“What have you gotten into that has made you forget that you belong?”

This quote sums up the entire message that Noelle Garcia conveyed to the conference this evening.  What struggles have caused distance between us and Christ?  What has made us forget that He loves us and longs for us to live in relationship with Him?

Noelle, after sharing some crazy stories about her family, brought to mind another story.  The raising of Lazarus.  Jesus went to Judea and was told by Martha that Lazarus was dead, and even blamed Jesus for not being there sooner.  After this, Jesus told Lazarus to rise and exit his tomb. And Lazarus did just that.

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Mary Sophia from LEAD is a parishioner at Mary, Mother of the Church in the Archdiocese of St. Louis where she is a member of the parish youth group. She recently graduated from Mehlville High School, and in the fall she will be a freshman at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Tonight we had the privilege of hearing her share about the first time that she let God into her life. In 8th grade, during a time of deep personal struggle – her mom had been diagnosed with cancer – she started to resent God, and thought that He had forgotten about her.

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Fr. Mike started his talk with a question that is asked by most people, “How do I get to Heaven?” He then said that most people believe that good people go to Heaven when they die, but that is untrue.

Fr. Mike gave us this scenario: If you die and are standing before God and He asks, “Why should I let you into Heaven?” What would you say? “Because I am good.” or “Because I go to Sunday Mass?” None of these would be good answers. He then explained that the correct answer would be: Because Jesus Christ died for me, and because of that I have chosen to live for Him.

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David began by bringing a few teens up on stage. He asked them to quickly define these words: to date, dating, seeing each other, and hooking up – according to today’s culture. The answers were quite despairing. Answers included talking about sex, no strings attached, and conditions.

David then asked the teens about the goal of dating. The arena all answered in unison, “marriage”. So, according to our culture, we are supposed to prepare for this sacred union of marriage by a no strings attached and a hook up culture. Really?

The world is constantly disintegrating the ideas of the way of dating and marriage that God has for us. David explained that, “The world doesn’t understand the sacredness of marriage”. So how do we get back God’s idea?

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Kate Rumping will be at both of our conferences this summer. If you are here week one, you will find her volunteering her time as an usher, and if you are here week two you will find her chaperoning the young people in her youth group – Defenders of Christ Youth Ministry from St. Joseph Parish in Imperial, MO – for which she is a core team member. Kate has been attending SteubySTL conferences since 2004, and over the course of these past 15 years she has been a teen participant, young adult, chaperone, and volunteer.

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