Great article about teenage girls

Check out this helpful brief article that one of the moms sent me:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/10/hagelin-i-learned-the-truth-but-not-at-seventeen/

Marianne

Camp

We would like to move towards more whole families coming. The idea/vision would be that in the long run, we are creating an environment that promotes community growth as a family, even inviting those who do not have kids to come and participate in the camp. We are working on getting the costs as low as possible to make doable for everyone. This will not change a lot of what is going to happen for the kids. They will still have games during the day, campfire and crazy games. The adults would be more present, and this may mean a smaller group.

We need: Families to consider coming as a whole, and see if this is something they can commit to this year. Feel free to talk to Marianne Skees, Hall Miller, Lee Yoritomo or Jeanette Barnes to get a feel for the vision of camp for the future. We also need to start planning for next year NOW.

Vigil Masses

Here is the plan that we came up with for the vigil masses for the rest of the school year:

April 11th - Easter mass - nothing needed

May 9th - Food: Cookout style - everyone bring side dish for 8
Entertainment: Outdoor games, bonfire w/ sing along & s'mores
If it rains - move games inside - make s'mores in ovens

June 13th - Food: Taco bar
Entertainment: Talent Show

We need:
Volunteers for May: Men for cooking, Grills, & set up people
Volunteers for June: Therese tentatively agreed for food, we need 1-2 more + 2 organizers for the talent show

Grade School Day Retreat

We would like to have a day retreat for the youth in grades 5-7 on June 13th, before the monthly liturgy. This would tentatively start around 11 or 12am and finish right before the Mass. Here is the tentative info:

Date: June 13th
Time: 12pm-4:45pm
Who: 5th-7th grades
Theme: Life in the Spirit
*we thought about including the 3rd & 4th graders for part of it, maybe lunch, so that they have something to look forward to

Here’s a sample schedule:
12-Icebreaker
12:15 – Lunch
12:45 – Icebreaker/Game
1 – talk 1 – Love of the Father
1:15 – witness 1
1:20 – Game/stretch
1:35 – talk 2 – A Relationship with Jesus (Living in the Kingdom of God)
1:50 – witness 2
1:55 – Small groups (by grade & gender if possible)
2:30 – Game
2:45 – talk 3 – Living Life with the Holy Spirit
3 – witness 3
3:05 – Small Groups
3:20 – Praying over/ Worship
4:20 – Talk 4 – Where to go from here? Growing in a New Life
4:35 – Witness 4
4:40 – Close & Prepare for Mass


We need: Parents who are willing to help for the day with food, small groups, talks, and praying over. It was recommended that one parent from each family would commit to helping if possible. We would also try to get a lot of the college students who are home to come and help.

Prayer Meetings

We would like to start a rotation of 4 different things happening each month at prayer meeting these include: Kids 4 Christ, Adoration w/ Janice Clark's ministry, youth prayer meeting, & the kids staying in prayer meeting. Our proposal was to do a trial run in July. Here's the proposed schedule, though we need to confirm with Janice to see if the dates work for her.

July 12 - stay in prayer meeting (end of weekend w/ Damien Stayne)
July 19 - Kids 4 Christ
July 26 - Adoration w/ Janice's ministry
August 2 - Youth Prayer Meeting

We need: Volunteers for each (preferable different people on each night)

Latest Discussions Overview

We met to talk about the following things this past week:

Prayer Meeting
Camp
A day retreat for 5th-7th grades
Vigil Mass Schedule

We came up with some ideas and would love to promote discussion and get the feedback we need from ALL who are involved in the life of the Community. We've created separate posts for each of these topics so that we can have a easy discussion about each of them. This would mean that each family should leave 4 comments total, one on each post. PLEASE comment and let us know what you think, and if you want to help. You'll see that with each discussion, we have space with what we need, please comment on each section either that you agree, or with thoughts or advice. Click on the links on the right of this page to reach the 4 different posts.

Thanks!
Marianne

What do I do now?

If you already have a google/blospot account:
1. Click on the links (Camp, Vigil Masses, Grade School..., Prayer Meetings)
2. Read the posts
3. Click on the "post a comment" link at the bottom of the post
4. Sign in if you need to and share your thoughts.
5. In the end it would be great if you could post on each of the 4 topics

If you do not have a google/blospot account:
1. At the bottom of this post, click on the "post a comment" link
2. Click on the link that says "Sign Up Here"
3. Follow their prompts to create an accont (write down the password)
4. Sign in and proceed back to the MOG blog
5. Follow instructions above for those who have an account

Why are we gathering as families to discuss the youth?

In October we started talking about how the life of Mother of God community could become more family friendly. Our first meeting included discussion about where we would like our young men and women to be when they become adults after having lived community life. The vision for the youth group at this point is that "these young men & women would grow to have a continually deepening knowledge of the faith that is prevalent throughout their interior life, marked by a fully Trinitarian spirituality, and lived out through the charisms of the Community’s life." We also talked about things like our prayer meetings, the monthly liturgy, youth groups etc. Because we are living community life, we would like to have the input of everyone who has children who are in the community, but also who participate in community life but may not be members. This is important because we are trying to develop a vision and a goal for the many years to come, especially for those youth who are already in grade school. Please take a few minutes to respond to the things that we've posted here on the blog and may post here in the future. Thanks so much, and God bless you and your family!!!!