Not the end, but just the beginning...

Hello friends!!

So, on this last day of the mission, I have the privilege of writing the final blog entry for our mission.

This past week was amazing. We had our final large-group event of the summer this past Tuesday. We called the event “Cornerstone” and it consisted of praise and worship music, testimonies, a guest speaker, and the commissioning of the new Revive team for our parish!

Four testimonies were shared at the event. They were all awesome and amazing! Two of the people sharing their testimonies were quite involved with our mission through our faith studies, and the two others were youth who had attended our youth retreat! One was 12 and the other was 15. It’s not every day you see such young people speaking in front of a crowd at St. Jude’s! And their testimonies were outstanding! To me personally, they were probably the greatest sign God gave us that He was so happy the three of us came to Espanola and put on this crazy mission!

Our guest speaker was André Regnier, one of the founders of Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO). CCO is a national Catholic movement dedicated to the New Evangelization, in which Mary, Angèle and I have all been involved. André spoke on the topic of how the parish had changed over the summer and where to go from here. He asked the parishioners what they thought had changed in the parish this summer. They mentioned things like more people attending mass, more sense of community, a greater sense of welcome. He linked these positive signs to the work God had been doing through the mission and expressed the necessity for it to continue. He challenged those who had taken the Discovery faith study to lead it themselves. If all of them led Discovery, so many people would be brought back to the church because they would know Jesus and would want to deepen their relationship with Him!

Angèle then announced that the mission would continue under the leadership of three parishioners to continue the studies and two parishioners to continue the youth group. We called them to the altar and Fr. Ed gave them a special blessing. Then, someone from the crowd suggested that we lay hands on the new Revive Team and pray over them together, so we did. We bonded as a community that night and gave a commitment to the New Evangelization. The studies will continue and the youth group is still going to happen!

We had our last Sunday at the parish today, and we said goodbye to the parishioners. It was a bit sad, but also exciting for all of us. After mass and a coffee social, we met with our new Revive Team to plan where they had to go from here. Looks like the faith studies and youth group will restart this September!! Praise God!

Thank you for reading this blog and for all your prayers and for all of your support!! What you have done, though it may have been from afar, has truly allowed this mission to flourish through the Holy Spirit! On behalf of the three of us, I wish to sincerely thank each one of you reading this blog!

Well, that’s it for Revive: Espanola 2013. Who knows what next year has in store for us? All we can really know for sure is that “with God all things are possible,” Matthew 19:26.

May God bless you, your friends and family! In the peace of Christ,

Marc-André

When the Phone Rang

Hey everyone!! This is a super special post!  Selina Deluca (www.thischildeoverhere.blogspot.ca) has written an AMAZING story to describe a hilarious incident during Revive.  Enjoy!

Forks halt mid-air, halfway to the mouth; fingers stand still above a laptop keyboard; conversations pause abruptly, half-formed words left hanging… time itself seems to stop when the ring of a telephone slices through the air.

Such is the case when the phone rings anywhere, but it was especially noticeable at the Sweeneys’, because the phone just rang all the time.  And something else I noticed – that people never seemed to be able to find it.

“Where is the phone?”

If Vince wasn’t there, Marc-André was first to jump for the phone.

“Where is it?” he would ask. Then he would find it. (Then they would ask for Marc-André and he would say, “this is the guy!”)

Sometimes I was tempted to answer the phone first. “Sweeney residence, Selina speaking!” But I never did – perhaps because I was a guest, but mainly because I just never knew where the phone was.

But there were other problems that week than just the phone being in a different place than you saw it last. One day Vince said to me,

“Do you know what makes a third-world country a third-world country?”

“What?” I asked.

“The lack of running water.”

So apparently we were living in a third-world country, in the Sweeney residence, for about a day. The well had run dry.

It was Wednesday. The Revive Espanola mission team and I were planning their first youth group meeting, which would take place at St. Jude’s parish Thursday night. Angèle’s parents Vince and Nicole were not, but they kept on going up and down the stairs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt anything –“

“Oh no, it’s okay, we’re done,” we assured them.

