St. Dominic Team… Finally!
Hello Friends and Family of Reach,
This is the St. Dominic team posting our first official blog… it’s about time! We can start from the beginning by introducing ourselves. The Dominic team consists of Joan Spring, from St. Cloud, Minnesota, Jordan Tracy from Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Tyson Chavez from Boulder, Colorado.
We have been keeping ourselves fairly busy this year so far. Our first retreat was in Portland, Oregon. It was a Catholic school retreat for 6th graders. We focused on prayer and personal relationship with Christ, and were able to finish off the retreat with Mass. The kids seemed to be receptive, and we really enjoyed them.
We did a youth night for the Lifeteen group at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Yakima. Once again, it was focused on prayer, and we had some praise and worship and a drama. We had a blast, even though we were there only a couple hours, but it was fun to hang out with the youth when it was finished.
Our third retreat was a weekend retreat for junior high youth in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. The retreat was up in the mountains at Shoshone Base Camp. It was a great place to truly enjoy the beauty of God’s creation. The retreatants were wonderful and very open to everything we did with them, from praise and worship to talks on Creation, the Fall, Jesus, and Choices… and especially open to an epic night game of capture the flag! It was pretty cold up there, but on Saturday it was sunny and nice enough outside to play a game of soccor and ultimate frisbee. Otherwise, we kept our warm clothes close to us! We truly enjoyed all the time that we shared with the youth, and it was a great first weekend retreat for us.
Since then we have had a retreat for youth in Naches, Washington after Mass for a few hours. We had about fifteen youth of various ages, the oldest being a junior in high school, and the youngest probably in second grade. We had fun playing with them, but we also discussed prayer with them. The coolest thing from that retreat was that while Joan was giving a talk, people started asking faith questions, both related and unrelated to the talk. It was neat because had some really good questions about their faith, and Joan, our theology major, was able to give them the answers they were looking for.
Our most recent retreat was in Wenatchee, Washington. The Benedict team was able to come with us to help out at this junior high retreat. We traveled up on a Friday evening and were able to relax and enjoy our wonderful host families. Then Saturday morning we started the retreat for the junior high youth. We had a really good time with them. We had talks, personal testimonies, a drama, praise and worship, and, of course, games. We also had opportunities for small groups with the youth. They had some really good questions and discussions. Some small groups talked about Mary’s Immaculate Conception, Creation vs. Evolution, and the Trinity. And then when given the opportunity for personal prayer time, many of the retreatants jumped at the opportunity. It was a great retreat, and although we had a little vehicle issue on the way home, we had a good time.
Besides retreats, we have also been keeping ourselves pretty busy with youth groups, but we will talk about that in our next blog… so watch our page, because we will be updating, and we will also be posting pictures very soon!
God bless you and have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!
The St. Dominic Team