YouthMinistry

Revival retreat

The Lord knows what we need even before we do. It’s up to us to follow His will and be abundantly blessed therein. So last weekend was a Revival Retreat, for the ‘youth’ in our deanery. To say I was a bit sceptical of the whole thing would be an understatement. I was to go and practice on Friday afternoon with the praise and worship team but I was just too bummed so I did not go, for which I ended up feeling a tad guilty so got up with the cocks crow on Saturday morning got there at 7:30 and lets just say my scepticism had not abated. I would have liked to practice songs beforehand but there just didn’t seem to be time and then we had a leader’s group prayer, which I found a smidgen long. Don’t I always? And the participants just …trickled in. Finally, it went underway with praise and worship and I was getting tYouthMinistryhis feeling of the Lord has brought you thus far for a reason so… be expectant.

The first session… A quarter of it went over my head coz arrogant fool that I am I was half the time correcting the speakers English and then that would lead me off into a major daydream and before you know it I have to drag my mind out of whatever land its currently in to the talk which was about waking my slumbering spirit. And I found it too long. But all in good time. So we split into groups, gender and age-based. As there are quite a number of females present I got roped into leading a group. I was thanking the Lord that I have somehow escaped leading the young ones (teeny boppers) and I have my own peers which is grand.

We begin discussing a topic to which I had only listened with half an ear. But the Lord works His miracles as always. It seems a quite number of the ladies in my group have never been to a retreat of any sort so they have no preconceived notions; like Di here who is expecting reverent coaching on how to get in touch with God (again). So we discuss the topic at hand of awakening our slumbering spiritual beings and talk as only girls together are wont to, about the relevance of our lives and we learn. Boy do we learn. It was such an eye opener and took me off my backbench and wanting to be “done” for and got me thinking on “doing for” the others. I wanted the ladies from my group to leave with extra knowledge on living Catholic lives on knowing the joys of being Catholic and on having fellowship that is second to none. And I wanted that for myself too but in this instance that was secondary. Was I ever grateful for having started teaching catechism lessons for then I actually had real catechism truths for some of the questions posed… whew!

As is wont to happen at most youth meetings relationships were talked about. Hey it’s a fact of life we love to talk about our relationships don’t we. We were taught to seek relationships in which we did not use others or allow others to use us, where love was the paramount love that was Free, Total, Fruitful and Faithful. Now I will happily say this is the love I have been seeking in any romantic liaisons I may have later and if a criterion was not met then sayonara. But I am sad to note this was not necessarily the same FTFF love I was seeking in my platonic and familial and friend relationships. Which I have charged myself to endeavour to change.


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