Scarborough Mission Day 5

Today we spent most of our day in St Augustine's Secondary School, which was fantastic.  We started the morning leading the assembly, this time it was Alfonso was spoke about being a witness and gave some of his testimony.  He spoke very well and the students were engaged with what he was saying.  After the assembly we were given the opportunity to visit some classes. We split up into two groups so we could visit both Year 7 classes and then for second period we were back together to speak to a Year 11 class.  The students had some great questions to ask us and seemed to enjoy us being there.  At first we're sure they thought we were a little crazy standing in their class talking about Jesus and how He loves us.  We enjoyed the class visits and the chance to hear back from the students.  In the assembly we can tell them quite a bit but there isn't that chance to answer their questions.

After we spoke to the Year 11 class it was back to St Peter's Church for adoration and Mass before we tucked into a lovely lunch in the Parish Centre.  One thing we definitely have to say is that the food and hospitality in Scarborough is amazing, absolutely out of this world!  Big thank you to all who looked after us and cooked for us!

In the afternoon we were back up at St Augustine's to visit some more classes.  Again we separated into two groups so that we could visit more classes in the time that we had.  At times during the assemblies we wondered how much the students were actually listening to us but when we visited the classes we realised that they had been listening and some of them had questions they wanted to ask us.  Each of us enjoyed the class visits and look forward to doing more at St Augustine's on Friday.

We had a lovely supper today (seriously the food is great here!) and then packed up to go and see the Confirmation group.  Tonight they were having two sessions, we were leading the second session.  The first session they had was on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and was a great session led by Sarah.  Our session had the title 'Witness' and we began firstly by asking each of the Confirmation candidates to tell us their name and why they had chosen to be confirmed this year.  There were a range of answers but the most popular seemed to be that their parents wanted them to get confirmed and some of their friends were doing it this year.  Although at first it may not have been their choice to be confirmed this year we congratulated them on being there tonight and having in a way made the choice themselves.  We spoke to them about what it means to be a witness and how we can be witnesses but we must choose to be.  We divided them up into four groups and gave them a scenario where they had to decide what the correct thing to do was and which gifts of the Holy Spirit would help them to make that choice.  They were a fantastic group and a very honest group.  We will continue to pray for them and we would ask that you do the same please.  At the end of the night we each lit a candle from the Paschal candle and prayed that we would receive the light of Christ, as we had done at Baptism.  It was very beautiful and prayerful.  We are loving our time here, what will the rest of the week have in store for us!?