Pascua Juvenil

I have two roles at FyA 44 this year. The first is as one of the 2 religion teachers at secundaria. The second is as the sub-coordinator of the school's pastoral program. The first task of this second role came in organizing students to participate in a mini-retreat called Pascua Juvenil (Youth Easter).

The retreat was pretty easy to organize. It's a program run by Jesuits who are still in formation, so we requested 2 scholastics to come to Andahuaylillas for Holy Week to run the retreat. I also had to explain the retreat to all the students and pass around a list for them to sign up. Finally I had to make sure they got permission slips.

The retreat itself was a good experience. The kids who came enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. There was time for play and time for reflection on the mysteries of Holy Week. The problem was that so few kids came.

Part of the difficulty in getting participants was the school calendar. Holy Week fell on the 3^rd week of school; and Holy Week means a shortened week for the observance of the holidays. Last year there was school Monday through Wednesday. This year we only had school on Monday because of teacher meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. This means I had 11 days to get teenagers interested in coming to school on a holiday weekend. If you've worked with teenagers, or if you were a teenager, you know that's a difficult task.

The benefit of having a small group at the retreat was that it created more opportunity for me to get to know some of my students. But we don't want future retreats to have such low attendance. I'm not too concerned about participation in retreats that happen later this year because there will more time to pique students' interest and convince them that the retreat is worth the sacrifice of time.

As for last week, we just reminded ourselves that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, He is there.