Planning the Confirmation Retreats with Youth Council

Today, January 10, we had our monthly Youth Council meetings. We planned for the upcoming confirmation retreats that we will be leading in February and March for parishes that do not have youth groups to lead the retreats. We discussed the theme song, "Son of Man" by Phil Collins, and how it connected to our faith. From this, we derived a theme for the retreat. I came up with the theme "Journey with Faith", which discusses that even after confirmation it is a constant struggle to maintain our faith and sometimes we forget that God is always walking with us. The group agreed with this theme and chose it as our retreat theme. Next, we talked about the different roles us, as leaders, will play in the retreat. We will be leading a group of 100 8th graders in 2 different parishes. Some leaders will give testimonials about their journey with faith and others will lead prayer services and activities to further help the retreatants understand their own faith. I will be leading a quilt activity where they draw a picture of their faith then after we sow the pieces into a big cross, signifying that they are not alone in their journey with faith. In the next retreat, I will be explaining the song and theme for the retreatants and how it applies to our lives. Lastly, we split into 3 groups and did a simulation on leading a smaller group. For the retreat, each leader will be in charge of hosting discussions with about 10 retreatants about various topics. In the simulation, there was one leader and the rest of the Youth Council acted as 8th grade retreantants. Our goal was to practice leading a smaller group and getting them to discuss topics of the retreat. After, the group would give the leader feedback about their ability to facilitate a group. The feedback I got back was that I was very supportive of the group and gave them great encouragement to share about their ideas. The Youth Council and I completed a lot of planning for the upcoming confirmation retreats.


Hours logged: 2.30 hours