Mark and Beth Stevison are parishioners at Mary Mother of the Church Parish in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. They have been married for 24 years and have three boys. They met on a youth retreat (how cute is that?) called Teens Encounter Christ where Mark was on the music ministry team and Beth was a retreatant.
This weekend Beth is serving as an usher, and Mark is serving as a prayer minister – and he was a youth group chaperone last weekend. This is Beth’s 5th year attending our conferences, and Mark’s 6th.
Mark works as an IT analyst for a bank, is a part of the core team for youth ministry at his parish, and is a self-proclaimed techno nerd! He loves new technology and seeing how it works and how it can best be used to connect people! Beth is a 1st grade teacher’s aide for St. Catherine LaBoure School. She loves to put together Lego sets and color, but her favorite pastime is taking pictures and making them into cards or enlargements – it’s very therapeutic for her.
Beth’s favorite part of the weekend is Adoration. She says, “I love the environment in the Q. The way all the youth show their love for Christ through this event is AMAZING. They take whatever might be going on in their lives right at that moment and they let go of it and give it up to Christ.”
Mark’s favorite part of the weekend is the overall dynamics of the conference. He says, “The Q will go from a Catholic rock concert to quiet Adoration chapel all with in the same day! The music ministry team will take a song, turn it into a prayer, pass that prayer off to the conference attendees, stop playing the last refrain, and then the prayer fills the arena in such a powerful and special way. Just gives me goosebumps.”
Mark’s advice for keeping the spirit of the conference alive after the weekend ends? “Seek out opportunities to pray with and form authentic relationships with your peers. Attend youth group, Attend weekly Mass. Seek out Jesus in the sacraments!”
Beth’s advice to teens for keeping this experience going? “Always make time for God, even if it’s just saying a little prayer to Christ on your way to school. Take time to continue your relationship with Christ by going to youth group and maybe even seek out how to join a Christian group at your school.”
Mark’s favorite story from one of our conferences was about a chance meeting in the bookstore:
A group of teens kept telling this girl Mallory, “Just go ask, you’ll never know unless you ask!” I had to join in on this peer pressure with them, and paused and asked one of the other teens what we are telling her to go ask. She responded, “I want to buy the stand up cut out of Pope Francis, but I don’t have enough money to buy it”. I’m like, well we can’t do bargain basement prices on Pope Francis, I mean, this is Papa Francis. The teens encouraged Mallory to tell me why she wanted to buy this cut out. She looked at me and said, “I wanna take him to prom.” I found out she was only about 10 dollars shy of the asking price so I gave her the few dollars I had in my pocket – and then we promptly turned this into a crowd funding/panhandling experience in the bookstore so Mallory tocould afford to take her desired date to prom.
Beth’s favorite SteubySTL story:
Last year, the conference started out like normal in the Q, I was at my spot as an usher on the floor, and then I saw the kids coming out of their seats towards the back of the floor section – so I went back there to see what was going on and help keep things in order. When I got there, I found the kids dancing with a dinosaur. I later came to find out it was Sister Karolyn in the Dino Suit! I think it’s great when we as adults can get in there and interact with the teens, and show them we as adults know how to have fun, too!”
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