“Okay good,” said Vince. “I have to show you how to turn off the pump.”

This was in case the water stopped working again when they were not there. We all crowded into the tiny corner of the storage room where the pump switch and breakers were. Vince began to explain the process.

“You do this – then you do this – then you do this…”

He stopped then, interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing.

Nicole reached for it first, picking up the hands-free phone that was sitting right there in front of us, right in that narrow space the six of us were shoved into. But Vince beat her to it.

“Hello?” he said, after reaching across to a twenty-plus-year-old-model phone on the wall, picking up the receiver, and blowing off a large dust-bunny puffball sitting on the mouthpiece. “Oh. Mary, it’s your mother.”

Everyone watched Mary intently, in the centre, about four inches away from each person, because evidently life could not continue until this phone call was over.  Everyone except Nicole, that is, who was staring down at the phone in her hand wondering what had just happened, exactly, and what she was supposed to do now.

The two phones in the storage room, when no one could ever find one anywhere else – how cramped we were as Nicole and Vince reached around us to answer the phones – the dust bunny flying off – the expectant way we all watched Mary answer the phone – a second later and the absurdity of all this hit us. The room exploded.

The three of us burst out of the storage room and tumbled into the rest of the basement, doubled over with laughter, leaving poor Mary helplessly trying not to laugh into the phone as she spoke to someone (who was not her mother!), and leaving Vince and Nicole wondering what was so funny, exactly.

Well, now we knew – not only how to turn off the pump, but where we might find an extra phone or two in the house, too.

Well friends, its just about that time…

Just a little over a week left of mission. This entry is a bit late so bear with me here. Its the trick to remember far back enough without trampling on the terf of what the last person said already or too far forward for what the next writer is gonna talk about. It's highly delicate and dangerous business this mission blogging...

Anyway, if my memory serves me right, last week was a really good week. Lately it really feels like God’s been saying to celebrate all the amazing things He’s done this summer. It’s crazy how easy it is to get bogged down on the things that didn’t go the way we, well..I wanted them to. Not even big things but even little almost insignificant things. But lately I keep getting that reminder to stop focusing on that. And to look at all the beauty that’s come about here, especially recently. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

We’ve been planning out how things will go after we leave St. Jude as well. After a lot of prayer and discussion, we asked a few parishioners if they would take the challenge to sort of carry the torch when we leave, keeping the Discovery studies and youth group going so that more and more people can be reached. We’ve gotten all yeses so far, which is really cool. It really hit me right before asking one lady if she would be a part of our “new Revive Team” that it really doesn’t matter what I say to her. It doesn’t matter if I use the nicest most elegant words I can think of or if I give her the top 5 best reasons she should want to do this or offer to pay her eight million dollars to do this for us. Because its not about me at all. Its about God. And if He wants her to be on the team than He’ll prepare that call in her heart and give her the grace to answer with a yes. I don’t need to worry about  anything. Its funny because that’s something I’ve told myself and other people for awhile. But I guess I didn’t really believe it myself until then. It's cool. Takes a lot of the pressure off. And it happened. I stumbled awkwardly through what I was asking her and why I was asking it. But she said yes anyway. Because ITS NOT ABOUT ME. Wow that feels great to say. It really isn't. Ok, you guys get it. It's just still new to me. One of those things I'd been struggling with all summer and it just clicked. It's freeing.

And our youth group kids! I could probably write a book on how great the kids in our youth group are. I look back at how completely incapable I felt that first night, how intimidated I was…and I just laugh now. I love them so much. Each and every one of them. I’m dreading having to say goodbye to them, honestly. Its so amazing that God brought each of them into our lives, in the weirdest ways too. They’re an awesome group and we've seen so much growth in them over the past couple of months. I still don't even really understand it. Seeing the same kids who, that first night, were running around screaming about how excited they were to throw paint at each other, run and scream down a hallway after going to confession for the first time in years yelling "I FEEL SO FREE!" You feel kind of like you're dreaming. Yeah, God is good.

