Christine Woodley, youth minister from St. Mary’s, Clayton and St. John’s, Lafargeville; along with Sharon Turner from St. Vincent of Paul, Cape Vincent, St. Vincent De Paul, Rosiere attended the National Catholic Youth Convention (NCYC) in Indianapolis, Indiana Nov. 16-19.
They write about their experiences here:
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Our faith journey began Nov. 16 as we attended Mass with the Albany region at the Indianapolis Conference Center (ICC), since we were the only two attending from region 2 Ogdensburg. This gave us an opportunity to meet some people to connect with throughout the weekend.  

Following Mass, we attended the opening session at the Lucas Oil Stadium (LOS). The emcee was Vallimar Jansen who is blessed with an extraordinary voice making her a highly regarded singer, cantor, and recording artist. She was joined by Robert McCarty, executive director of the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry, who has been in professional youth ministry since 1973.

The two spoke on the theme “Call to Glory” which, they said, is like being a disciple of God. The program included dance and song production demonstrating various ways of praising and worshiping God. 

On the second day, we returned to LOS for the morning general session with key note speaker Mark Hart, who serves full-time as executive vice president of Life Teen, a Catholic youth ministry movement currently being implemented in 1,600 parishes in 26 countries worldwide.

Mark spoke on the theme “draw near to God and God will draw near to you,” offering several ideas on how to help the young people learn that an open heart is all you need to invite God in.   The quote for the day was “Be nice” to all the people in our hotels, and all the volunteers at the event.  The theme of the day’s session was that, in your life as a teenager, God is first, family is second and you yourself are third. This session included youth from the various ministries who told their stories and how God has affected their lives and also how he is a part of their everyday lives.

At the ICC youth and adults were offered a number of classes, activities, music etc. to attend throughout the day. Our first session was Round A with Doug Tooke “Living Faith in a Small Town.” Small town vs. Big town everyone has the some power if you are willing to invite it in.  Also Carrie Ford played music and sang for the group, which was a special treat because we had previously met her in Massena for a diocesan Youth Rally.

Round B was with Justine Fatica whose ministry was titled “Hard as Nails” and is a four year program (hanm.org). He demonstrated that “What we do as Youth Ministers matters! Challenges from kids are all the same, no matter where you live or who you are.

Round C was with Rob Wahl “Catechetical Improv” in which he demonstrated exercises, games and performances for Youth Ministers to present them all or in part to the teens of our parish.

We attended “Victory (Thematic) Park” this is an interactive venue that includes exhibits by colleges, religious orders, ministry organizations, performers, and other vendors as well as opportunities to play games, be of service to others, or listen to some great musical performances. This was truly a great experience to interact with others and to gather information to bring back to our parishes.

The evening session was presented by Bishop Luis Zarama who was born and raised in Pasto, Columbia where he also attended seminary and received his degree in philosophy and theology.

The next day’s general session featured Michael Patin speaking to young people and adults on issues of Catholic faith, positive attitude, using your gifts, and living life fully. His quote was “Prayer is our relationship with God”.
We later attended Round D presented by Father Steve Ryan “Prepared to Prepare the Young for Prayer” who discussed the Oratory Criteria and broke it down into four parts: “The welcome Home” “A School that prepares for life” “A Playground where friends come to meet” and “A Parish that evangelizes. He stressed that everyone needs a life with prayer, in order to pray with the young.  Life is busy and he gave suggestions on how to achieve this such as morning prayer and evening prayer, daily Eucharist, pray the rosary, journaling to Jesus, spiritual direction and support system. Also some key points were 1) keep it real 2) enthusiasm 3) environment and 4) take risks.

Next our Discernment Session was with Kevin Feyen “Next Step After NCYC.” Kevin gave us an opportunity to have open discussion with other Youth Ministers and we found this extremely helpful. He also gave us guidelines to follow and explains each of the following: 1) We aim for mediocrity. 2) Who is our target audience? 3) Teens know squat! 4) The needs of many!

We visited Victory Park again to obtain more material and to sign up for programs and websites to bring home with us, to guide us for the upcoming year and the years to come. We attended Parish and Worship live concerts (more like a rock concert), comedy acts, dancers and many more shows were offered throughout the weekend.

The closing session was at the LOS with Evening Mass. Words cannot express what it is like to attend a Mass with 20,000 teenagers, 3,000 adults, 250 priests,  175 seminarians, 30 deacons, nine bishops.

We also had  23,355 virtual visitors from 92 countries including China.  NCYC is considering changing from National to International!

In summary this was an opportunity of a lifetime to network with people running youth groups and learn about the many resources out there to share. We both personally experienced a renewal in our faith. We could not have attended such an amazing event without the help of our parishes. Our parishes sponsored us to go and we are greatly thankful to everyone who made this trip possible. Also, the diocesan Youth Ministry office was wonderful and very efficient on filling out the many forms and completing all the paperwork, for this we are grateful. This is not an easy task by any means.

In short there are many people to thank for making this experience all come together, but most important is the Lord must have had a hand in this, we are blessed to of had the opportunity to witness such an event. Thank you Lord.

Thank you Father LaBaff and Father Aubin. Thank you to the entire Youth Ministry Office of Ogdensburg.
In 2012 the NCYC will be adults only held in Orlando, Fl. In 2013 the NCYC will be held back for adult and youth at Indianapolis, IN. We are planning now to return in 2013 with as many youth as we can so they will have an opportunity to experience what we have.

Chris Woodley, youth minister from Clayton and LaFargeville; and Sharon Turner from Cape Vincent and Rosiere attended the National Catholic Youth Convention in Indianapolis in November.