Desert Flower has got a small seedling

During the holiday camps, the youth from the various communities share an intensive time together and develop friendships with fellow youth from all over Israel. These friendships are very important as the adolescents get to know others like them who share a common faith. This companionship helps to strengthen them through the difficult process of identity building in puberty. While some of the kids have a countdown on their phone telling them how many days are left until the next holiday camp will start, we were asked to organize regular meetings where these youth could get the chance to see each other on a monthly basis and therefore shorten the time between the holiday camps.

During the past weekend, for the second time, the Catholic youth of the Saint James Vicariate met for two days. We were invited to stay at Saint Peter’s monastery in Jaffa for the night and met there on Friday evening. We started the weekend with a challenge. Divided into two groups we tried to complete the same mission defined as “an escape room” - different series of puzzles had to be solved, keys and hidden doors needed to be found. This was an exciting start with some brain work, lots of group work and some fear.

Saturday was spent with a barbecue in the park of the Jaffa port, where we celebrated the birthdays of those having had birthdays in the past month and did some group work on identity building. We closed the weekend with Hebrew language mass in Tel Aviv at ‘Our Lady Woman of Valor’.

For the following month, we are planning to meet in Haifa.