Monthly Youth gathering focuses on The Heroes

Sep 10, 2016

TAWAU (Herald Malaysia): The Youth Monthly Programme (YMG) is back again, after a break, as time was required for the preparation and execution of the 4th Sabah Youth Day (SYD), held June 6-10, 2016.

The programme was restarted on July 17 at the Parish Hall with the participation of 150 youth. Also present was seminarian Raymond Lee. The theme for the programme is The Heroes and the objectives are as follows:

1. Helping the youth to build friendly relations with each other.

2. Establishing a cooperative spirit among the youth to enable them to adapt to the working conditions in groups or in the community.

3. Awakening the youth to recognize and emulate the ‘hero’ Christ and the Santo and Santa.

4. Providing early exposure to youth ministry in the church so that the youth are ready to accept the mission of the Church’s ministry in the service of faith, especially the youth of the parish. (There are a lot of talented youth, but some of them are not aware that their talents can also be used in the service of the church. Therefore, early exposure is especially important for the youth.)

The programme began with registration at 12.30pm, followed by songs of praise and worship and the opening prayer. All participants were divided into groups, based on activities which had been prepared, and where each group was required to create the “Yell” as a sign of unity in the group.

There were Team Building Activities to help the participants to work together in a group. In addition, the participants’ creativity could also be seen — that by working together to promote activities, they needed support and encouragement from everyone on the team.

The programme’s main event was The Heroes. In this activity, the participants were exposed to their personal saint, based on their selection of the name of the saint.

Then each group presented their results through a video recording, using the creativity of their respective groups. Through this, the youth not only obtained knowledge about their Catholic heroes but it also made them more aware of what it is “to be a witness of Christ,” irrespective of their background.

Seminarian Raymond Lee gave an overall view of the programme with the question “Who is a hero?” A hero is someone who does something that others can or cannot do. Be a hero to serve, even in small things, for example, in Church activities. Serve with the abilities that you have, he said.

The activities continued with “express corner.” Each participant was given a piece of paper to write words that can motivate and inspire to show that they, too, are heroes. Some of the participants realized that they had talents to give and enrolled themselves in the service they were interested in. The participants were also given time to visit the Parish Youth Apostolate (KBP) exhibition. The 38th YMG programme ended at 3.45pm with the prayer of the Jubilee of Mercy. — By Suzana and Philip