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.

First Youth Group and Adoration!

Hi Everyone!

Marc-André here! Hope you’ve been following and enjoying our blog posts to see what God has been doing here in Espanola!

I’m here to fill you in with the rest of our week. As Angèle explained in the last post, we had our first faith study of our second round this past Tuesday, July 2. Last Thursday, July 4, we had our first youth group evening! The theme of the night was God’s Overflowing Love. We had about eight youth come out to the first night. We played games, sang some songs, ate some food, and talked about God’s love. I gave a talk on how God’s love is a personal love and that He will never stop loving us, but we can choose whether or not we love him back.

To demonstrate God’s overflowing love in a concrete way, we had a paint war! Yes, at the sound of the bear-horn to signal the start of battle, we began drenching each other in shades of blue, yellow, red, and green. If my memory is correct, the blue team was the winner, and they were awarded only the finest plastic trophy Dollarama could provide. It was epic!

What could possibly top such a colourful competition, you may wonder? No one else but the true presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist! We had an adoration night last Saturday, and about twenty people came out. We left booklets in the pews of the church called “The Ultimate Relationship.” These booklets explain how we are called to a personal relationship with Christ. We hoped that these books may give those who came an opportunity to start a relationship with Christ while in his presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

Afterwards, we had refreshments down in the hall, and we spoke with people to see how their night was. One girl in Grade 7, after reading The Ultimate Relationship booklet, shared that she had made a big decision during adoration. “I’ve decided that I want Christ to be the centre of my life!” she said. “I think we should give these books to everyone at church!” she added. Praise God! What a decision to make for one who hasn’t even reached high school yet!

Well, that caps off last week. Thank you so much for reading, and please comment on our posts!

God bless!

Marc-André

Half Way!

HALF WAY POINT!

I can’t believe we’re here already, how did the first half of mission fly by!?  Now I know I’m a week late with my post, but it has been a pretty busy couple of weeks, so forgive me!

After the School of Evangelization, we challenged each participant to lead the Discovery faith study.  The timing was perfect for this since we had just finished our first round.  The idea is that participants become leaders, and then in turn train their participants to become leaders.  This leads to spiritual multiplication, and the hope is to reach the entire world with the Gospel message.

We had ten people come out to the training session to learn how to lead Discovery!  We were all very excited!  Of those ten, we have three leading studies this round, and one person co-leading with Mary, which is awesome!  The others are intending on leading studies at a later date.

At the training night, one woman who attended the retreat asked me if I could help her with her testimony. As I read what she had written, it was clear to me that her life had changed dramatically and that she now knows Christ.  She described how her life used to be full of worries and uncertainties, but that now she knows that she doesn't have to worry because Jesus loves her and has died to pay the price for her sins and risen to give her eternal life.  It was so clear to me that she has a personal relationship with Jesus, but it wasn't clear how this relationship began.  I asked her when she realized all of this and when her life changed. To my surprise, she answered "I guess after the Discovery study and School of Evangelization Retreat".   Wow, praise God. This woman's life is changed.  

So we had lesson one of Discovery last week, and it was really wonderful.  Instead of having huge groups, we had six smaller groups.  The really amazing thing about this new group of participants is that it is filled with people who aren't always at mass.  We asked participants from the first round to invite their friends to take the study, and we now have about 30 participants!

Since then we've had many different events, but Marc will fill you in on all of that!

God Bless you all!!!

Angele

The School of Evangelization from Joe Murphy's Perspective

My name is Joe Murphy and I had the pleasure to visit Espanola the weekend of June 21-24 to participate in this wonderful mission. I attend the University of Ottawa with Angele, Marc-Andre, and Mary-Claire (where I met all three of them).

I traveled to visit them with three CCO Impact alumni (Zak Brownrigg, Jeremy Eckert, and Daniel Rodrigues) and Pat Hoffman, a CCO missionary (who happens to be Mary's brother). Our van made the long journey from Ottawa to Espanola to assist with the retreat by providing music ministry and helping set up.

Having never gone on a summer mission like Impact, I had no idea what to expect when coming to Espanola. Boy, was I sure surprised.

