Days 79-81: Heading South (And Back)

Wow, November has begun. Thats ridiculous. (Well as I post this its December… whoops) Anyways, we started off the morning as usual: prayer, breakfast, and leaving another family. When we arrived at St. Bernadette, Sarah and Nels were coming up with a gameplan for the day, and the main pastor, Monsignor Smith, approached us and had convo with us. Still reeling off the World Series victory, his jokes and stories were drop dead hilarious, and the team gathered a few inside jokes from him. From there, we had a one-hour adoration session for team prayer, which was super refreshing. From there, it was off to our net stop: St. Mary of Piscataway in Clinton, MD. A fee things stood out from this retreat: 1) The retreat theme, Fully Alive, really contradicted the graveyard that laid in front of the church. 2) There were 14 retreatants, and only 3 guys, but all of them loved us and our silly humor, making it such a fun time. 3) We had more adoration, which adds up to about 4 hours of exposed Jesus in the past 24 hours. Pretty sick lifestyle isnt it? Anyways, it was gonna be a late night, but we all knew it would be rewarded after the retreat. We left for our next stop, St. Mary of Immaculate Conception in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Yes, Virginia, we have moved out of Maryland! That night we arrived at the rectory at 11:30, and immediately hit the sack for a Saturday school retreat. Night night!. . . Aaaaaand good early morning. This morning retreat would be another confirmation retreat, and it was interesting because it was 2-time retreat. In other words, we would be there next Saturday and give the same retreat. But today was our focus, and today was awesome!! The group was good, but my small group was great. Plus, we did showtime for the first time, where the small groups get to create skits to promote a new Christian product to present in front of the whole group. And they were incredible! All of them were creative and so funny. Such a fun time. From there a chill night: Mass, calling friends, and blogging. It was a lot of time to myself, which was apparently so needed, because emotionally I felt so much better. Im beginning to learn how to balance team life and home life, and its making my emotional life better. Looking forward to growing in that area as well. . . We got to sleep in a bit this morning, as today was our first TBA day of the day: a day planned to have a retreat but turns out not having one for certain reasons, so we have a work day. But first, we had to arrive to our next destination: St. Pius X in Bowie, MD. If that sounds familiar, its because we were there a week ago! We left St. Mary’s and Virginia at 10:00am, and picked up lunch at Chipotle before arriving. Our work was pretty light today: a Men’s Session, Music Practice, and Team Rec that consisted of more Gravel and Kickball. During Team Rec, Sarah and Nels, our Team Leaders, left to go plan stuff. When they returned, they said we would have a different type of team prayer. They took us upstairs where 9 chairs were lined up in front of the tabernacle, each consisting of a card with our name on it. Sitting in our respective spots, Sarah began reading allowed the Gospel passage of Jesus washing the Apostles’ feet. Soon after, Sarah and Nels began washing the feet of their respective gender, then prayed over all team members separately. This was an extreme act of love that I absolutely cherished, and I am so grateful for my leaders for doing such an act. Finally, we ended the night with chinese food and drama practice. In that time, Ellie and I were planning Sarah’s birthday tomorrow, as that is our roles as Host and Hostess. With everything set for tomorrow, we were not going to disappoint her on her big day.