Teen leaders make faith fun at annual youth conference

Teen leaders make faith fun at annual youth conference

After Mass and lunch, a group of teens sang the theme song to the television show "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" while washing dishes, another group drove off to tape an "A-Team" skit on faith at a local church and the rest did service work, sweeping out a dusty garage.

That was just one afternoon for the teenaged "peer disciples" participating in the annual St. Isaac Jogues youth conference.

The three-day conference, held last weekend at the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, is an annual retreat during which teens come away from their everyday lives and troubles, walk on the holy grounds of the shrine and come to know God through guest speakers, praise, eucharistic adoration and confession.

This year's theme was "Awaken," based on Romans 13:11, which reads in part: "The time has come for you to wake up from your sleep. For the moment when we will be saved is closer now than it was when we first believed."

Now in its fifth year, the conference was started to give local Catholic youth the chance to attend a retreat at a more reasonable price and distance than some other larger Catholic youth conferences could offer.

Traveling teens
This year, local youth groups were joined by groups from Long Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

A conference of this size requires a team of volunteers to act as construction workers, actors, dancers, altar servers, lectors and intercessors. This group of teens, called "peer disciples," spent a week in Auriesville to prepare the grounds for the conference - and also got the chance to go deeper in their faith, surrounded by their peers.

The peer disciples' week is a combination of camping out, building sets, rehearsing skits for the retreat, growing in community and growing in faith.

Despite the heat, living in tents, mosquitoes, the lack of showers and the workload, the program is growing. The number of teens applying, the diversity of parishes and distances from which they come have increased each year.

Paul LaMarre of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Lindenhurst, NY, was a first-time peer disciple as well as a participant at the conference.

"The work is really hard - and it's buggy - but it's worth it," he told The Evangelist. "It's for a good cause. It shows how you need teamwork and togetherness. We have become like a little family."

The volunteers also get a week of spiritual formation: Masses, recitation of the Rosary, prayer time and talks - plus, this year, sharing their own stories and answering the question, "Why do you believe in God?"

For Kristin Balschunat, in her second year as a peer disciple, the week challenged her to solidify her Catholic identity.

"Before, I just went with it," she said. "But here they dig deep and have us ask ourselves why we believe."

Paul agreed: "It actually made me question my faith, but in a good way. Before, I didn't care for [my faith], but now I'm thinking about it more; I'm open to it."

Many of the teens who volunteered for the program did so after seeing the fun and fellowship the previous groups seemed to have at the conferences.

Count me in
For instance, Mary-Kate Hayward of St. Mary's parish in Glens Falls said she admired the peer disciples when she first came to the conference three years ago, and knew she wanted to join after a group of them prayed over her during a Saturday night conference session.

"It helped me in my faith just to know that there are other people my age out there who believe the same thing," said Mary-Kate.

When this year's conference began on Friday evening, the peer disciples' work really began. Their job is to energize and reach out to participants with skits, leading singing and hand motions during songs, praying with them during Saturday evening Eucharistic adoration and leading by example.

Kristen shared her enthusiasm about being able to serve the other teens: "I'm excited that we're going to touch so many lives and we don't even know who or when."

BY the end of the week, the peer disciples - known this year as "The A-Team" - were tired but joyful and grateful for what they were able to do for their fellow teens at the conference.

"It's fun how we get to energize and bring life to the conference," shared Nicole Kujan of St. Ambrose parish in Latham. "Everyone becomes a family based on Christ. It touches everybody wherever they are in their faith. Nobody would not like it."

(07/15/10)