Meeting all of the parishioners of St. Jude's showed me the great rapport that the Revive team has with the parish community, which has been exemplified by their successful faith studies and projects completed thus far. We got to help out at both Sunday masses, encouraging people to participate in faith studies (we were even introduced to the parish at the one mass!).

The retreat itself was unbelievable. Michael Dopp, who gave the retreat, was an amazing speaker whose passion for Christ was truly inspiring to experience. His approach to the New Evangelization gave the participants an understanding of its significance to the Catholic Church but also provided everyone with a toolbox of methods to share their faith with others. The anecdotes he provided were incredible, and the words he chose to describe certain concepts were thought-provoking. I walked away from that retreat renewed in my commitment to Christ, and the challenge was presented to the parishioner attendees to continue working in their parish after the weekend was over.

Since I have absolutely no musical aptitude, I was more than happy to change the slides so everyone could sing along with the songs. I was so moved by the wonderful performances given by Jeremy, Zak, Marc-Andre, Mary, and Angele during the praise and worship parts of the weekend. Even when no one was around, the group would be doing jam sessions covering everything from Church songs to 1980's pop songs.

We were also treated to five star level accommodations during our visit. The Sweeney family opened the doors of their home to us with open arms and their neighbours (whom none of us had ever met) let us stay in their trailer AND use their showers. I would like to classify this as Northern hospitality, which is much better than any Southern hospitality you may find elsewhere. Our group was truly blessed to have this opportunity to come and visit.

On a final note, all five of us walked away from this weekend wishing we could stay and remain part of the mission. Michael affectionately referred to us as "the red shirts" all weekend, and many parishioners were delighted to see the Revive team more than double in size for the weekend. Everyone we interacted with were so delighted to have us there, but we were the lucky ones. Even if it was just for the weekend, we got to be part of something special. I got to see their "Command Center" where they had developed all of their plans, I got to pray, eat, and hang out with these talented young missionaries.

 As Pat Hoffman noted during the weekend "What you guys are doing here in Espanola is the whole point of what CCO is all about". These young people have taken what they have learned and applied it to the real world. Revive Espanola is a great mission, and everyone from our group was more than thrilled that we got to experience this amazing opportunity.

And there's still more to come! I look forward to hearing more about will be happening in the coming weeks in that fine little paper town...

God bless,

Joe Murphy

The School of Evangelization from Zak Brownrigg's Perspective

What a great weekend in Espanola! This past weekend was the best weekend of the summer so far! It was also the first weekend of the summer but you get my point.

I got a chance to meet so many wonderful people! It was great getting the chance to witness so many people interested in the New Evangelization. Think about it. If we all just give a little bit of our time and effort to evangelizing, soon the whole world will hear the basic gospel message proclaimed!

So many people contributed in different ways. Some contributed by their hospitality. Others contributed by their music, others by their welcoming and friendly attitude, others by their organizing, and others by preaching the gospel!

I can’t think of a more rewarding project to give my time to. We were blessed to have Michael Dopp as our speaker. Like I told him at the end, it is rare that I can listen to someone talk so much in such a small amount of time and not go crazy! Well, not only am I not crazy (or am I?) but I am super motivated to evangelize!

One of Michael Dopp’s themes is that our earthly life is short. No one is going to care in two hundred years who won the Stanley Cup this year, who has the best job or who Justin Bieber’s next girlfriend will be (I would if I were still alive). So instead of being so focused on worldly things, why not be focused on God?  Why not spend our life preparing for eternity and building up God’s kingdom instead of things that won’t really matter in the end? We should put our focus, especially in our parish life, on evangelization. Evangelizing is at the heart of the Church’s identity and so we should be focused on that, in our personal lives and in our parish activities. That’s what Michael Dopp reminded me of this weekend. What a message!

What always blows me away is how fulfilled I feel when I evangelize. Sure, I get nervous and uncomfortable. But the more you do something, the easier it gets! God has a plan for each of us and that includes sharing the gospel!

There’s so much more I could say....it was so great seeing my good friends, Angele, Marc-Andre and Mary-Claire again. What a job they are doing! It was great getting to know Angele's parent's, Vince and Nicole too! Props for building such a great house and for filling it with such loving people! And I’m happy to report that Espanola looks so much greater than it smells. Indeed, what a fine paper town it is.

