St Patrick's Parish Blacktown

22 April 2010

The first 8 months of the World Youth Day Parish Intern

by Philippe Dulawan

Upon taking 5 minutes to reflect upon what has been a truly awesome experience working in and around the Blacktown St Patrick’s Community, I am amazed and surprised that April is my 8th month in this opportunity. These last 8 months, in my perspective has seen great growth for Blacktown St Patrick’s Parish and for many members of the community, my own and Christine’s personal development and our respective Ministries. Often, I am caught up always looking forward to the next challenge, opportunity and heading in all directions. Through this experience I believe I have become a bit more reflective and I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate some of the achievements that we have shared as a community through this World Youth Day program.

Little Miracles has transformed into the Children’s liturgy, taking the great work of Meg Stone and building upon this foundation. The Children’s Liturgy is now held every two weeks at the 10am Mass, providing our primary school children the opportunity to learn about the Gospel in a more easily understood forum. More children are attending these meetings and some of their great work is displayed within the church.

Of course this wouldn’t be possible without our volunteer teachers, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the teachers who are currently involved with this ministry; Sandra, Mel, Alex, Lisa and those who are in the process of coming on board; Tony and Jose. Keep up the good work guys! As these guys will tell you it’s an awesome time and is rewarding for both you and the children.

If anyone is interested in joining this ministry please let me know – my contact details are below. There is absolutely no commitment required to show interest, we can allow you to visit a class and show you the process. This will show you how much effort is required; you will never be alone and will always have a buddy teacher to assist.

The Young Adults group has started and has seen many old faces return and new faces become one. There has been a range of successful events from our first Pizza night, our beach outing turned movie – celebrating the environment, going as a group to Theology on Tap and the successful running of the Compassion BBQ that raised $720 for this cause. It has been great making new friends and being able to see familiar faces around the community. Watch out for future events and join the SPY facebook group for regular updates.

I’d like to also list some of the achievements of Christine my colleague and friend who has done so much! Not to mention the creation of the AFRICAN CHOIR! They are amazing! I’ll let Christine elaborate on this. She has also recently organized the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.

From this opportunity I have myself learnt and progressed a great deal through the support and involvement within this program and how this interacts with the community. I think the greatest lesson I have learnt is that there is opportunity for those who seek it to achieve and make St Patrick’s, The Parramatta Diocese and the overarching Blacktown community a better place to be in. We are the Church, the improvement of our community doesn’t start with the Priest but each individual who makes up this community. It has been a pleasure to get involved in activities and meet members of the community who I have never met before.

There are so many wonderful things in the Parish that we have and are grateful for, even better is that there are members of the community who just have amazing stories to tell and so many lessons to be learnt.