Article was submitted by Meghan Weber of Challenge Blessed Sacrament Parish in KY. Content was contributed from the Team Leaders of each group.
The Challenge Blessed Sacrament club is all about helping the girls make a positive impact on the world around them. The club has over fifty Challenge Girls in grades 5-8 who are led by fourteen great High School Team Leaders. At our first meeting the girls decorated rocks with positive, inspiring messages. Rocks were then taken home to leave around the community for others to find. Check out the facebook page NKY Hidden Rocks or Twitter #NKYHiddenRocks to track them. It was a fun and creative way to spread a positive message for the girls.
The eighth graders have been busy this Challenge year. We have been focusing on the theme of LIFE! All of the girls collected diapers from friends and family to donate to CareNet. We also spent a meeting making adorable blankets for future babies to use. We donated these to CareNet as well. At our last meeting, we were given the amazing opportunity to actually visit CareNet and give them all of the things we collected for them. The girls learned a lot about the mission of CareNet, and they were able to help out with small projects while at CareNet. It was so moving to learn about CareNet’s mission of accepting and loving all of the expecting mothers that arrive at their doorstep. All of the girls truly enjoyed being there, even while pulling weeds or sorting diapers.
The seventh grade Challenge Group is really enjoying their time together! The team leaders introduced the girls to a post-it-note project that will be ongoing this year. Each week the girls are to add a post-it-note to their mirror at home to grow in self-acceptance. At each meeting, the girls share something about their notes, recalling what is good about themselves, and they discuss how they are learning to have self-acceptance. After the club-wide paint rock project, the girls had fun making “stain glass” window decorations to be delivered to seniors in our community. The meeting before the visit, the seventh graders got to spend some special time with the Consecrated Women who helped prepare their hearts and minds to share God’s love to those they would visit. The girls visited residents at Atria, an assisted living community. Both the residents and girls enjoyed their time together so much that a future visit is planned. The girls got right to work making Christmas cards for their new friends. It’s going to be a great year for the this group.
So far the 6th grade challenge girls have been having a blast! We have just finished our first service project which was collecting cans and bringing them to BeConcerned. We decorated boxes and made a train out of them. We then split off into two groups and went around the neighborhoods collecting cans. Once we were done collecting the cans, we put them in the boxes and took them to BeConcerned. We learned about the history of BeConcerned and finished off with a tour of BeConcerned. This year we have decided to grow in the virtue of courage. We have lived out this virtue so far by being courageous and going out in the neighborhoods and collecting can goods. We have also been growing in the virtue of friendship. Every challenge meeting we read a Gospel and have a discussion. This helps us grow in friendship because we get to listen to each other’s opinions and what they thought the Gospel meant to them. Praying during challenge and saying our intentions also helps us grow in friendship because when we listen and pray for other’s intentions we show them that we care about them and their loved ones. Our next service project is going to be baking cookies and giving them to the Parish Kitchen. During the rest of this challenge year, we hope to continue to grow in the virtue of courage and friendship.
So far this year the 5th grade Challenge has learned a lot. We have talked about how words affect others, we learned hospitality, and also that we are the hands and feet of Christ. A few weeks ago we learned about hospitality by going to St. Charles Community, an assisted living facility in Covington. We played games with them, like pas the pumpkin (hot potato), had a Halloween themed photo booth, and passed out candy to the residents. We all enjoyed getting to know the people in the community and we think they were happy to have visitors, so we will be going back in the future. We have also gone to St. Mary’s Cemetery and cleaned up the graves for people that don’t have visitors. We said prayers for their souls that if they were in purgatory that they would go to heaven because it was All Souls’ Day earlier that week. These were some really fun activities that we feel made a difference and we have many more fun activities planned.