Paul began his talk with a story about his first honest prayer to God. It happened at a Steubenville Conference when the host invited the teens to pray. At first he didn’t want to. He was used to being the jokester, not the serious guy. But when he saw his friends around him praying, he eventually offered up his own awkward prayer. He joked about how different girls are from guys when it comes to crying. Like most guys, he did not want to cry. But the tears flowed that day, after saying his first honest prayer to God.

Prayer at our conferences happens in so many ways: praying with one another, for one another, and simply opening our own hearts to Jesus. We hope you enjoy this gallery of some of our participants praying in all of these ways. Please pray for us!

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Maria is proud to be a cradle Catholic from St. Simon Parish in St. Louis where she attends youth group, and goes to Mass every Sunday with her family.

But, after being made fun of for being Catholic, she put her faith into a box, becoming somebody she had never intended to be.

Then, on a Saturday night during Adoration at Steubenville, she realized she needed to face up to God and what she had done – and once again take pride in her Catholic identity.

Quotable

“I am not going to hide my light under a bushel basket to appease other people’s opinions.”

If you want to know the true definition of relationship goals, meet Denny and Tammy Handley. With this being Tammy’s 9th Steubenville Conference and Denny’s 30th, they absolutely make this weekend a significant part of their lives.

Aside from eating Chick-fil-A in the PSU and jamming to Adam Bitter playing their favorite songs, Closer and Light the Fire, they love seeing many teens’ hearts being touched by God in different ways throughout the years.

Denny’s favorite Steuby moment thus far was in 2014 when they began to do a Call to Baptism during the Vocations Call at the end of the weekend. The following year, a girl named Rebecca Wood stood up at this moment and by 2016, she was baptized into the Catholic Church.

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Yeshua.

A post shared by Steubenville St. Louis (@steubystl) on Jul 22, 2017 at 9:40pm PDT