And so, that’s all I have to say I think. I guess Marc or Angele will be writing the last blog here. Thank you guys for reading. And thank you for everyone who prayed for us, encouraged us, came to visit us, supported us in any way really. We needed every ounce of it. So thank you J And don’t be scared of what you think you can’t do. God doesn’t ask much. He just wants us to be willing. He does the rest. He does the impossible through our clumsy and incapable hands. So yeah, there’s my piece of cheesy proverb for the day. 

God bless us, everyone ;)

-Mary

Return to the Promised Land! By Joe Murphy

It's hard to believe its been almost six weeks since we made our first trip to Espanola to help with the Revive mission. Those of us who were fortunate to make the trip for the second time walked around the spiritual center thinking no time had passed since the School of Evangelization in June. It was like coming home returning to Espanola.

Only this time our team was an army! Former Impacters from Windsor (Matt Johnson) and Winnipeg (Ed Bohncke) traveled super-long distances to help with the youth retreat. 

Jeremy, Zak and I were joined by a whole bunch of amazing Ottawa people: Connor Brownrigg, Janice Ling, Yves Chartrand, Celine Masson, Claire Brady, and Chris Zettel. 
Our mission: to assist the Revivers with hosting their youth retreat. We all had important roles to play in performing worship, giving talks, leading small groups, sharing testimonies, performing skits, and much more!

We got to meet a bunch of amazing kids who were probably some of the best behaved retreat participants I've ever met. They were so open to everything we had to share with them, with many of them experiencing Confession and Eucharistic Adoration for the first time. They also decided to give Jeremy the appropriate title of "Cool Guy".

God worked wonders bringing all of us volunteers together with this group of kids during this particular weekend! The theme of "all things are possible with God" was evident in the ways to Lord spoke through all the speakers. 

As I'm writing this, I should be studying for a final exam I have tomorrow. But all I can think about is how awesome this weekend was! A huge shout out to the "Everything Skit" team; one of the most moving performances any of us have ever seen.

Thank you God for Revive Espanola and for this weekend!

Joe Murphy

REVIVE YOUTH RETREAT!!!

Hello everyone!

Marc-André again here to tell you about our retreat weekend we just had July 26-28. What an amazing weekend it was!

We were a bit nervous leading up to our youth retreat. The week beforehand, we had only 6 people registered for the retreat, which was still enough to put the retreat on, but we had 11 volunteers coming from out of town to help out. But hey, the theme of our retreat was “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” Matt. 19:26. So we prayed and fasted together for more youth to register for the retreat. We also prayed a novena together to St. Rita with our intention being for the youth to encounter Christ in a personal way on the weekend and to give their lives to Him. If St. Rita fulfilled the intention we asked of her, we promised to make her achievement known by publishing it in the local newspaper. Well, after writing this blog, I’d better get on to the newspaper article!

All of our participants as well as the volunteers for our youth retreat, with the notable exception of Ed Bohncke, who is humbly taking the picture.

By Friday, we had 15 people registered for our retreat! It was amazing! All of the volunteers who came were awesome and had a key role to play on the retreat, whether they had to lead a small group, play in the worship band, act in the skits, give a talk, or be prayer warriors during the weekend. Everyone fit perfectly into their God-chosen role! He made everything very possible!

The talks for the weekend where based on the four-point gospel message:

1. We are created for a relationship with God

2. Our sin breaks this relationship

3. Jesus restores this relationship

4. We choose whether or not we want to accept Jesus to restore this relationship

The youth were very receptive to the talks. Unlike our youth group nights, they were quiet and attentive to the speaker throughout each and every talk.

On Saturday night, we had Eucharistic adoration, which was the highlight of the weekend. During the adoration, reconciliation and prayer ministry were offered. We had asked four priests to hear confessions that night, and we had some doubts whether or not we would actually need four priests. But God makes all things possible, right?

