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
Going to miss you three lots and lots. Hope to see you all again some time :)
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