12 hours with the Yutes!!!!!

Saturday I spent 12 hours with 14 of my youth from church. We sported our super spiffy matching Maroon T-shirts and met at Rowland high School for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's Youth Rally!!! The Theme was "Adoreums: Let Us Adore". I had never been to a youth rally, so I was not sure what to expect. St. Liz has the biggest youth group I've ever seen and I wondered of a majority of them were only there for the Youth Rally and the rest of the year only about half of them show up. As is the case with most groups. It's really bad of me to think like that I know. We got there early which proved to be a very good thing because we got front row seats!!!! We started making friend immediatley. While I went to a leaders meeting, the kids danced and got pumped for the days events. We saw skits, speakers, and a beautiful tribute to JP2!!! Our skit was the best, even though we didn't with the presentation award. I was so proud of the kids, because they worked well over 12 hours in a very short amount of time to put together a very awesome dance skit!!!

Jesse Romero was the guest speaker and he said 2 things that really stuck with my kids about the Eucharist:

1). You are what you eat!!!! You take the body and blood into your body and you become the image of Christ, you have him within you. The kids really liked this!!! In fact yesterday morning at Mass, N walked by me after receiving and said "You are what you eat" and I got so excited about going up for communion. I did go back stage to share my niece story, with him, of how she said "I become a living tabernacle for Christ" when asked what the Eucharist meant to her. (side note on Jesse: I am going to try to get him to speak at our summer concert..yessssssss)

2). You can get high for free!!!! We all realized that for years we've been getting high: On Christ, through the Eucharist. wOOt!!!!!! We loved it. And yesterday some of us met after mass and were like "Hey, I got high, did you?" Good times

My youth gave me a gift I will forever cherish as long as I live. After Mass they had Adoration. All 14 of my youth went up as close as they could to the edge of the stage to worship and adore Christ. It was so beautiful and I was weeping!!! I will never ever forget how beautiful that image of them up there was.

We danced, we laughed, we screamed, so much so that I have no voice. Ok, I have a bit of a voice, but it's quite scratchy. Worth every minute of screaming though, I had the greatest time with those kids. Most of them said afterwards, "Katie, I don't want to leave" I said "great, we can stay here and you never have to share this with anyone ever". I encouraged them to take this enthusiasm and strength and share it with everyone that didn't get to go. We ended the evening by going to Applebee's for dinner!!!! I love my kids

Something struck me this morning. I'm not sure how to take the thought, wether it should be taken as good, bad, mean, etc. I heard about the Youth Rally back in September. I remember thinking that it might be fun to go to, since the kids had mentioned the desire to attend again. I mentioned it to Fr. Michael and it was brushed off as not a possibility because the parents would not want to drive the kids there, they do LifeTeen (which he was opposed to) so basically it got nixed. When I asked Fr. Mark about it, he was supportive and enthusiastic about it. I thougt that maybe all this time we'd been held back!!! I'm not trashing Fr. Michael or anything he did, but really, he didn't want to give the kids a room to call their own. A place where we could all gather for youth Group, etc. He didn't want us going to anything that required us leaving the church property. He didn't want us doing much in the way of fundraising. He was opposed to my crazy game night (which the kids LOVED). I understand wanting the kids to serve the church, but you have to mix in a little fun in there!!! While his intentions were good, I can see why T might have gotten frustrated and left. He held YM back. When the kids did the Passion play, the parish was excited. When they went and did their skit for the Prayer group, 2 kids came up and wanted to join us and the adults were smiling, and proud of our youth. I have gotten many compliments on how well the group is going. WHich is nice for the ego, but to see kids excited to be coming to church and excited to hang out together!!! Amazing. While I loved Fr. Michael and will forever be grateful to him for giving me a chance, I am also grateful for this new beginning with our new pastor. Fr. Michael planted seeds and now we need to grow, but we need to grow out in the world that needs us and needs us to evangelize.

I asked Fr. Mark about taking kids on a retreat at St. Matthew's (my old parish) he said "If they need the training and if this is a step towards that, go for it. Get the transportation issue dealt with and you can go". This never would have happened 7 months ago. There is no way Fr. Michael would have let me take these kids to Corona for a retreat. They would have stayed stagnant, not evangelized, not growing. I don't mean to sound really snotty or like I don't appreciate what he did. I see new adventures on the rise. I see the ability to take this group to an amazing level and for the first time in a LONG TIME I feel energized, I feel happy, I'm doing what He wants me to do. Yesssssssssssssssss.

We have coffee with Christ coming up on Friday and I am really getting excited about it. Oh I'm stressing about if we have the coffee coming or the band all situated and what not. I'm stressing about the 2 video presentations cause I am only able to verbalize my thoughts and not show them visually what I am creating in my head. We're doing a JP2 tribute and a presentation of the kids throughout the last few months. To top it off the kids are performing their skit from the youth rally. No really, I'm not stressing AT ALL!!!!

I love my job!!!