Merry Christmas from the Ottawa Team!

The past few months have been full of blessings and opportunities for our team here in the Ottawa-Cornawall Archdiocese. We have helped start a bi-weekly middle school youth group at St. Maurice parish and have had our first two Diocesan-wide youth nights! We have also been able to put on Advent liturgies with students through grades 1-6 at multiple schools and have been able to participate once a week in bible study with the students at Lester B. Pearson Catholic High School! On top of it all, we continue to help with The House (middle school youth group) on Friday nights at Annunciation of the Lord Parish, and we have just completed the Alpha series with the high schoolers there!

Outside of ministry, team life has been full of much joy and laughter! Recently, we were able to spend the day as a team Fiat Farms to partake in their farm day as well as JP and Zachariah had the opportunity to spend a few days with the Companions of the Cross at their
farm! We had our first visit from our awesome supervisors and Bernadette and Claire won an epic
and hilarious lipsync battle!

Whether we are doing ministry or hanging out as a team, we are very blessed that the Lord shows us his awesome loving power. At one of our retreats, Zacheriah had the opportunity to pray over a grade 11 boy who had expressed to him: “I have a heart of stone.” Zechariah told him, “Okay, well, let’s ask the Lord to break it.” They then started praying for the Lord to show him his love and to give him a heart like God’s. After this, Zacheriah asked this student if he has ever committed his life to Christ and he said that he hadn’t. Zechariah led him through a prayer of surrender and he gave his life to Christ! While we were leaving the church, the student had a beaming smile and was very happy. We are very blessed that the Lord chooses to use us as his vessels during situations like these!

God Bless you,
JP, Bernadette, Zacheriah, and Claire