I attended a one day camp at school...
The camp was meant for the Catholic boys in St.Paul Secondary...
I was awake early at 7am to get ready to go to school...
My father sent me there...
I was excited as I already knew who was facilitating the camp...
FATHER DANNY!!!
The most hilarious priest alive...
Since he was facilitating, I was sure its gonna be fun...
So I arrived there around 8am...
Some of them were already there when I arrived...
I registered myself and got my name tag...
My friends were there already...
Ezra was there...
We were at the hall upstairs...
So we waited for others to come....
It was a cold morning as it had rain earlier....
In the chilly cool morning, we waited and chatted...
Not many turned up as expected...
Only around 20 turned up where the rest arrived later on when sessions had begun...
Soon after, the teachers arrive and so did Father Danny...
I learnt that he was in school since 8am loitering around...
And after chatting with Father and the teachers for awhile, session was about to begin...
We started off with the praise and worship session...
The singing was rather dull as many of them did not sing along...
After the singing, Father commented on the singing and made a joke out of it..
He mentioned about the cold morning which was suitable for...sleeping :P
He then requested that we move to the Form 6 classroom downstairs as it would be easier to hear each other in a smaller room rather than shouting in the hall...
It was a good idea and so we cleaned up the hall and quickly went down..
As they were organising themselves downstairs, I was closing up the hall...
I went down a joined them after that...
We rearranged the tables to put 5 group of 4 tables....
Then, when everyone entered and moved to the table of their choice, Father told us to stand at the back...
He used the number method to decide our group counting from 1 to 5...
I was in group 3...
So was Ezra, Zeke, Russell, and Charlene was in my group as well...
After rearranging, Ezra was separated and put into another group...
Once he was done arranging the groups, session began....
The teachers were kindly asked to leave the room for our first session...
Father Danny started with asking us about "What I like about being a Paulian"....
Then he started to talk about it and told some stories...
He mentioned a lot of stuff about how privileged we are to have a Catholic community and still continue to be called a Paulian...
He said one day when the school is taken over by the Malays, the name Paulians might be called Muhammadians... Haha... A real laugh...
But then he told us about the story of how Christians and Muslims actually worked together to fight for their rights against the Jews in the past....
And then we went on, he asked some people what they like about being a Paulian...
Then, he gave each group a mahjong paper to write it down...
Once we were done, he asked us to write "What I dislike about being a Paulian" .....
After writing down both the likes and dislikes, he asked us to present it group by group...
There were all kinds of funny answers and we had a great laugh...
Father commented on certain stuffs here and there...
We could share openly as the teachers were not there and it was only among us and Father...
After the session was over, we went for our tea break...
We had some mee hoon and tea....
During the break, I was asked to bring the small Bibles from the prayer room to the classroom and so I did along with the help of some others...
After the break, we returned to the classroom....
Once we were settled, Father asked us to sing the song 'Above All'...
I joined the group in front as the singing group and we sang it the first time...
After that, Father asked us to close our eyes and reflect on the lyrics of the song as he, Ezra and myself...
We sang the song meaningfully as the others listen...
It was a moment of awe as the room was filled with the praises to God on high....
Once we were done singing, he asked us this....
"Name me some teenagers from the New Testament of the Bible"
Everyone started with the easiest one Mother Mary when the angel Gabriel come down to her was a teenager...
Nobody knew who else there was after that...
So one by one, Father mentioned the names and the Bible texts which relates to them....
They were:
- John Mark from the Acts of the Apostle 15:36
- Timothy from 2 Tim 4:11
- Rhoda the servant from Acts of the Apostle 12:7-17
- And the boy who gave Jesus the 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes to feed 5000 men not including children and women
Later, he asked Daryl to read from the Gospel of Luke 15:11-32 about the prodigal son...
He told us to remember this line:
'Severe famine in that Country'
What did it really meant??
The boy could feed the pigs when they mentioned 'severe famine' ...
By right if it is severe, there should not even have been food to feed the pigs...
What Jesus meant when he told the disciples this parable was that the severe famine is the sign of emptiness ...
In that Country was referring to the prodigal son...
It was fascinating how that line could hold such deep meaning...
After all the bible sharing stuff and all, he asked us about our struggles both in school and at home...
The teachers were again asked to leave during this session....
So everyone mentioned some struggles and Father explained and understood those struggles...
Then he asked some questions like, "Who has struggles with your parents?"
Something like that and people raised their hands according to the struggles...
Once all that was over with, he did some serious talk which was like some kind of advice to us...
He even told us some stories about others who struggle in life and all...
After that, we went for lunch...
We waited a little for the food to arrive...
As soon as the food arrived, everyone quickly went to help and bring the food in as everyone was hungry...
The food was spicy but delicious...
Some of us were literally sweating from the spiciness....
After lunch, we came back to the classroom...
I was not sure when but Father Danny had explained to us about another Bible text from
Mark 2:1-12 which was about a friend in need, is a friend indeed...
A was a story about how the faith of four men to help their paralytic friend made him well...
It was a great story to show us about helping others in our faith life...
Anyways, after lunch, the main program was the role play...
After discussing about the struggles and all, he asked each group to prepare a role play whether about the struggle at home or in school...
It was all spontaneous but it was done well and the message was there...
It was funny too..
My group did about "How you are treated is not necessarily how you should treat others"
After all the role playing, Father had taught us how to pray and also told some more stories...
He prayed for us and blessed us...
Once it was all done, Miss Lucy gave Father Danny a token of appreciation..
The tables and chairs were rearranged to its original positions while I was with Joan going to keep the mini Bibles back to the prayer room...
We were all given each a necklace of the Divine Mercy which was blessed by Father Danny...
Father had left in a hurry...
He did not have enough time to share some other things he planned out for us sadly...
Either ways,
We had fun that day....
Though it was half a day we learnt a lot of valuable stuff as teenagers and students...
Father Danny truly is awesome and we are blessed to have him, a Paulian and a Seremban local to be with us and share with us the love of Christ...
God bless us and I continue to pray that Father Danny remains healthy and continue to inspire more youths all around...
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