Days 96-99: Naples, FL (11/18-11/21/20)

Naples is amazing. First off, they have five Catholic churches in the city alone, the weather is immaculate, and the people are so far pretty dope. We are split between host homes, with Andrew and I staying at the St. Elizabeth Seton rectory with Fr. Casey Jones. We started our day together at the parish for a Veterans’ Day Mass, which was rescheduled to today due to a hurricane last week on Veterans’ Day. It was with all the students at St. Elizabeth School, and their ceremony was very well done. From there, we had to reschedule flights coming back for the second half of the NET year in January because they extended Winter Break an extra week, meaning we will return January 9th to NET rather than January 2nd. Once finished, Fr. Casey took us out to Seed and Table for lunch, which can only be described as conservative Whole Foods. The amount of Trump posters were insane, and all I could think was “This place would get burned to the ground in Seattle.” At the store, we met up with Kyle, the youth minister at St. John the Evangelist in Naples, Florida. For 3 years, they had a NET Discipleship team come to their parish, so they are very familiar with NET. Kyle invited us over to their Friendsgiving feast that evening, which we gladly accepted since we had nothing planned that evening. This parish is RIDICULOUS! Large church, and their parish center included a basketball court, theater stage, two workout gyms, a bocce ball court, a fountain, and a couple gardens. I fell in love, I would thrive if that was my home parish. Either way, I hope we come back soon. . . Today’s ministry event may be the closest thing to a retreat that isnt a retreat. One of the middle school teachers at St. Elizabeth, Mr. Ganse, another NET alum, asked us to come in and share our 3-minute testimonies to each of his classes. So between three religion classes, everyone shared their testimonies, and did a Q&A at the end of each class. Then, at the end of the school day, we did a Prayer Ministry in the church for all the middle school classes. I guess you could count it as a retreat, I’m not sure though. The crazy thing is, this was all planned the night before by me, and that is really how this week is going: if an opportunity arises, we will take it without any second thoughts. Chaotic, but it keeps us busy. In the evening, Fr. Casey, Andrew, and I went to Elizabeth and Sally’s host family’s house for dinner (paninis), where I learned St. Elizabeth parish wanted us to stay for the week because they wanted to test the waters on possibly having their own NET Discipleship team at their parish! It would be exciting if they could have a team down here, praying for that. . . A simpler day today: we spent the morning stuffing and sending Christmas letters to all our financial donors, then the afternoon doing ministry practices. In the evening, I set up a NET alum Team Prayer, inviting any local netters to our daily praise and worship via Facebook. There were only a few that showed up, all of them peeps we had met either at St. Elizabeth or at Ave Maria University, but it was super special. Most NET alum say they miss Team Prayer the most when leaving the road, so to give them that opportunity was special. . . We couldn’t leave Florida without heading to the beach, though. So on our last day in Florida, we drove 20 minutes west for a beach day! It was WILD, standing on the hot sand, or jumping into the cool saltwater of the Gulf Coast, in 80 degree November weather. We also did Team Prayer praise & worship on the beach too, which was so epic! So many people were watching us, it was awesome. That took most of our last day in Naples, but we concluded our time with mass and a mini prayer service afterwards for any parishioners who needed to be prayed over. Fr. Casey requested for us to do so, and it worked out beautifully! The evening was chill, eating leftovers at a host home, and all is well. I loved Florida so much! I’m really hoping to go back next semester, praying for it.