Godspeed,

Zak

Retreat Times

Hey everyone :)

              So I have the honour of writing this week's blog. It's luck of the draw actually, but we'll call it honour. Sooo much has happened this week. Guess I should begin with the retreat..
We had our 4 day School of Evangelization Retreat with Michael Dopp this weekend. It was way more awesome than I even remembered from last time I did it. Michael Dopp is a truly gifted speaker and his witty cracks and hilarious analogies leave you looking at your watch wondering where the hours went - seriously.              
Some highlights for me.. He spoke about how important it is that WE have a relationship with God before we try to go our evangelizing other people. We can't give what we don't have and we need to understand what it is that we're calling other people to take a part of in at least some way before inviting them. He also talked about how us Catholics need to stop catechizing people who aren't evangelized, like how we tend to focus on teaching people about the sacraments or the gifts of the Holy Spirit in things like Confirmation and RCIA programs, which are good things, but aren't of much use to someone who isn't really interested in the faith because they don't know God - so we need to focus on that first. And how all of our ministries exist in order to evangelize - so even though its easy to get caught up in what colour to paint the Church or what time to have the rosary, EVERY SINGLE MINISTRY's focus should be to PROCLAIM CHRIST. That is why they exist. The CWL, the Knights of Columbus, the Baptismal Prep and Youth Committees, the choir...everyone. That was pretty cool to remember, because I know its easy to get sidetracked with that stuff. Because as Michael put it, yes those other things need to get done too. But we can't lose our focus of why we're doing all of this. Michael also taught our group how to write their own testimony, how to share the basic gospel message clearly, essentially that we were created by God purely out of love, and so that we would have a relationship with Him, that relationship is broken (once by  Adam and Eve, and continually harmed by us) by our sin, so God sent His only son, Jesus, to die to repair this brokenness by taking on the punishment for our sin, and we are all called to respond to this act of love, to say yes to this offer at a mended relationship with God and live it out in our lives.
       And our lovely friends from Ottawa (Carole, Zak, Dan, Joe, Jeremy, and my brother Pat) were here to help out with the retreat, which was really cool. They're great people. I laughed a lot this weekend guys so thank you for that :). And thanks for all your help, your beautiful witnesses, and general awesomeness.
   I also had my last day of volunteering at Sacred Heart today, which was actually pretty sad. I guess I grew kind of attached to some of the kids there, and the teachers too. I'm going to miss them. Hoping to see some of the older ones around when our Youth Group starts next week though :)
Anyway, that's our life lately. Our friend Zak who was here for the retreat wrote something to share too so I'll let him do some talking. Au revoir and please pray for us.!
                            -Mary

Disco Lesson 5, High School Outreach, and Father's Day!

Hello everyone!!

Marc-André here again posting about past week on the Revive mission, and boy, was it ever an eventful one!

Last Thursday, we had Lesson 5 of the Discovery faith study where we look at how we must personally choose to have a relationship with Jesus and that we are all called to participate in this intimate relationship. We start the lesson with a question, perhaps the greatest question you will ever face. If you were to die today, and God asked you, “Why should I let you into heaven?” what would you say?

When I first heard this question, I just listed a bunch of good and virtuous deeds I had done; the fact that I had never committed any really bad sins; and that I always strived to be a good person. I hoped that that would be enough.

The truth is, no matter how righteous a person is, this cannot overcome the infinite barrier between us and God because of our sin. In order to overcome an infinite barrier, we must place our faith into an infinite being. That being is Jesus. He is the reason why we can return to our Father in heaven. And Jesus does not care about what we’ve done or who we are. As long as we are repentant of our sins and humble enough to place him at the centre of our lives, we experience God’s grace in a way like no other.

Lesson 5 is what led me to have a relationship with Jesus and to know God personally. I am sure it has led many of our participants’ lives to encounter Jesus in a personal way, perhaps for the first time!

We also challenged our participants to lead their own faith study group when we begin our second round in July. As you read this, the Holy Spirit is entering the hearts of our participants and making them become leaders in the New Evangelization and the renewal of the world. What a grace!

