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