All they need is love!

Wow so many things have been happening here at Covecrest for the missionaries. We had the youth ministers retreat, confirmation retreat, we went and visited the 8th grade classes we put retreats on for earlier this year, and we have begun to teach ourselves the Core Values. Mark taught us about Love on Wednesday and Sara taught us today about Eucharistic Spirituality. God really spoke through them and gave all of us a new incite on how God is Love and how we are called as Catholics to Be Eucharist. I really want to write blogs about those but today I feel very called to share our visits at the schools.

Back in October myself and seven other missionaries helped put on a retreat for the Holy Redeemer 8th grade class. Middle school retreats usually run a little different than high school ones. They need to be really high energy and a lot of interaction so needless to say I remember being very nervous going into that retreat on how to bring God to these pre-teens. But the retreat went great. The schedule went off without a hitch. The talks and small group discussions went well and I truly fell in love with those kids.

Fast forward to Monday when we went to visit them. Again I had that nervous feeling that they could care less that we were coming, "O just those missionaries again...sweet I get to miss class!" was what I thought they would be thinking. But God showed me just how HE brought himself into these kids lives! They were so excited to see us. Sara's group literally ran each other over to see who could get to her the fastest. I was blown away by how much they loved us. We met with our small groups and began talking about the retreat, what they liked and remembered. It was a really amazing and special time just to catch up with them. I asked if they remembered anything we talked about...blank stares. I thought to myself "why are they so excited to see us if they didnt even get anything out of the retreat?" But as we were leaving the girls would not let us go, some even cried and begged us to come soon. The boys wouldnt stop laughing and punching each other. I was so moved and I realized then that it did not matter what we said to these kids back in October but it mattered to them how we LOVED them. They felt LOVED by us. They remembered that LOVE and wanted to keep feeling it that is why they were so excited to see us.

God made us and calls us to LOVE. That is our sole purpose on earth because once we love with Christ's love everything flows from that. All these kids needed was LOVE and God worked through us to give them that!

I shared this thought with the missionaries in the car and we all kind of looked at each other and said "Do we even remember what we talked about? hahaha"