The Simplicity of Faith--an email to a parent

Hi!  This is Father Quinn.  I am founder and director of Catholic Youth Expeditions.  When I was in high school you couldn't catch me dead on a religious retreat.  Well, I HAD to go on retreat for confirmation and I was mad because the Sweet 16 was that day and I was missing it!  A retreat back then for a teenager as it is now sometimes can be pretty boring.  Usually a retreat for a teenager consists of sticking us in a dark basement of the parish offices, school or church for a weekend with people telling us how important God is.  Well that was how it was then.  The intentions were good and God still did a good work in my heart back then.  The confirmation retreat was actually pretty powerful.

So when I got older and had to make a decision of not what I would live for, but WHO I would live for, I decided to give my life to this person by the name of Jesus Christ.  Have you heard of him?  Well that changed everything.  Then I thought to myself, "Self....what if we made faith FUN!  What if we spent the majority of our time outdoors instead of indoors and encounter the living presence of Christ in one another and in God's grand cathedral?"  We'll I wrote a mission statement and a vision statement (found on our website which I suggest you take a gander at) and we began taking young adults and high school students on outdoor adventure trips.  And guess it...it was fun.  Faith is meant to be shared and not lectured so we allowed the Holy Spirit to do his work just through prayer and fellowship and outdoor adventure. 

Today, our ministry has grown and we have our own properties in Door County, WI  We have five state parks to utilize and also a ski boat....which I personally enjoy very much.  We also have 25 young adults who are in college who work on our staff and they are fired up.  So I would recommend you come up and see it for yourselves.  Four days, three nights, in a tent, outdoors, lots of swimming and running around and lots of prayer too.  See you soon!