Almost all of the youth went to confession! There was a line-up the whole night. Some had never even been to confession before! I asked one of the youth how he felt after his confession. He told me, “It was like I got rid of all the dirt I had inside.” What a grace! Many of the youth went to be prayed over by the prayer ministry team as well.

Also during adoration, we had commitment prayers to Christ laid out in front of the altar. Many of the youth came up to the front and prayed the commitment prayer for the first time! To reiterate something John Paul II said at a World Youth Day celebration, these are the saints of the 21^st century!

Overall, it was an AWESOME weekend!!! Some of our volunteers who were there will be posting about their experience of the retreat, so stay tuned for those posts!

Thank you so much for reading this blog! Please continue to pray for these youth that they nurture their relationship with Christ.

God bless you all!

Marc-André

Another week in the life of Revivers!

Hey there, Angele here!
The past week has been pretty boring, so there's not much to talk about.
JUST KIDDING!  Revive: Espanola is NEVER boring!  We always have something to do, which is absolutely wonderful!
I'm a few days late on my post (forgive me), so i'll try to remember the highlights from last week.
Tuesday we had lesson 3 of Discovery.  I guess I'll share a bit of how my study is going.  This is my first time leading Discovery in french, and it's definitely challenging.  However, the really great thing is that God uses our inadequacies and weaknesses!  Although I'm not really sure how my participants are doing, it has been such a great way to realize that hearts are not changed because of what I say. It has been a very humbling experience to realize that I may not be clear in my expressions or teaching, but that the Holy Spirit can reveal Christ to participants regardless!

We also had our third week of youth group, the theme was: What's stopping you/Fear factor.  Mary gave a really great talk on peer pressure.  So many kids face this, not only because of their friends, but also because of the media, pop culture, even music.  Our small groups were really great this week.  We prayed with the kids, something that most of them have never done before.  It's really amazing to see the kind of people coming out to our youth group.  When you think youth group, you think of kids who come from well formed Catholic or Christian families who attend church each Sunday. This is NOT the case for our youth group.  We had 12 kids come out, and of those twelve, not a single one attends mass, and maybe three of them have parents who attend mass.  It's a pretty amazing gift that God has given us.  These kids are encountering Christ!  CRAZY!

We also have our youth group coming up this weekend, where most participants don't attend mass, some who have never even set foot in a church.  So keep us in your prayers!!

This past Sunday was also really great.  We split up to go to the different parishes in the area to invite youth to the retreat.  I was able to go to Sagamok and Webbwood.  Sagamok is a native reserve about 30min outside of Espanola.  I was amazed at how welcoming everyone was there, especially the priest.  I wasn't sure what to expect since I went by myself, and no one there had heard of Revive, but the priest got me involved, handing out song books and allowed me to give an announcement at the end of mass. It was awesome, many people thanked me for what we're doing, and indicated that they're interested in the youth retreat.  We haven't heard anything back yet, so pray that some kids sign up!!  I also attended Webbwood church, which technically should be my family's church since we live outside of Webbwood.  It is such a beautiful church, and again, as soon as I walked in the front door I shook hands with about 5 people!

Going to these different churches really gave me an appreciation for our universal church.  That i can go anywhere, and the mass is the same.  Different songs, different words spoken maybe, but the liturgy, the amazing liturgy is the same!  And the best part, JESUS!  Woo!  I think I've been on a spiritual high for the past four days because of this Sunday, haha.   But really, the Catholic church is so beautiful.

ALSO, Selina, who came to visit a couple of weeks ago has written about Revive in her blog- here is an excerpt.  She is a creative writer, so I strongly encourage y'all check out the rest of her blog! http://thischildeoverhere.blogspot.ca/2013/07/impact-throwback.html#more

Impact Throwback

This is my third day in Espanola Ontario visiting the Revive Espanola mission, which is my friend Angele's initiative to bring a parish renewal mission like CCO's Impact mission to her hometown. So far everything has been awesome! Last night was the best so far - it was a complete throwback into Tuesday nights from Impact Halifax last summer.

