YL Capernaum Everywhere

Together, Young Life and the Catholic Church have tremendous opportunity to reach every kid, everywhere with the gospel. Through a shared passion for Christ, kids and mission, this rising tide of cooperation is making significant contributions to the new evangelization described by Pope Francis. Overall, Young Life is committed to working with the Catholic Church by: • Training our staff and volunteers to minister to Catholic teens in ways that respect and reanimate their Catholic faith in Jesus. • Encouraging Catholics to serve as Young Life staff, volunteer leaders and committee members. • Working with Catholic dioceses, parishes and schools to invigorate the faith of young Catholics. This is all absolutely relevant and true for our Capernaum Clubs and friends too. A significant way Capernaum can come alongside our Catholic families and local parishes is to connect them with existing resources that provide specialized catechism curriculums and plans, inclusion resources, a...

We are so grateful to Katie Vidal, Area Director, Tucson Capernaum Young Life for all her amazing and intentional work on these discipleship plans!  Thank you so much, Katie! Over the last few months, we have been brainstorming ways to be more intentional about providing our friends and their families with resources as they transition out of Young Life Capernaum and into a lifelong faith community. We know that across our country, people with disabilities are underrepresented in our churches. Many of our friends and families expressed that they weren’t sure how to begin conversations with church leaders about the skills and gifts God has equipped them with and the ways that they want to use those gifts to serve in the Body of Christ. We wanted to create a tool that our friends can bring to their churches to express their individual discipleship goals and the ways that they would like to serve in their church. We modeled our Capernaum Personal Discipleship Plan after the on...

Thank you John from Young Life Capernaum, Santa Clarita Valley! Sammy Sosa experienced his first time at camp at Lost Canyon Capernaum week this summer! In fact, it was his first time away from home! Sammy has been in a wheelchair his entire life, and he needs a transfusion every other day, so going away from home has never been an option for him.  However, with the help of his amazing YL leader, Curt, Sammy was able to go to camp, and he had the “best week of his life!” He rode horses, went on the big swing, danced, pied his leader in the face, made some new friends with the campers and buddies, laughed, heard about God’s precious love for him, and basically got to be a teenager!  Sammy is smart, friendly, full of jokes, and he always has a smile on his face. During cabin times, Sammy shared his story and his struggles. Growing up with a disability, he often wondered why he was ever born. He said he spent some years being very angry and bitter with God.  But...

We LOVE this club idea from Robb  Schreiber, YL San Diego North Most of their friends come dressed up for club and the leaders also bring some extra items for their friends who didn't bring a costume. Superhero Shuffle: basically works like a cake walk Printed 27 pics of superheroes that we placed randomly all over the room and while the music played, we walked around until the music stopped everyone moved to a superhero. We printed all 27 names and called 3 out each round like bingo. Example: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Mr Incredible.  We bought superhero figurines from the Dollar Tree and some activity books that were a superhero themed. Each kid would get a prize. After that round we would pull those superheroes off the floor and play again. Each round we call out 3 superheroes, give out prizes, and then pull them from the floor until there were only a few superheroes left and the kids had to choose from the last remaining superheroes on the floor, so we had mult...

Gathering information about our friends so that we can love and serve them is crucial when it comes to club, contact work and camp! We love this idea that Heather Powell and her team created! They gather the specific details on these cards , add a photo of each kid and then print them out as pages. Those pages are then in plastic sleeves inside of a binder and leaders can review or glance at when needed! *To protect her friends, we changed the photos on two examples and left details blank; as well as kept info on two (so you can see what they included) but took out the photos of those friends.