Also, this past Friday, we had a presentation at the Espanola High School for our youth group starting in July. We weren’t very sure what to expect at this school; it is the only non-Catholic school where we were planning on presenting at, but it is also the biggest school in Espanola. We served free pizza to attract students, and they came, about 15 – 20 of them. We presented a small sample of what youth group would look like. We played a game to start off, and then we asked them a number of faith questions, such as, Who is God to you? Do you think religion is relevant? If you could know God personally, would you want to?

After these questions, we led a couple of praise and worship songs. It was all our first time leading worship, so we were definitely a bit nervous, but it all went really well! Angèle led us wonderfully, and hey, even some of the kids sang along!

After the music, Angèle shared her testimony of how she came to know Christ. This was her old high school, so her story was pretty relatable to the students there. She spoke of how, on the outside, her life may have seemed perfect, but on the inside, she always felt empty during high school and her first year of university. It was only when she let Jesus into her life at a retreat that she felt truly filled, inside and out.

Some, if not all, of the students were definitely struck by her testimony; one of the students talked to me about how he could relate to her story a bit. We ended up getting seven phone numbers of interested students for our youth group. Not bad, considering we have three more schools to go to, all of which are Catholic!

And finally, today at the mass, God graced us with some notable events! Before the French mass, Angèle went to ask one of her faith study participants to see if she would like to share her experience of the faith studies. At first, she said no, but about five minutes later, she approached us and said that the Holy Spirit was telling her that she should go speak after mass. And so she did, and it was awesome! She shared about how the faith study allowed her to deepen her own personal faith and encouraged others to join the next round! We need more people like her at the parish for when we leave in August!

Also, today being Father’s Day, we had a soup luncheon after the 11 am mass for all of the fathers at the parish and also as a fundraiser for our mission. We had about 80 people come have soup and raised about $500! This money is going to help us with our youth programs for the months of July and August. It was also a wonderful event for parishioners to socialize and build community.

Well, that’s it for this past week, but stay tuned! This coming week, we have three school presentations, the last lesson of Discovery, and Michael Dopp is hosting a “School of Evangelization” retreat this coming weekend! God’s done so many wonderful works on this mission so far, and much more has yet to come! Thank you, God! And thank YOU all for reading this blog!

God bless,

Marc-André

Revive, week 5!

Hey there!

Trying to recount the past week has made me  quickly realize how jam packed this summer has been so far, which seems to cause the days to run into each other.  “What do you do with your days?” you might ask.  Well let me tell you! 

Revive is such a peculiar mission.  Maybe that’s only my perspective, but I’ve never done anything like this before!  Last summer the path was laid out for us and it was clear what kind of mission work we had to do for Impact, but this summer is quite different.  It’s like blazing a trail in uncharted territory, using skills that you only recently acquired.  Sort of makes me picture an inexperienced hiker trekking through the jungle.   But actually, an inexperienced hiker would, I’m sure, have a much more difficult time then us because we have a secret weapon: the Holy Spirit!  Revive has been peculiar, and different because each day we wake up and pray for guidance.  When you’re experienced it’s sometimes easy to know in which direction to go, but when you’re in this kind of situation, you’re walking blindly by faith, and it’s sort of awesome.  That’s probably the biggest thing I've learned so far this summer, is that if you rely completely on God for guidance and direction, He will not let you down.

So this past week’s highlights…drumroll!!!!  Lesson 4 of Discovery!  It went so well.  I ended up having a “smaller” study, with only 12 women this week, so there was lots of sharing, and I was really feeling a sense of community.  In the lesson we looked at an analogy from St. Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue.  St Catherine describes that God intended for a perfect relationship between Himself and humanity, this would look like a bridge.

But then, we sinned.  This sin washed away the bridge, and created a huge divide between humanity and God, between you and God.  This divide is so huge, and raging that no matter what you do, YOU CAN NEVER GET TO GOD IN HEAVEN.  Sin causes SEPARATION and DEATH.  I know when I think of being separated from God for ever I feel pretty miserable, but we know this isn’t the end of the story!

