Sanctuary@Walsingham is THE International Prayer Festival of 2010.
It gives you the time and space you need to think about your faith, in amazing surroundings and a stress free environment. You can attend walks, talks, services and workshops which will make you want to explore your faith.
Hopefully you all received the latest update email about the new London leadership team. Noel, Janet, Daniel, Hannah, Laura and myself Lanie are the members of this team we're having fun working together and the plans for Walsingham are in motion and we're excited about this years festival!
Our publicity campaign is well underway! Including posters in 4 train stations around the country. These can be found in Waterloo, London Victoria, Manchester Piccadilly and Leicester BR. If you happen to pass one or want to go on the hunt for one please send us a picture of you with it, maybe you and some friends could pose with it, perhaps you have a Youth 2000 t-shirt and could have a picture taken of you wearing the t-shirt with the poster, we want to see you and the posters. Wacky, interesting, original, silly faces, whatever it may be! The posters will only be in the stations until 20th June so be quick, send in your photo and it may be included in a future blog! Daniel found the one in Victoria and sent it in.
We're looking for ideas and people to help us with our fundraising for this years Walsingham prayer festival. If you have any ideas for sponsored events that the team could do or would like to do something yourself please email the National Office at info@youth2000.org.
That's right, 20th March is the official first day of spring! I'm sure you're all looking forward to packing away the winter coats, wellies and gloves and breaking out the sunglasses, shorts and flip flops!
Hopefully you've spotted a few new born lambs and have seen the daffodils breaking through the soil to say hello to the sun.
Here at Youth 2000 HQ we've got a few events to look forward to in the next few months and we hope you'll be able to join us at one or two of them.
First up is the next formation day. This will be happening at 2 Calbourne Road, Balham on 27th March. The day starts with 10am Mass at Holy Ghost, Balham. Please contact Lanie at the national office for more information (info@youth2000.org).
Next month we've got healing@healing, the retreat is taking place at St Benedict's School, Ealing. The dates for this retreat are 23rd - 25th April. The programme and parental consent forms are available on the website www.youth2000.org.
24th July is the date for the Youth 2000 Summer Fundraising Ball. The venue is Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch, London. There will be a drinks reception from 6:30pm and a three course meal will be served at 8:30pm.Ticket price is £60 per person, please send cheques for payment to the national office, with your name, email address for confirmation and whether or not you are vegitarian. More information can be found on the facebook group page under events. This event is primarily to help raise funds for the Walsingham prayer festival...
Which will be taking place 26th - 30th August. Walsingham is our biggest event of the year, held in a couple of fields at the site of the National Shrine to Our Lady. We will be expecting over 1000 young people! It's going to be great and you should definitely be there!
If you haven't already found it we've set up a fan page on facebook, simply search for Youth 2000 fans or click on the link on the right hand side of the blog. It's a great place to put photos from retreats, find friends and share your experience of Youth 2000.
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact the office.
Happy New Year! As usual we saw the New Year in at our annual Balham retreat. We welcomed over 200 people to the retreat including people from Scotland, Leeds, the Midlands, and London. We had some great speakers including Fr Emmanuel (CFR), Dr Danelia Cardona, Fr Julian Green, Fr Stephen Wang and Sr Jacinta (CFR). It was wonderful to see so many people choosing to spend the new year at a retreat, we had a great time and hope that those of you that attended did too!
The next retreat is just around the corner. We'll be heading to Harrogate for the weekend of 19th - 21st February. The retreat is being held at St John Fisher's High school. It would be great to see there! More details will be on the website next week along with the programme and parental consent forms.
Catholic? In your late teens/twenties? Want to feel 10 out of 10 for 2010?
New year celebrations can be such an anticlimax. But if you’re looking for an alternative celebration this year, then devotion@balham could be right up your street.
During this special new year event, you can see the new year in with God, make new friends and start 2010 as you mean to go on.
Entry to this event for young adults is free if it’s your first time, so don’t worry if all your money is gone by Christmas. It’s taking place at the Holy Ghost church in Balham, with places to sleep nearby.
For more information or directions, visit www.youth2000.org, call 01937 584 451 or find details through Facebook.
Just wanted to let you know about the upcoming retreat this weekend, 30th October - 1st November.
