Father Chris Martin shared, near the end of Mass today, that sometimes we make presumptions. And that’s not good.

Presumptions can be obstacles to evangelization.

Perhaps we presume that everyone who attends one of these conferences has a relationship with the Lord, or perhaps we assume that everyone who came here this weekend is Catholic.

Father Martin called up to the front of the room a young man named Alex, from Topeka. Fr. Martin explained that Alex had attended this conference last year, and at the time he was not Catholic. And now he is, because an invitation to become Catholic was extended to him last year during this conference. Alex was met with a thunderous round of applause.

There’s more.

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Mary Kate has been coming to SteubySTL since 2006, and this weekend is her 25th Steubenville conference!

If you were here last weekend – or if you watched the Livestream – you know that she was the female worship leader (and she killed it, by the way). Between conferences this year, she has been volunteering her time as a liaison, helping with LEAD. And if you are here this weekend, be sure to say hello to her in the bookstore (and go back and view the Livestream of worship last weekend; did you hear that she killed it? well, she did.) Besides those roles, she has also been here as a teen participant and as a young adult chaperone.

When she is not here at Steubenville, Mary Kate spends her time working as the Campus Minister at Notre Dame High School, an all girls Catholic high school in St. Louis Missouri. She also leads praise and worship for various ministries, youth groups, retreats, and conferences. She loves to listen to Taylor Swift albums on repeat until she comes out with her next one. “RIP the old Taylor, I miss you”. She loves to get creative by painting, songwriting, sewing, playing guitar, beading, bedazzling (not really, but she wants to bring it back), decorating new spaces, etc…

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Grace – who is from Chicago – grew up in a normal stable, Catholic family. She always knew that God wanted to be in her life.

One time, while kneeling in Adoration at one of our conferences, she felt nothing. She thought that something was wrong with her, so she decided to just listen to the music. Then, a lyric from one of the songs spoke to her heart:

“If Your grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.”

With those words, she experienced an overwhelming sense of being in a large ocean, and envisioned the people all around her as waves crashing. She knew that God was with her, and with everyone else, even though she didn’t feel it. As Grace said so eloquently:

“The most important thing is that you are here with God, and He is here with you.”

This is Missy’s 6th summer volunteering at SteubySTL. Most of these summers involved helping the Social Media crew led by Paul Masek, who is her brother-in-law! He gives her a new responsibility every summer. She said, “Either he doesn’t like what I did the summer before, or he just likes to mix things up. I have no clue!” (spoiler alert: she’s just really good at a lot of things).

She has written for the blog, run the SnapChat stories, and this year she has been updating the Instagram Feed and helping her sister Lisa Masek take pictures on week two. So, if you see her lugging around a big camera, strike a pose – you could be on Instagram!

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Oscar began his talk during our men’s session this morning by talking about how we men like to win. That’s true. He then led us in a baptized and very fun version of “All I Do is Win”.

Oscar mentioned how we can, sometimes, leave men’s session talks feeling like men are evil, bad people. However, he spent most of the time building us up, so that we can know that we are winners, loved by the Father.

The world tells us that we need to be strong, play the part, and not show weakness or emotions. But we are more than that…we are greater than that.

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