Days 170-174: Supe Visit Pt. 3!! (2/14-2/18/20)

There are some nights on NET when you wake up and ask yourself, “Where am i? Who am i?” It was one of those mornings waking up at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and heading off immediately to mass with the Brew City missionaries. Upon return, we took a Holy hour as our personal prayer time, which was super nice, and had Ministry practice. Our whole day today was planned around picking up the supervisors, Christina and Jaime, from the airport at 5pm! So, to fill up the time, we drove to the Schoenstatt Shrine in Madison, WI! What is a Schoenstatt you might ask? It’s essentially a Catholic movement created as a spiritual renewal whose foundation is based on a “Covenant of Love”. It was something a couple of my teammates were passionate about, and it was pretty fascinating, and another one of the many things i would only learn about on NET. From there, we picked up our supes from the MKE airport, and headed straight for host homes. The guys all stayed with Linda, who was super nice and chill, and loved playing Dutch Blitz with us, which is basically Nurtz but with colors and less numbers. Definitely a very fun night to say the least. . . Today was one of the few times that we had a group of quiet middle schoolers. This was today’s retreat at St. Louis in Caledonia, WI, but it certainly wasn’t a bad retreat, just the us all off since we typically have to control their energy rather than find it. Plus, I met my youngest brother’s birthday twin! One of the guys in my small group was born on the same day as him, and i thought it was the coolest thing ever. What i appreciated about today, though, was definitely the normalcy of the day: wake up, pray, lead a retreat, eat dinner, and go to host families. It’s felt like forever some we had a day like that, and i appreciates it more than i thought i would. . . And what’s great is that i would have two days like that in a row! We left Caledonia back to Racine, WI (home of SC Johnson I learned), to St. Rita to lead a day-long Confirmation Retreat for 30-some high school juniors from St Joseph’s parish not too far away. Typically on longer retreats we’ll have Men’s Session, where today I gave the men’s talk, and there was a special camaraderie to these guys that i dont see often at retreats. It was really refreshing, and hopefully they can definitely help eachother get closer to God. That night, we all stayed at the rectory offices, where we got to chill out and hang out together, which is always a good time. . . Monday team days with the supervisors are so interesting, because they lead it and you don’t know what to expect. Today, we started all morning in silent prayer and quiet reflection, which also felt refreshing since on NET there isn’t typically silence. From there, we split into Mens/Womens groups for lunch like usual (we went to Panera if you were curious), then came together afterwards to do more bowling. I got my alltime high score at 152, blowing out the rest of the team by alot, losing myself more than anyone else. For dinner, we spent it with our opposite gender supervisor (Christina), asking questions about the her and the sisters and just hanging s good time with her the rest of the night before bed, which I thoroughly enjoyed since i dont see her enough on these visits. . . On the final day, it was really just Final notes on how our team has improved and can improve more in life, which felt more like good and basic reminders that i needed to hear and remember. After dropping them off, we ran some quick team errands before heading off to our host homes, which was Tim and Paula from a few weeks ago! We spent a whole week with them not too long ago, so familiarity is more beautiful than i thought it would be. Although this time we brought Adam, since when we were with them last time he was still of the road.