The retreat is taking place at St Mary’s Retreat in Carmarthen, South Wales. It'll include a range of talks, life-changing services and time for quiet prayer. This event is pay-what-you-can, so it won't break the bank.
For more info go to www.youth2000.org or email me at info@youth2000.org
We ask you to pray for all the young leaders who served at the Walsingham festival. We held a formation day in the run-up to Walsingham to which all the volunteers were invited. It was a fantastic opportunity to plan and prepare together for Walsingham, and it really built up excitement! Two more formation days are planned to take place in London before the end of the year – these days are proving exciting times of fellowship and growth in the faith, where young leaders have the opportunity to develop skills needed at retreats and to build real friendships.
The next one is taking place on 21st November, put it in your diaries! More details will be available soon. Contact the office for more information.
We are delighted to bring you news of the Walsingham Festival 2009, which your prayers, support and donations made possible! This was the first Walsingham festival organised by the new leadership team, and although it was a daunting task, God proved He is never outdone in generosity. Now over a month since the festival ended, the national office is still receiving feedback and testimonies daily from young people whose lives have been changed. We would like to share with you some of these comments, so that you can see how your prayers and money go directly towards making possible the conversions of young people in this country!
Members of the Service Team, Retreat Team and Music Ministry arrived in Walsingham early to prepare the site and also to spend some time together before young people from all across the country descended on the shrine. We were grateful to have Fr Emmanuel CFR with us during this time to give formation and help prepare us for the task ahead. Thursday evening came and there was huge excitement as hundreds of young people arrived – we even ran out of food! One young person said:“I was quite overwhelmed as soon as we arrived at the site on the Thursday evening, when we went inside the main tent for the evening Mass. I had a great experience of such warmth, it was wonderful.”We were delighted to welcome over 1200 young people to this year’s festival, including large groups from both Germany and Spain.
It was a great privilege to have Eduardo Verastegui with us over the weekend. Eduardo is a Mexican Hollywood actor who had a radical conversion, making the decision to dedicate his talents to God. He starred in and produced the 2007 pro-life film “Bella”. (See our website for more details about his story.) Eduardo was a lively and charismatic speaker, inspiring many of the young people present to commit their talents to serving God, and to stand firm in their Christian values, especially chastity. Eduardo is a fantastic role model for young people and an amazing ambassador for the faith, and we were delighted he could attend. One young person said: “...I was probably helped most by his explanation of being a Catholic and working in the media, but still staying true to being a Catholic and living a Catholic lifestyle.”
All the speakers throughout the festival inspired and instructed the young people present in the basics of the faith. One young person said: “The Festival definitely made me think about things in a different way, for example the importance of living out chaste relationships, and what it means to be pro-life” and another said: “I would like to say a huge thanks ... The energy of the speakers every day was very refreshing and in every talk ... I always found at least one thing that was very relevant to me personally.”
We were supported by great numbers of priests over the weekend who heard hundreds and hundreds of Confessions! One young person said:“The constant availability of priests made it very easy to go to Confession, which was something I did (eventually) after I had not been for a long time,” and another said:“I enjoyed the Reconciliation service (I never thought I'd be saying that, after dreading Confession for so long) but I felt fully healed after and since I have found it easier to pray and I am generally just more happy!”
Many young people who attended appreciated the experience of being with over 1200 other young Catholics and the festival atmosphere of Youth 2000 Walsingham. Here is what some young people said: “Probably just being able to meet other Catholics in their twenties who had shared a lot of the experiences I had had was the best part about it”; “I made many good friends there who I have been in constant contact with since leaving the festival… when I arrived I knew no-one. The atmosphere was so genuinely friendly and it was also very humbling to meet other young people who have helped out in their community in real physical ways”; “I felt closer to God in such a friendly environment.”Please keep all these young people in your prayers, that they may receive the support and encouragement they need to continue living out their faith on a daily basis.
Fundraising
As you may be aware, we are still short of around £7,000 needed to pay off the costs of the Walsingham festival: bills still need to be paid for marquees, plumbing, catering costs, coaches, kitchen equipment, sound, St John’s Ambulance hire and furniture. If you feel prompted, please visit our fundraising page: http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/walsingham2009 where you will see even more testimonies from the festival, and where you can see the running total of what is still left to pay off. If you have any ideas of potential donors we could approach, please get in touch with the national office. And most of all, please keep this intention in your prayers.
Hello readers,