God is loving, so loving that when He saw what we had done, He knew He had to fix it.  So He became man to take on our sin.  As a man, Jesus took on your sin, and suffered.  He paid the price.  By dying on the cross, Jesus bridged the gap between us and God, so that we might have eternal life and come to the same joy as the angels (paraphrased from St. Catherine of Siena).  AWESOME, right?!  Without Jesus, we’re damned, but with Him, we are offered eternal joy and fulfilment with God.

(don't mind my pitiful drawings)

A few days after this awesome lesson, we got to celebrate Marc-André’s 20 birthday!  If you don’t know Marc, I’ll fill you in on some insider info.  He is really wonderful, and we’re very blessed to have him on the Revive: Espanola team this summer!  It’s hard to believe he’s only 20, Mary and I joke that he’s actually a 40 year old man stuck in a 20 year old’s body…haha.  So for his birthday we had a pizza party at a friend’s place (thanks Larissa!) before going to a concert!  Brian Houston, a Christian artist, was playing at the Lighthouse in Espanola.  He was really great!  We then went to Marshall’s (the local bar and grill) for some pool and fellowship!  It was all in all a really great day!  Thank God for Marc-André’s existence!

Today we went to mass and Fr. Ed had a really amazing homily!  He spoke about how God can raise us from the dead not only physically, but spiritually as well, AKA Revive!!!  We also had many people register for our retreat, which is June 20-23^rd!  We’re all getting very excited for the retreat and can’t wait to see how many people the Lord will call to come! More info about the ministry at www.missionoftheredeemer.com

I think that’s pretty much it for this week, thanks for reading!

God Bless!

Angele

Hey guys!

Mary here...another week has flown by in Espanola. One of us has probably said this already but it feels like we’ve been here for so much longer than we have. Things always seem to go that way though, so I should probably stop stating the obvious and get to telling you what exactly God’s been filling that quickly passing time with...

I had my first day volunteering in one of the elementary schools here last week (we started volunteering when we’re not working to get to know the kids here) and I must say, it was a bit intimidating. I guess it’s been awhile since I’ve been around kids – and that many, that I felt slightly out of my comfort zone. But that’s okay, because the more this mission goes on the more I am realizing that it doesn’t matter if I feel inadequate or ill suited for what I’m doing, God can use it. In the words of my spiritual director “Just do what He asks of you the best that you can. The results are His business.” Besides, the kids I’ve been working with are hilarious and fun to be around. Even if I spend the day around the kindergartners – who are obviously too young to know or really care about our mission or why I’m in their school, it’s good just being there and getting to be with them.

            Our adult retreat is coming up in just over 2 weeks and we’re pretty pumped. Michael Dopp is coming to do the talks. I went to this same retreat in January when I was at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barry’s Bay and it was really cool. Michael goes over a lot of stuff, about our relationship with God and evangelization and just relating to other people in general. I always remember especially one thing he talked about, how everyone draws close to God by either Beauty, Goodness, or Truth, often a combination of the three but usually one moreso than the other two; and how quoting the truth of the gospel or Catechism to someone who has been hurt by the lack of goodness in someone in the Church will often not be heard, and how describing God’s beautiful creation or divinely inspired art to an atheist mulling over discrepancies in the Bible have little weight. It just really made me think about how I talk to the people around me, whether Catholic, Christian, or neither. What I expect them to understand and how I can be aggravated when they don’t understand me or me them. And how even within a small group of practising Catholics, we each relate to God in a different way, on different levels, from different places.

I think each of us has a bit of worry in the back of our minds about the upcoming retreat. There’s always that fear of failure. The worry that no one will come. Those moments where you don't trust God so much and start thinking it's about how good YOU can do, what results YOU can pull off. No wonder things can get a little daunting and bleak at those points.. This is us we're talking about..
;)
But then we remember that it’s God doing this, not us. So there is nothing to fear.
:)

Revive, week 3!

Hi again everyone!

This is Marc-André, and I have the privilege this week to give you a rundown of how the mission has been going so far!

Mary and I started to volunteer at the local Catholic elementary school. We’re getting to know the young people that will be a part of our youth group this coming July! It is a great experience getting to know the wonderful children and future leaders of Espanola!

We had another awesome faith study night this past Thursday. We had about 35 people come out again for Lesson 2 of Discovery, and like the first lesson, our participants enjoyed their small group sessions and all learned about how we can deepen our relationship with Jesus.

