TYME OUT Blogs!

The view from the stage was great Wednesday night! 

I have to tell you, it is so rewarding to see “TYME OUT of the Cold” coming to fruition.  It was nearly a year ago when the lightbulb went on (lightbulb is my shorthand for “Holy Spirit,” by the way) and I thought, “I love music and I love TYME OUT, why not bring these two passions together somehow.”  Our staff have been very generous in putting energy and creativity behind this idea and I hope you’ll agree that we’ve had two very successful nights. 

 Dear friends,

November is the month we all make a special effort to say

THANK YOU! 

As Development Director, one of the many pleasures of my job is writing thank you letters.

I consider the letters as daily prayers of thanksgiving to you our friends for your monetary support, dedicated volunteerism, in kind gifts, and as prayer warriors of our ministry.

During this time of economic stress we appreciate your continued support. We understand you are bombarded with many worthy requests.  We are ever grateful of your loyalty to our mission: TYME OUT is dedicated to the faith formation and character development of youth empowering them to reach the fullness of their potential as individuals created in God’s image.  You allow us to carry on the mission!

You have been blessed to be a blessing!

You are truly a blessing to TYME OUT Youth Ministry Center.

With a grateful heart,

Kathy Wisnefski

Gift Development Director

Ever since TYME OUT’s beginnings, the Executive Director, either Sister Kieran Sawyer or now Ben Brzeski, has realized the importance of taking retreat time for a staff who leads and prepares for retreats for 9 months out of the year.  Therefore, once a month the TYME OUT staff takes a morning off from their daily jobs and come together with our spiritual Director to make sure that we are all spiritually ready for what we do.  We call this OUT TYME.  I would like to tell you about the OUT TYME we experienced this morning, October 28th.

Our Spiritual director is Sister Joan Penzenstadler, SSND.  Sister Joan opened OUT TYME with prayer concentrating on Autumn and expecially what we can learn from the Autumn trees.  The trees teach us much about letting go and standing vulnerable to the elements.  We then all shared stories of our vulnerability; when we freely chose to be open to the other, no matter who that other is; when we freely chose to stand firmly on our convictions amid controversy; when we freely chose to risk failure in order to discover and use our giftedness and potential.  Those stories were a wonderful sharing from our community.  This then led to the next activity which was the pumpkin carving prayer.  The pictures show our end result, but what we learned from the experience is something that cannot be easily shown.  However, it may appear on a future retreat when we are talking about forgiveness.  It may impact decisions each of us makes regarding family members and loved ones.  It certainly impacts the way we look at ministry.

I know we all feel blessed to minister in a place where personal spirituality is valued.  TYME OUT offers adult retreat experiences for parish and school staffs to do what we do.  Please check out our adult opportunities page.  The TYME OUT staff continues to pray for all those who come to us and those who we minister alongside.

                                 Lumen Christi 8th Grade Leadership Retreat 2008

I am strictly the program administrator at TYME OUT.  However, every so often I schedule myself to direct a retreat.  Those days on retreat are always the days that invigorate me to do my “real” job the rest of the weeks.  I had an opportunity to do a leadership retreat for Lumen Christi School in early October.  I would like to share with you my experience with this group of 8th graders.

At the beginning of 8th grade or at the end of 7th grade is the perfect opportunity to do a leadership retreat.  These kids are the leaders in their school and can set the tone for the whole school.  Lumen Christi’s theme this year for their whole school is “We walk in Faith.”  The 8th grade decided to come up with their own theme which was, “There is no ‘I’ in team.”  It is off of these 2 ideas that Jim Zellmer, a member of our retreat team, and I were able to build a leadership retreat to suit their needs. 

We made use of many activities, that were active and fun.  We played reverse charades and challenged each student on the challenge course.  We had a values auction and figured out what we would do if we were on a life raft.  We found out if there is time in our life for God by praying a prayer called God’s Time.  We discovered who we are with the help of the “Lion King” movie.  Each of these activities and many more made for a jam packed 2 days.  I am including some pictures so you can see the kids in action.

I hope some of my friends at Lumen Christi will jump on our blog and let everyone know how the retreat went for them.

I will be doing a retreat for St. Joe’s Wauwatosa later this week and let you know how that is going.

Peace,

Margie

Hi All,

We are back in fine writing form.  This new blog will give you a taste of TYME OUT from different staff here.  You will get to see and read the prospective of different members of our staff each week.  So this week and next week you will be hearing from me, Margie Lang the program administrator. 

I am scheduling retreats like crazy.  We have every weekend booked with at least 2 retreats until Easter on April 12th.  However, we always have room for Confirmation youth who might need to make up a retreat.  We call you, Individual Retreatants, which is a lot better than our old name for you, stragglers.  If you have missed your Confirmation retreat, please give me a call and I will help you find a weekend that will work for you.  We know a Confirmation retreat is a requirement to receive the sacrament of Confirmation, so we want to make this as easy for you as possible.  Either call me at 262-966-1800, or email me at youth@tymeout.org. 

Our building has been full of grade school groups coming for either a day or overnight experience.  We can always use help at these retreats.  If any of you are seniors in high school and would like to volunteer your time to help out on a retreat, we have a fantastic group called OverTYMERs.  This group is run by Lea, one of our retreat team.  Please give her a call at the same number above or email her at the same email address and she will give you a call back.

I will write more next week, but let me know what I can do to help you.  Just post a response and I will get back to you.  Glad to be back on the blog.

Peace,

Margie