It was the first night of the second round of faith studies in the parish of St. Jude's in Espanola, which is one of the main things that these missions do in the parishes. TheDiscovery faith study is a six-week study that looks at the basic message of the Christian faith: that God loves each one of us personally, and Jesus gave His life for us on the Cross so that the relationship with God that was broken by sin can be restored, and then we can choose for ourselves if we want to have this relationship or not. Twenty-seven people attended the studies last night, which is awesome!

I sat in on a study that one of the parishioners is leading in the second round, after having taken it in the first round. All the women in her study seemed to really enjoy the first lesson, which is about God's real, personal, and secure love for us individually, and they all had some really interesting stories to share too. The leader shared her testimony (the story of her faith journey) and everyone left beaming with a heightened awareness of God's love, and the other missionaries had great things to share about how well their studies went too. I was so filled with joy at being able to witness this first night of studies and to see how much God is working through these people to make their parish more alive and on fire for Christ! Everyone deserves to know how much Jesus personally loves them and if everyone knew that, can you imagine how much more meaningful people's faith lives would be? There is a reason we go to church, and that is because we are living out a relationship with our Creator and Redeemer, who wants to give us everything, and a hundredfold more. The Revive Espanola team is essentially giving parishioners at St. Jude's a reason why they go to church. Churches all over the world need this kind of renewal, and it's so amazing and a blessing that I get to see some of what God is doing through them!

It's also really nice to get to spend time with my friends who have given their summer for this mission. Espanola is a really nice town and this is where I got to spend my prayer time today: http://instagram.com/p/bT2lGOhsry/

Mary-Claire Hoffman reporting from Espanola ;)

Hey guys,

Its been one of the easier going weeks of the mission, for me anyway. We had our second lesson of the second round of Discovery on Tuesday, and my parents and sister made a cameo appearance, as did our old Impact friends George Worthen and Chris O’Hara (in the middle of their trip across the country), which was really cool. Its awesome how God’s been sending old friends our way periodically through the summer. Those visits always seem to come when we need them the most.
Anyway, the second lesson of Discovery is my favourite I think. I probably said that about another lesson earlier in this blog...but anyway, this time its my favourite. Its all about the Prodigal Son, and how it demonstrates our relationship with God; the way we tend to walk away from Him, thinking we have a better plan for ourselves, but that never really works out, and like the son in the story, we come home to God eventually. The son in the parable expects wrath from his father when he comes home after spending nearly all the family money on parties...but receives a warm welcome home and forgiveness and mercy instead. Its really beautiful. I'd highly recommend reading it if you haven't :) and even if you have. Its Luke 15: 11-32. And, since its pretty applicable to my testimony, it was my turn to share my testimony on Tuesday night at the study, which, as always, was a little scary. I put it in here for you guys to read too if you want to :).

And we had our second youth group night on Thursday. We had a photo scavenger hunt across Espanola, which was surprisingly fun. It was girls against guys, so me and Angele were on a team with 5 rambunctious and extreeemely energetic young ladies, who had no qualms running into people’s yards or flagging down police officers to get pictures with them. All in all, it was a lot of fun, regardless who the winners were (us).

We went to two parishioner’s houses for supper this past week too. They are really amazing people. So loving..you can feel Christ just beaming through them. Its crazy. It really amazes me the more we meet older people, how strong their faith is despite the unimaginable suffering some of them have been through. Real live “Jobs” that you meet who seem to have everything taken from them yet can still come out of it and say “bless the Lord.”

Anywho, that's what God has been doing here as of this week. Hope all of you people are well. Until next time!