In Lesson 1, we looked at how God’s love is personal, NOT general, and how we are created to be in a relationship with Him. Lesson 2 looks at ourselves and how we respond to God’s love. The lesson can be broken up into three sections: 1. Love is offered; 2. Love is proven; 3. Love is merciful.

In the first section, we look at the creation story with Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We pose the question, “We know that our God is a loving god, so why would He put the Tree of Knowledge in the garden and specifically tell Adam and Even NOT to eat from it? How is this an act of God’s love?” Well, what do you think the answer is?

God offers us His love so that we can accept it. Adam and Eve needed to have the choice to disobey God, i.e. the choice not to love God, in order for them to have the choice to obey God, i.e. to love God. Imagine if God had not put the Tree in the garden. Adam and Eve would not be able to disobey God; it would be impossible for them. They would be forced to love God, which is not love at all. Love is only love if it is freely chosen. We need free will if we want to love, and God offers us free will by giving us the option of sin, of disobeying God, of not loving God and neighbour.

But humanity did choose to disobey God, which caused us to be separated from God. This leads to our second section, “Love is Proven.” To mend this gap between humanity and God, God had to send His only Son, Jesus, to die for us, to prove to us that despite our disobedience, God still desires to be with us. Jesus did not die only for those who loved him; He died mainly for those who hated, despised, and loathed Him. Think about it. You might have a mother, a father, a daughter, a son, or a friend that you love so much, you would be willing to die for them. But what about an ungodly person? What about your worst enemy or a murderer? Would you be willing to die for them? I don’t think I would! But as it says in Romans 5:6-8:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

What an immense love! Christ has made a way for us to turn back to our Heavenly Father! Which leads to the last section: Love is Merciful. God gave us the parable of the Prodigal Son to exemplify what happens when we turn back to Him. In the parable, the younger of two sons takes his inheritance from his father and leaves home for a life of indulgence. He squanders all he has on pleasures of the world and is ultimately left with nothing. He looks at himself and realizes he has nothing. He decides to return home: Maybe my father will take me back as one of his servants, he thinks to himself. At least they have food to eat. But on his way back, while the son was still a long way off, the father runs to his lost son and hugs him and kisses him. He warmly welcomes his son back into his family. “My son was dead,” the father says, “and is alive again!” The father forgives his son of his great offense and floods him with love. What great mercy!

This isn’t just a nice story. This is reality! This is how merciful our Father is to us whenever we turn ourselves away from Him. The moment we decide to turn back, He instantly fills us with his love, mercy, and grace.

Wow, that ended up being longer than I thought! That’s a tidbit of what we learn in Discovery and how we can draw closer to God. If you’re interested to hear more about this faith study, come join us at St. Jude in Espanola on Thursdays at 7:30 pm! If you are nowhere near this town, send me a message, because I know for a fact there is a Discovery study going on near you! It’s being led all across Canada! Check out this website and see for yourself: leadingdiscovery.ca

Contact us at revive.espanola@gmail.com or call us at 705-869-6340 for more info!

Thanks so much everyone! Have a blessed day,

Marc-André

Heeeeeeeeeeello everyone!
(Angele here)
Let me just start by saying how excited I am to have the honor of writing this week's blog since it has been such an amazing week!
Monday evening we went through our super long list of contacts (60) to personally invite everyone to attend our first lesson of Discovery, which  started this past Thursday.  We only got about 11 people who confirmed that they would be attending, and a lot of maybe's so we weren't really sure how many people to expect.  When Thursday evening rolled around we set up three tables with eight chairs at each of them, thinking that there would be enough room.  We were wrong.  God is amazing that way, he outdoes our expectations!  We ended up having 33 faith study participants.

The studies were huge since there are only thee of us.  Discovery is usually led in a small group setting, with no more than 5 participants.  My study had 14 women.  It was amazing!  You would think that it would be complete chaos, but surprisingly it wasn't.  Yes, it was loud, and somewhat difficult to hear everyone speak, but it worked.  It was very successful, and I really think that everyone enjoyed the study.  I guess when you're learning about God's love it's hard for the study to be anything other than a success!

