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