting to feel really at home here in la Beauce.

Thursday was our first team day in our new home and we were able to go on a hike together in Parc des Sept-chûtes. The park is appropriately named for its seven waterfalls and they are beautiful! The trail was almost 3 km long and followed the water up all the waterfalls to a suspension bridge at the seventh waterfall. We’re all very excited to go back throughout the year and see the different landscapes as the seasons change.

Blessed Dina Bélanger, pray for us.

St. Bonaventure, pray for us.

Katelyn Sutton

Les Équipes NET

Putting our "Hats" back on for departure

This is it. All is said and done. Complete. Finished. The End... 

These are not the words I want to be hearing but unfortunately all good things must come to an end at some point in our lives and this is one of those situations. We, Infuse 2 are departing from Medicine Hat, Alberta this week leaving behind a lot of amazing people and a community truly in love with our Lord Jesus Christ. This year we as a team gave it all that we had for all our events, our friendships, and our parishes but yet I feel like we received so much more in the end. It's just a true example of how much God loves us with absolutely no conditions what so ever! 

We were able to have our final Unchained and Equip this past weekend with nothing but craziness and laughter! Friday night at Equip we had a Blast from the Past games night where we played some of their favourite games from the year along with some new ones. Secret Dancer, Sharks and Minnows, and Pancake Flipping were some of the games we got to play and man nothing but smilies were present! All of the Equip youth are going to be greatly missed and in a few years I'm sure a few there will be a few more Netters coming out of that group! So excited! 

Then for Unchained we had a bit of a food fight challenge which only included lots of runny Chocolate Pudding. Now you have to be wondering what we got up to right? Let me tell you: Chocolate Pudding - Slip and Slide - Egg on a spoon Challenge!!! Yeah that was pretty crazy and extremely dirty. Then we had more chocolate pudding and sponges… You guessed it they got to throw these sponges at us on the Net Team. It was defiantly "sweet" revenge for the youth after we had made them do some crazy things this year. We finished the activities with the classic school yard game of Tug of War. It was a great fight to watch! Thanks to all our youth for coming out and being so dedicated to your faith! 

With all this said we say Thank you. It was been an absolute pleasure being able to blog for the world about our happenings in Medicine Hat, AB as Infuse 2 of NET Ministries of Canada. We are excited to know that the youth and community will continue to grow in their faith as life goes on. This is our Thank You video to Medicine Hat but I hope all who read this and watch the movie just see how amazing this year has been. With that said… ok don't cry… Thank you and God bless. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LptsOMsQSXY

With lots of Love and Prayers, 

Matthew ten-Bohmer

Infuse 2, Medicine Hat, AB

From the World's Largest Teepee 

The End Is Near

Hi Everyone!
I can not believe that the end of this year has approached so fast!
It has been such an amazing year, both for the community of Lethbridge and for our team!

This last week here has beautiful.
This past Sunday we had a goodbye party after the 6pm Youth Mass we go to every week at St Basil's Church here in Lethbridge. During the homily during the Mass, our priest, Fr. Kevin, asked our team to stand up, and he talked about how we are just normal people, but are spending this year taking time from our busy lives to serve God, and God is using us to touch other people's lives this year. This was both humbling and affirming. We are all given the same gifts of the Holy Spirit. You don't have to be a priest, nun, or missionary to evangelize. It is the call of all people united under the Catholic faith. After we got to sit back down, he asked the congregation to stand up if they had been impacted in any way from our team being in their community for the past year. It was so beautiful seeing almost everyone in the full church stand up! Sometimes you don't realize you are touching people by the work you are doing, but even just by being a witness as someone who loves Christ, you can touch people's lives. One guy I got to know this year pretty well told me how much we had impacted him and helped him grow in his faith and change him in a good way! Sometimes I think that I only impact the lives of the youth we encounter at our youth groups and school visits, so I was caught off guard when people I was just friends with outside of our ministry work had been affected by us being here.

We also had our last PULSE Jr high youth group night this week. We had a huge game of capture the flag in the park across the street from the church, and we ended the night with Sundae the Netter. Basically, we supplied the needed materials to create the perfect sundae, and then let the youth dump it all over us. We were a mess, but a sweet tasting mess. It was a grand way to end our awesome year here!

God gave us such an amazing year! May God Bless you this year and many to come!

Love
Amy ten-Bohmer
iNFUSE ONE
Lethbridge, Alberta