Lesson 1 is one of my favorite lessons.  We look up bible passages that support how God's love is personal, proven, merciful and offered.  We hear all of the time that God loves us.  As a kid growing up, I know I always knew that God loved me, but I also knew that He loved everyone else too...He's God right?  Isn't that His job?  But Discovery goes deeper than that.  We know that God loves us, yes, but do we really know what that means for our lives? God's love is much deeper and more personal then of often think it is.  We learned in Discovery that God has a plan for our lives! "for surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm.  Plans to give you a future with hope" - Jeremiah 29:11.  We also learned that God's love is unconditional and that nothing can separate us from this amazing love!

Think about it.  Right now, at this very moment, where is God?  I bet you looked up.  He's up in the sky, right?  Well, no!  He's right beside you!  He wants to be your best friend, because He loves you!  Say hi to him right now, I bet He'd like that :)

Another exciting thing that happened this week was a NET (National Evangelization Team) retreat at St. Jude parish.  Some of the kids from Sacred Heart school in Espanola and St. Mary's school in Massey attended this retreat, and Marc-André got to sit in and hang out with the kids!  This is such a great opportunity for the kids to learn about God and to strengthen their faith!  Hopefully it was like a building block for our youth group which is starting in July!

Saturday was a very crazy day.  I woke up at 6:30 am to the smell of pancakes and eggs cooking and thought why in the world are Marc-André and Mary cooking so early, then I remembered it was my birthday!  Those two are such absolutely wonderful people.   So we had some breakfast and then it was off to work for me, and off to the BBQ for Mary, Marc, and my parents.

We put on a BBQ fundraiser at Giant Tiger to get the word out about Revive: Espanola and to raise some funds.  Mr. Lalande, the owner of Giant Tiger, is such a generous man.  Not only did he donate all of the food, supplies, and space, but he spent all afternoon barbecuing!  Marcia Campbell was also incredibly helpful in waving down cars off of the highway with her BBQ sign!  She was so awesome at it!  And my mom and dad also helped us out by cooking, taking money, handing out pop, etc.  It was a huge success and I really feel like if Espanola didn't know about Revive before, they sure do now!

Mr. Lalande, Vince Sweeney, Nicole Sweeney, Marc-André Veselovsky, Angèle Sweeney and Marcia Campbell

(missing Mary-she was at work)

Sunday was also a really great day.  Marc-André sang the Psalm at the early mass, and needless to say people were blown away.  Fr. Ed even commented saying "after school, Marc André should change his mind.  Don't go to Hollywood, come back to Espanola".  It was awesome.  We also started announcing our adult retreat which is will be June 20-23 at Anishinabe Spiritual Centre.  We're very excited because Michael Dopp from Mission of the Redeemer Ministries will be coming to Espanola!  Please call 705-869-6340 if you're interested in attending this retreat!

Sunday night we also went out to a friend's camp/cottage, so it was really nice to be able to relax and introduce Mary and Marc to some friends!

Overall it was a really amazing week.  I also feel extremely blessed for all of the amazing people in my life.  For my parents for all of their help, for Marcia Campbell for being like the pseudo 4th member of our team, and for Mr. Lalande for his incredible generosity!  Mary and Marc are also amazing.  I couldn't imagine a better team to live, work and do mission with!

Until next time!

God Bless

Angele Sweeney

So!

We just finished our first official week of mission. It’s crazy to think we’ve only been here just over a week. It feels like so much has happened since we got here last Friday. We did 60-second surveys in our parish, St. Jude, today. The surveys ask the parishioners a few questions about faith, such as “Do you believe Jesus is God?” and have the opportunity for them to leave their contact information so we can call them and invite them to our upcoming events – the first of which being Catholic Christian Outreach’s Discovery faith study, which we will be starting up this Thursday. We got over 60 contacts from our parish in total! We hope a lot of them will come out on Thursday!

