| On the Go with the Rogate Youth |
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| Written by Maricel Polmo - Rogate Youth President |
| Tuesday, 03 November 2009 13:16 |
 I’m a member of Rogate Youth (RY), and, I’m proud to be a Rogate Youth! I bet some of you guys just raised your eyebrows and thought, “Rogate Youth? Is there such a group?” Well, yes indeed!Rogate Youth started in 2007. Its vision is to answer the challenges of life and vocation through the examples Saint Hannibal has shown. Its mission is to nurture the member’s personalities, to have deep faith in God, to be true at all times, to love, and to value others, especially the children. Majority of our group’s members, including myself, happened to be those kids who were being taken cared of by the nuns and seminarians and were taught catechism every Sunday at the Rogationist Seminary. As we grew up, we started to have the desire to have our own group where we could discuss more mature matters by ourselves. Like an answer to our prayers, the Rogate Youth was formed. My experience in RY taught me how to serve my fellow youth. As part of the first batch of officers and core group, I was given the chance to speak my mind. Sustaining the group was tough, but RY is different. I learned that there is no way to be a perfect leader, but there are many ways to be a great one. The members possess different attitudes and it’s hard to reach out to them. RY even helped me to be open-minded. I learned that I shouldn’t be fixated with just my own thoughts; that I should try to evaluate my environment and assess whether the things I wanted to be done needs to be altered. I also learned that if everyone has leadership skills, even simple actions can mean the difference between outstanding and poor results. I learned how to build trust among my fellow youth. If I trust them, the team will do trust me, too. There’s also interdependence - I should make sure that each one has a fair share of the responsibilities. In a youth ministry, there should be no competition. I learned to avoid sugarcoating things just because I’m afraid of conflicts. I learned to be proactive. When I joined RY, I was able to live out and share the Gospel. They say that the youth of today is exceptional. True! RY made me realize that we need to be explicit about the fact that faith is the only underlying motivation in the things we do. What are words without faith anyway? Dealing with different personalities within the group, in order to draw close to God, is like building communion and taking part in the richness and diversity of charisms of our church. Prayer also plays a vital role in my RY life. Every time I pray with the group, I have the confidence to drop the tangles of my life and just leave them in God’s hands. Praying with them is like having a wake-up call from all of my preoccupations. It feels so good to know that when I come at the end of my rope, God is there to take over. Casting a look at RY now, I can say that between our spiritual life and openness to reality, mobility for our mission/vision and reflection to action, my group has now embraced the challenge the church has given us. Someone has said “Beginning is half done.” RY may still be a young group, but I can now affirm that, little by little, we are envigorated and empowered. After all, in youth ministry, leadership entails understanding that becoming a good leader is a process, one that never ends. We’re still testing the waters, because doing so will empower us. As we always say, “We may not be the best, but we are the only one!” |
| Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 November 2009 14:22 |