By Angela Mandich
The Well is an awesome group of high school students and dedicated volunteers. We look forward to meeting each week to enrich our faith through community service, friendship, fun, and Chicago style popcorn! It’s a “wellcoming” group that allows our youth to de-stress and support one another in the complex times in which we live.
This year we are focusing on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, trying to live these in our daily lives.
We were all inspired by a vision of building community and creating opportunities for our youth to explore their faith, discuss current issues, and have fun! To this end, Aaron Pellerin, Adriana Scholtes, Elizabeth Burtwistle, Kelly Zabehaylo and myself have taken the lead on the WELL this year. It continues to be a weekly high point to get together and pray, laugh and have fun. This Fall we had a visit from L’Arche, attended the play at STA, had Fr. John come for a ”Grill the Priest” night, had games nights and several potlucks! We also designed our own Well sweatshirts!
Each week we begin in prayer, and then each of us share our “highs and lows” of the week. This often takes the better part of an hour and allows us all to share in meaningful conversation and support one another.
We also enjoy watching Fr. Michael Schmidt videos. His short and thought provoking video’s offer a springboard into dynamic conversations about living our faith, and our call to action to be disciplines of Jesus in our daily life.
We have had the privilege of having Hayfaa, ( a member of our Syrian family we support) join our group this year. She has been a wonderful gift for our group and has helped us see the common, interwoven landscape of our Catholic faith and the Muslim faith. We are all part of God’s family and connected to the same loving and compassionate God.
This year we wrote our own prayer as a group and wanted to share it with the parish and invite you to pray for us.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for giving us the support of our family and friends, as well as the resources to be your earthly disciples. Help us to be strength for each other.
Give us the courage to stand up for our friends, to take the weight off their shoulders, and to understand their feelings.
As we gather at the Well, we offer you our gifts and talents. Please guide us to use them wisely to benefit and serve our community. Help us show love and kindness to all we encounter.
Give us strength to interact and behave as Jesus would. Through your Grace, let us be witnesses of your love as we serve others.
Amen
Our group is helping the Knights of Columbus serve breakfast on February 18th, we hope you come out and support us.
The proceeds in part, will go to support our youth attending Steubenville -Revealed, July 13-15th, 2018. We are also serving at the Good Friday 11:00 service.
The youth of our parish are awesome, and every high school student in our parish is invited to join us Wednesdays at 7:00-9:00!
(Angela Mandich is a Well leader)