We’re pretty excited for Discovery starting this Thursday...mostly because it’s an amazing study! It presents the four basic gospel points in a clear and simple way: firstly that we were created for a relationship with God and that this relationship is broken by our sin, creating an infinite divide between us and Him; in order to remedy this, God sent His son, Jesus, to die for us, bridging this infinite gap as an infinite being, yet a human; lastly, we are all invited to respond to this remedy, by giving the Lord our yes in our own life, freeing us from the burdens of sin and granting for us eternal life. Even though it’s so simple, it’s completely mind blowing. I think especially as Catholics, we tend to think of God as distant – not as a person who knows and loves us. It definitely changed my life when I took it. I never really knew that God loved me personally until then. And even though I still didn’t feel like He did for a long time after taking Discovery, I chose to believe it then, and eventually, that feeling did come, but more importantly, I believe it more strongly now than ever before.

So, we have really high hopes for this faith study. The three of us have seen the incredible things it can do in people’s lives, and God will do really great things with it here at St. Jude J

-Mary-Claire Hoffman

Hello everyone!! Marc-André Veselovsky here for our first blog entry for our summer mission project, Revive: Espanola 2013! For those of you who don’t know, Revive is a summer-long mission happening at St. Jude parish in Espanola, Ontario. There are three students running this mission: Angèle Sweeney, Mary-Claire Hoffman, and myself (our bios will be up soon!). We will be leading the CCO Discovery Faith Study, running youth and adult retreats, and starting a youth group!

The mission began Friday, May 3, and boy, have we ever had a heck of a weekend! Friday afternoon, we had our job interviews to work at the garden centre at the local Your Independent Grocer. All three of us got hired! After that, we all settled in at Angèle’s family’s house, the place we will be staying for the whole mission. Her parents welcomed Mary and me with open arms to their beautiful log home. We are so blessed to have such wonderful hosts for the summer!

Saturday, we had a day retreat for the three of us at the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre, a five minute drive outside of Espanola. The retreat was to give us time to plan our first weekend at St. Jude as well as prepare our hearts to be open to the Holy Spirit throughout the mission. God filled our hearts and showed us His wisdom at the retreat.

Right after our retreat, we went to our first mass at St. Jude. Angèle made our announcement at the end of mass to introduce our mission to the parishioners! We asked them to leave their contact information with us so that we can let them know about our faith studies and other events. We did the same at the two masses on Sunday, and by the end of the weekend, we had received 40 parishioners’ contact information!! Praise God!!

After the eleven o’clock mass, the parish hosted a coffee social so that we could meet and chat with parishioners. So many of them were so happy to have this mission at their parish! The hall was vibrant with spiritual conversation; one lady told me how great things seemed to be falling into place everywhere for this mission! Our pastor is very supportive of the mission, and so is the Bishop of Sault Ste. Marie, Msgr. Jean-Louis Plouffe.

As if that wasn’t already enough, the 41 confirmation candidates for the parish were meeting Sunday evening to prepare for their confirmation, happening this coming Friday, May 10. The lady in charge invited us to come to the meeting to give a presentation on our own personal witness as to how our faith has made an Impact on our lives. We knew that many of them were getting confirmed because their parents were forcing them to. I shared my testimony with them, to show them that I too once thought church and faith were boring, unfulfilling, but because I stuck with my faith, I was able to make a personal commitment to Christ to keep my faith. Now, faith is far from boring and unfulfilling.

We then shared with the candidates the four-point basic gospel message: we are created for a relationship with God; sin separates from God; only through Christ can this separation be overcome; and it is up to us to choose Christ. We asked the candidates that if they wanted to make a commitment to Christ, similar to the commitment they are making Friday, to stand and recite this prayer:

Father, I believe that you know me and love me. I have not always chosen to love you, and have broken my relationship with you through my sins. Thank you for sending your Son Jesus who proved your love for me on the cross.

Lord Jesus, I open the door of my heart and I invite you to be at the centre of my life – to be my Saviour and my Lord. Direct me by your Holy Spirit and help me to live the Gospel with my whole life.

Many of the children said this prayer. Who knows how many graces will enter their hearts because of it! Please pray for these children and their confirmation happening this week.

Well, that was our first weekend! You will hear many more updates from all three of us as the mission moves along. Who knows what great things have yet to come for Espanola!

Please comment and let us know if you have any questions about the mission! I would be more than happy to answer them! Thank you for all of your support and prayers!

May God bless you and keep His Holy Spirit burning within you,

Marc-André