Growing in Faith Together (G.I.F.T) Retreat

Retreat #2 of the year. This past weekend we did the Gift retreat, which is a leadership retreat to help train high school teens how to be leaders in their parish. So all of those communication studies classes that I took at Marquette have been useful, in particular the Training and Development class. So indeed I have used some of the skills that I learned in my college education. The lay assistants, Tom, and Fred put this retreat together in a matter of days. There was a basic structure to follow but we switched some of the details. We included some more interactive options for the teens. The LAs realized that this year will get us working to use the skills we have in short periods of time. :)

On Saturday as part of the self-esteem module I presented my first of many witnesses for this year. It turned out well and we did a skit on how others tear our self-esteem down but how Jesus can build it up. Claire and I had written the skit using Maureen as the central character who was being picked on. In particular there was a funny joke about acorns, if you want to know ask about it.

Later in the afternoon during the Christian Leadership Module four lay assistants and Tom were purposefully given one characteristic of a bad leader. Well we must have had great acting skills because the kids thought that more than one of us really had some of these skills.