My Testimony

    I grew up in a Catholic family that went to Church every Sunday, but as far as I knew, that was all Catholicism was; a bunch of rules that were impossible to live by so no one followed anymore and God, He was up there just waiting to strike us down when we messed up. So in high school, instead of trying to pursue this unattainable perfection, I pursued popularity, which evolved into something that controlled my every decision. I just went with the crowd, no matter what it was. I figured what other people didn’t know didn’t hurt them, and so as my family can attest to, I had very little consideration for other people. If you would have asked me then if I was happy with my life I think I would have said yes. I was having fun with my friends. But I remember at one fundraiser night for my brother hearing one of his friends give a testimony. And thinking, man, that guy has something that I don’t have. I kinda wish I had that. But I pushed that idea out pretty quickly. I did NOT want to change who I was, I was comfortable enough to cling to that, there was no way I was becoming one of those Christian people. I had a stereotype in my mind that I wasn’t about to fill and I was too scared of what God would want from me if I let him any closer than the outskirts of my life.

So God shook up that comfort a little bit. A couple months later I was off to University, living in the city, far far away from all my friends and that “cool” status I worked so hard for and whatever else made up my security blanket. My brother kept bringing me to all these CCO events, where I was meeting devout Catholic people who didn’t know about any of the things I had done, and wanted to really know ME, the real me. Looking back now I realize why they all freaked me out so much. It was because without my friends, my reputation, who was I really? What did I have left? Nothing, I had no idea who I was, and that was a really scary feeling. One event my brother insisted I come to was the “CCO Fall Retreat” that was going on during one of the first weekends of University starting. I remember having so much fear about not fitting it there, but getting there and being totally blown away by the people. There were all my age and they were so excited about their faith and they seemed so happy, just like that guy I’d heard share his testimony a few months before. I wanted it so badly. But, fear rushed the idea from my head again, saying “these people are perfect, Mary. Remember all that stuff you’ve done in the past few years? Yeah you don’t fit in with them.”

The retreat hosted Adoration that night, which is a night of music and sitting in front of the Eucharist and just praying. I remember sitting there with a million thoughts racing through my head. I kept thinking, “How can I change? How can I become like these people? I cant, its impossible, but other people said they changed, it must not be that bad, no it will be horrible, cant do it” I felt something in me telling me to go to confession, but I thought, “I don’t feel really feel sorry for what I’ve done over the past few years, so how could I? But that voice in my head kept persisting so eventually I went. It started like every other confession I had, I began with those small wishy-washy sins, but before long I was sobbing, telling him everything. The horrible things I let consume me in order to maintain my rep as the “popular girl”. How I didn’t even feel real remorse for the things I did. When I finally stopped the priest gently told me the story of the prodigal son, which I had heard a dozen times before but never actually understood until that moment. For the first time, I could relate to that son. And even though I could not wrap my head around why God would possibly be waiting for me with such excitement, it was something that struck my heart and stayed.
            I left Fall Retreat very confused about what it really meant to live for God, and very, very scared. But I knew for sure I didn’t want to keep going on the path I was on, so I decided to let him take over. I didn’t really know how people went about these things. So while sitting on my dorm room floor I dug out my bible from a box, flipped to the back page, and scrawled “God, I promise to live for you” on it. I thought to myself, “Well, this is it. He’s going to ruin everything. Turn me into a hermit or a nun.” As if He was out to destroy my happiness and I had no choice in the matter.
            But over time, weird things started to happen. I started seeing how there were good people God brought into my life that really did care about me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but God wasn’t snatching something wonderful from me. He was patiently leading me to a place of light, where I could see the truth about the life I’d been living, and genuinely wanted something different. Something better.
             Since then I’ve been learning more about God. I took Discovery and was shocked to hear that he was actually present in my life like any other person, and wanted me to talk to Him regularly, so I started praying. For about 5 minutes twice a week at first and it felt like the largest most inconvenient commitment I’d ever made, but from there it grew and grew and so did I. I learned Christians aren’t perfect people. That we all have our sins and our struggles, and that all our good acts and holiness are still not enough to reach God without Jesus as our bridge.

But overall, I can honestly say I’m not the same girl I was two years ago. I am happier, more confident, more at peace, but I don’t feel lost, or empty, or angry anymore. I feel free. I know God loves me. So much that he sent His son to die for me. I know I’m forgiven. His love for me, though it seems crazy that the Creator of the World would love me, makes me want to always try to be a better daughter to Him and grow closer to Him.