For one of our Wednesday trips, the pre-novices and I went to our school in New Rochelle, New York. We got to hang around the school, meet with the director for awhile, sit in on some classes, and give a few vocation talks to the religion classes. The high schoolers are great and really seem to learn a lot at the school. Although as good as the become, I still noticed a few of them trying to cheat before a class or text message in class when they knew I was watching them. Aww… high schoolers.
Anyways, I gave a vocation talk to some freshman and I’ve never gotten so many good questions back about the religious life. Some even came from kids that are probably not Catholic. After school, and hanging around the kids for a while longer while they waited for rides, we headed back to Salesian residence. Okay let’s be honest, it’s a nice house. Granted they have 7 people living there and the house was given to us like 100 years ago, but it’s still a very nice place. We joined the community for prayer and a meeting and then dinner and game night to follow. There were three clerical brothers there so the age range was good. We played a game where you look in the dictionary and find a tough word and everyone must make up their own definition to try to get people to agree with their own. I think it’s called Balderdash, but I’m not sure. Today was a very nice day to get to see a real religious community in action doing some apostolic work.
Oh… and if you ever want to get the attention from a group of high schoolers, just tell them a story about how you know Barack Obama or someone else famous. They’ll listen right up (even though afterwards you have to tell them it was a lie).
