This year, three of our Youth Ministry students, Cooper Sweeney, Laura Peters and Layla Hepplewhite had the opportunity to embark on an Equipping School experience in Canberra. This Canberra retreat experience went from Thursday to Sunday morning and involved training and resourcing youth, young adults and ministry leaders for the mission of school leadership, church and wider community.
Before attending the equipping school, which began Friday morning, the Connecting Catholic Coasties (CCC) schools all collectively paid a pit-stop visit to the War Memorial and Parliament House. These CCC schools comprise of St Peters, St Brigid’s, Mackillop and St Josephs.
The CSYMI Equipping School experience contained full days of workshops, speakers, sharing ideas, learning, socialising, games, Mass and a very powerful evening of Adoration and Reconciliation.
The enormous four days came to an end on Sunday morning with a special commissioning ceremony at the top of Mt Ainslie. The students were presented with a pin of the Holy Spirit and encouraged to take all they had learnt and experienced back to their communities. A literal mountain top experience to end a spiritual mountain top retreat. We definitely feel more equipped to share the Good News!
Blurb from a Cooper Sweeney re: Canberra Equipping Youth Ministry School:
During our time at the equipping school we made new friends, learnt new skills about our faith, how to progress within our faith and how we, as leaders in our youth ministry can bring skills to help others advance their faith. We observed sacraments like Reconciliation and Eucharistic Adoration and worshipped in the morning and evening to reflect on our journeys in faith and connect with our spiritual senses.
We had so much fun with games, making new connections and lots of acoustic guitars, flash mobbing, late nights and singing to accompany everything in between
I would recommend this fantastic opportunity to any student, even if it is outside their comfort zone.
