Galt youths attend Indiana Catholic conference
Youths from St. Christopher’s Catholic Church in Galt recently attended the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) in Indianapolis, Ind.
The conference is an opportunity for 25,000 Catholic teenagers to come together and grow closer to God and to their faith.
NCYC brings together Catholic youths from all over the United States. Catholic teens come to experience three days full of prayers, service, keynote speakers, inspiring workshops and meeting different people. For three days the Catholic youths of the United States grow closer to their faith more than they ever have before. All these teens have one thing in common, and it’s their religion. They come to a place where they can express it freely. They come together and experience a wonderful connection with God.
Planning for this trip takes two years. Within those two years our youth group minister, Eva Delgado, put in an extremely tremendous amount of time and created fundraisers to be able to fund for this costly trip. From selling raffle tickets out in the rain and making cotton candy for a couple of days straight, the NCYC participants from St. Christopher’s were committed to helping out in order to be able to attend the trip. As the teens contributed their time and effort into these activities, they grew closer to one another and they learned to have respect for one another. The NCYC participants from the St. Christopher’s Church include: Carolina Ayala, Milagros Ayala, Zulema Corrales Franco, Brendan Davidson, Keegan Nelson, Joshua Patton, Nathan Patton, and Ryan Patton. And the chaperones that attended, who also contributed to the making of the whole trip, are Father Miguel Silva, Cathy Nelson, Terri Davidson, and Terri Flores.
Some of our highlights at NCYC were running down the Lucas Oil Stadium, trying to get front row seats just like thousands of others. Proudly we can say we achieved the goal of getting front row seats multiple times.
We also enjoyed trading items with youth from all around the nation. At NCYC everyone takes items to trade and we took sand bracelets which contain California sand from the beach. Things we trade our bracelets for are souvenirs, other bracelets, rosaries, and other fun items. The best part of trading items was meeting the different people who came from different states.
Another highlight of ours was adoration. Many of us enjoyed adoration the most because of the wonderful atmosphere. With 25,000 people in the stadium, it was all silent, letting us connect with God and discuss whatever we had in mind with him. Everyone was at peace and found a way to enjoy the silence. Even though we were all tired and sleep deprived, we took that moment to experience something beautiful: the presence of God within all of us. We also enjoyed the overall bonding experience. We all grew closer together and had fun.
This year’s theme at NCYC was “Called; Llamados.” We learned what it means to be called to more, called to listen, and called to serve. The emcees, Father Joseph Espaillat and Emily Wilson, taught us what it means to be called and how we are called by name, called by God to be his apostles, and how we were called to NCYC to grow our faith. We heard from amazing speakers such as: Chris Stefanick, Sister Miriam James Heidland, Paul J. Kim, Roy Petitfils, Brian Greenfield, and Mark Hart. Each and every single one of the speakers had real struggles and problems, but their love for God just became stronger through all of it and they shared their experiences with
all of us.
Here are some of the main things we learned from some of the speakers at NCYC.
• Father Joe Espaillat taught us what the word PRAY stands for. P is for Praise. R is for Repent. A is for Ask. Y is for Yield. He connected all of those words to God and how we should praise God and repent our wrongdoing while asking God for his love and to yield his will. The word yield means to be present and we learned how we must present ourselves to God as his servants and his disciples.
• Emily Wilson taught us what the church bells mean and how it represents how we are ready to pray when we hear them. She also taught us how we are called to be disciples and how God calls us by name.
• Chris Stefanick taught us many things, including that it is important to love yourself. We must love ourselves and we must believe in ourselves. We also learned that we are what we envision of ourselves to be. He taught us that we are blessed and we are beloved children of God and that we must keep growing in our faith, regardless of what people have to say.
• During our time with Paul J. Kim we learned that we may not always be close to our faith, as a matter of fact, there may be times when as teens we are embarrassed to say we go to church, but we will always have God. He taught us that it can be a struggle to choose faith, but we should go to Mass with open hearts because “church is not boring, we are.”
• Sister Miriam James Heidland taught us that we are still loved by God regardless of the sins we commit. She explained how our lives matter. She also taught us to not be afraid of Christ because he loves us. She shared her journey and her struggles; we took that as a learning experience that God will always be there for us.
• Roy Petitfils shared his life story about how he struggled with obesity, Petitfils told that God sees past our appearances and loves us for our hearts. He loves us for the amazing souls we have. He also mentioned how God sacrificed himself for us and how he is speaking out to us through the Eucharist.
• Brian Greenfield taught us that we are called to more. How can we be silent when we should be loud for Jesus? You should step to what God called for you to do. We should give more, rather than give less because God called us to experience his love and open up our hearts for him.
• We learned from Mark Hart that oftentimes we run from our faith and we don’t let God into our lives, but every time we run, no matter the circumstance, God always runs after us. He goes after us with open arms and at times we still keep running. Hart taught us that we must change that and stop running from our faith because God is accepting of who we are regardless of what we have done.