Iced drinks and silent monks

The Bazaar and Singathon is one of those days that unites everyone within the parish.  Although it rained for a portion of the day, it did not drown any of the enthusiasm that lasted throughout the day.  We worked along with other members of the Youth and Young Adult Ministry to serve iced drinks and waffles to hundreds of our parishioners and guests.  Also, we kept youth entertained in our video game corner.

In addition, we performed our rendition of "Silent Monks 'Singing' Hallelujah Chorus", which we have been practicing during our past few Rosary nights.

Being sent off

We attended the Archdiocesan World Youth Day Send Off event tonight, and joined hundreds of other pilgrims who will be travelling from Vancouver at St. Patrick's Parish.  Through icebreaker activities, we got to know some other people who will be on the same journey as we are on.  It was great to hear Fr. Rosica and his production staff talk about their experiences with World Youth Day.

It is hard to believe that we will be journeying to Poland in less than two months!  Time is really flying by.

At the end of the night, we returned to SFX to help setup the Youth Loft and Café for the parish bazaar tomorrow.  We also practiced our Singathon performance one final time before our "big day".  We're definitely looking forward for a long but exciting day tomorrow.  See you in the JP2 Room (2nd floor of the Gym)!

We're on retreat

This weekend we had the opportunity to go on retreat together and bond further as a pilgrim group.

We had an opportunity to learn more about mercy, the theme of the upcoming World Youth Day, in different practical ways.  In the afternoon we drove out to Precious Blood Parish for reconciliation and prayer time.  Later in the evening we had fun playing board games and karaoke.  On Sunday after Mass on the way back to Vancouver, we stopped by the quaint little village of Fort Langley.

Thank you to Henry and his parents for hosting us for the weekend, and cooking such delicious food for us!

Joy all around

First of all, we'd like to extend our thanks to all our supporters who came out to our fundraising dinner tonight.  In addition we'd like to thank all the kitchen staff, additional servers, performers and everyone else who helped to make this night a success.

Tonight was an opportunity to get to know you, our supporters, and for you to get to know us.  We had a pleasure serving everyone including our family, friends and all our supporters.

We will be bringing the prayer intentions that you have written in the envelopes to Poland with us and will be keeping you in our prayers throughout our preparation and journey to Kraków.  We hope that you will be praying for us through this time as well.

We also had a special guest at the dinner, Pope Francis!  Well actually just a cardboard cutout of him.

But we hope to see the Pope in person when we are at World Youth Day in Kraków, Poland.

A taste of Polish culture and preparations update

The World Youth Day coming up next year will be held in Kraków, Poland.  In order to experience some of the culture we would soon be immersed in, a few of us went out this afternoon to the Polish Cultural Festival in North Vancouver.  We had a taste of delicious perogies and sausages which are some of the common foods in Polish cuisine.  We also watched a number of dances and acts on the stage.  We are looking forward to journeying to Poland next year, and we hope to learn more about the history, language and other aspects of the culture before we arrive.

After the festival, we had our pilgrim meeting in order to talk about more of the logistics of our journey to Poland.  World Youth Day is less than one year away, so we are working to get everything organized soon.  For spiritual preparation, we are praying the Rosary together, along with others in the Young Adult Ministry, every month.  In addition, we are also having monthly faith formation sessions with other leaders of Youth Ministry, where we have been watching the Symbolon series.

In other news, we are working hard towards for our fundraising dinner at the end of the month.  We are all excited as the event nears.  We thank all our supporters who have already purchased tickets, and for everyone preparing behind the scenes to help us with this event.

As you can see, preparations in different aspects are underway, and we hope to be in Kraków, Poland in less than a year!