Well……it has been way too long…..I have not blogged in months! Forgive me! My new goal for 2009 is to blog at least every other week if not every week. Hopefully, this will give you a window into the “behind the scenes work” that goes into putting on a Life Teen event. So a side note about me….I like order. I like excel sheets and color coding, alphabetizing, and bullet points. I like them all. They make me happy. I tell you this because that is how my blog is going to look and

In January, Life Teen (along with Mustard Seed Communities and CRS) hosted the second Youth Minister’s Mission Trip. The purpose of this trip is to give youth ministers a hands-on experience of a mission trip as well as training on how to lead a teen mission trip. This trip was born from a desire to empower more youth ministers to give their teens an experience of loving and serving Christ in the poor. The mission team that God assembled was as varied as the locations they came from. 9

Many of you have been asking about the status of the Basic/EDGE conference in Houston on Oct 12-15, 2008 at St. Anthony of Padua. We apologize for the delay of information available as we were waiting for the hotels in The Woodlands (outside of Houston) to get back to us about the level of damage they received. At this time, the La Quinta is unable to guarantee that they will be able to accommodate our participants. We encourage you to book your rooms at the Drury. The Drury Inn did suffer some damages

Hi there! Well, get out your calendars…..I have 2009 dates and locations!!!!!! This list is not complete, we still have a few dates to add. Keep your eyes on the website as we begin to put out information for 2009 events and begin to open up registration. Retreats and Training Conferences: YM Retreat: January 27-30, 2009 – Camp Covecrest, Tiger, GA Spring Training: March 16-20, 2009 – Camp Covecrest, Tiger, GA Women’s Retreat: April 24-26, 2009 – Camp Covecrest, Tiger, GA Training

Check out a snapshot of yesterday at Spring Training at Covecrest in Tiger, GA. People traveled from all over the country to Covecrest to plan for an entire year’s worth of programming for their parish youth group.

Hi there! Spring is in the air here in Phoenix. I know most of you, you are still in coats and wishing for the warm weather to make its way to your city. Maybe you should come visit us in Phoenix! Speaking of visiting Phoenix, have you started thinking about Life Teen Convention in June? know June seems like a long ways away, but it’s really not! It will be April next week. That means Convention is only 2 months away. Can you believe that? I have been on the airline websites for the past few

Hi there everyone! Well, I just returned to the office from a two-week trip to Camp Covecrest in Tiger, GA. We had a great turn out for the Youth Minister’s Retreat – about 60 youth ministers! It was wonderful to be able to talk with so many of them and get to know them. That is one of my favorite parts of my job. After that, several of us on staff and other contributors gathered to begin working on programming for summer camps. I want to be a teen at camp this year! It is going to be awesome.

The lovely Christina McShane sent me these snapshots from last week’s YM Retreat at Covecrest: What a good looking bunch. “Throw your hands in the air-yer… …wave ‘em like you just don’t cay-yer.”

Happy New Year Everyone! So have you made your resolutions for 2008 yet? I hope so, and I hope that one of them for all of you youth ministers out there is to TAKE SOME TIME FOR YOURSELF this year! Speaking of time for yourself, it’s not too late to sign up for the Youth Minister’s Retreat out at Covecrest in 3 weeks. As of right now, we have 55 retreatants signed up. The theme of the retreat will stem from Benedict XVI new encyclical on Hope. Besides working on youth minister’s retreat,