Advent

I found a neat Advent calendar on the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) website. You can access it here. It has daily readings for Advent as well as discussion topics for families, prayers and reflection topics.  Check it out! Remember, Advent starts the Sunday after Thanksgiving!

Confirmation Ropes Course

Each year, our Confirmation class participates in a Ropes Course at Brethren Woods in order to learn some valuable lessons about teamwork and ourselves. We start out with some games where we get to know each other's names. Usually the teens in the group know each other, but there are often adult sponsors that do not know everyone. This is also a great way to break the ice and get people talking. We then move into some trust activities. These are particularly important because the challenge course has some difficult activities for the group to work together on, and if we don't trust each other, it makes them much harder to do. We had several volunteers to do a trust fall with the group where they fell back into the group and we actually picked up and moved around by members of the team. It is quite fun, if you allow yourself to trust the others!

Then we had a few games that tested our listening skills, cooperation and planning. I don't want to give away the outcomes in case any of you are ever given the opportunity to play a similar game, but suffice it to say that we handled the challenge well.

We had to get to a remote village across the Amazon river and the waiting crocodiles!

After the team building activities, we moved into the woods to try our hands at some more challenging...um...challenges! Our leader, Seth, decided to take us straight to one of the more difficult challenges: The Wall. There is a very tall wall that each member of the team must get across with the help of the other team members. We had to work together to come up with a plan and then implement it. I must say that we did a really good job!

First, Randi had to explain some cheer leading moves to Meade:

Then we got started hauling people up and over the wall. Even the adults went. Here's Deacon Fred:

Everyone had to work together and takes turns helping to pull people up the wall:

We actually managed to get everyone safely over the wall! The next challenge involved getting a rope swing to swing over "the ocean" between "two ships." Sounds easy, right? Well not if the rope is stuck between both sides and you have to get it to move from a stationary position. We got that figured out, though, and everyone got to swing across.

All in all, we had a great time with the ropes course. I think the teens and adults really learned a lot about each other and themselves while working together. I can't wait to do it again next year!