Actually, the retreat went very well---much better than anticipated. When I passed out the retreat invitations on Wednesday I felt like I was in a jungle: hands and arms flying from every angle and waving in front of my face, wildly grasping for the pieces of paper in my hand. I believed this to be a foreshadowing of the retreat.
The theme was the same as the 2nd form boys retreat: “Be Not Afraid”. We set up stations this time because there were 73 boys (!) and Fr. Mark suggested the idea to make it easier to contain them all. Two stations had teachers giving talks and the third station was futbol (soccer). My group was terrible for the first talk but by the third station (last talk) they were great. We had time for anonymous questions and they asked some really great ones. Most of them consisted of questions about love, girls, and sex. The boys were wonderfully quiet during adoration and Mass. The two most beautiful part of the day was that boys were going to confession throughout the entire two hours it was available. One student would be coming back from it and the next one was walking out. At communion, almost all of the students received (normally only half or less do). It was awesome to see these guys receiving the sacraments!
It must have been all the prayers =)
Here are some pictures from the first form girl's retreat the week before:
Miss Betsy
The Panel (Miss Katie, Me, Mr. Tom, Miss Betsy)
Students outside of the retreat center
must be great to see tangible results of your work - that's awesome!
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