SOUTHAVEN – Students and teachers hold their hands up in blessing over veterans during the school’s Veteran’s Day Mass. Father Greg Schill, SCJ, a veteran himself, celebrated the Mass. (Photo by Sister Margaret Sue Brooker)
COLUMBUS –Annunciation School students are the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge champs for the fifth consecutive year. Overall, the school logged 672,794 reading minutes and finished in the top 40 worldwide. Representatives from Scholastic visited the campus on Wednesday, November 8, to present the official award plaque and banner. The school community offered a huge thank you to the librarian, Terri Doumit, seen accepting the award from Scholastic Representative, Les Kevehazi. She coordinates this program every year. (Photo by Katie Fenstermacher)
JACKSON – Sister Thea Bowman students, dressed as book characters, shared their joy of reading their favorite books at the recent Reading Fair. (Photo by Shae Robinson)
JACKSON – Sister Thea Bowman students watch with amazement as teacher Carolyn Wilson demonstrates a science experiment.
BATESVILLE – The youth of St. Mary Parish constructed and released a helium balloon rosary on Sunday, October 29, following the 10:30 a.m. Mass – in honor of October being the month of the rosary. The youth put a special prayer in each balloon.
(Photo by Daniel Brennfleck)
GREENVILLE – St Joseph School Art Teacher Brian Speck and students Emily Blackstock, Mary Helen Duncan, Sarah Powers and Neely Chennault painted faces and helped make bead bracelets on Thursday, Nov. 2, at the River Regions Art Festival, sponsored by the Pilot Club of Greenville for area special needs students. (Photos by Missi Blackstock)
COLUMBUS – Annunciation School seventh grader, Mason House, collects donations for the Columbus-Lowndes Humane Society from students during morning drop-off. ACS students showed that they are “Paws”itively drug and bully free by bringing donations for the local shelter during Red Ribbon Week, Oct. 23-27. (Photo by Katie Fenstermacher)
GREENVILLE – Oct 23 – 24, St Joseph School students welcomed the NET Ministries Retreat Team fresh from the middle school retreat. Above, they play a game between presentations. “NET retreats are designed to present youth with the truth of who they are as God’s children and how true joy and meaning in life are found by accepting Christ’s gift of salvation and living as His disciple. Every NET retreat includes an extended time for the youth to pray and be prayed with to make a personal response to God’s invitation.”(Photo by Missi Blackstock)
MACON – More than 60 seventh and eighth-grade Catholics spent the weekend of Oct. 21-22 at Lake Forest Ranch participating in the inaugural diocesan middle school retreat. Youth groups came from Clinton, Greenwood, Jackson, Madison, Meridian, Pearl and Starkville.
The retreat was organized by Abbey Schuhmann, coordinator for youth ministry for the Diocese of Jackson. “In my first year in this position, I was getting lot of feedback about the need for a diocesan middle school event. More and more parishes were having active groups at that age level so they wanted an event,” she explained. “I saw it first hand at my own parish — seventh and eighth-graders were eager to be involved and wanting to do more and adults wanted things specifically age-appropriate for them,” she added.
A team from the National Evangelization Team Ministries (NET) led the retreat. NET coordinates and trains teams of young adults to travel the country for a year offering retreats. “We have had great experience with NET ministries in our diocese in recent years. They are dynamic, they provide high energy and their retreats are well balanced with fun and prayerful activities. They are young adults actively living out faith and great role models for our youth,” said Schuhmann. She pointed out that life on the road for a year is a huge sacrifice and the retreat leaders often share stories of their own faith journeys so they can inspire the students who attend.
Bridget and John Harwell brought young people from Meridian. “The facilities were awesome, setting was perfect and the spirituality was superb. The NET team’s energy was very good and our youth were extremely impressed by their testimonies,” said Bridget.
Priests from four parishes came to offer Reconciliation and when the service started, the teens jumped up to get a spot in line.
The theme for the retreat was Safety in Numbers and many of the presentations centered on the importance of friendship and community. “I was hoping it would be an opportunity for students in this age group to come together with their peers to know there are others like them on a similar faith journey. I want to acknowledge that being Catholic in Mississippi can be challenging at times, but I also want them to know there are youth all over our diocese facing these same challenges on a similar journey,” said Schuhmann
COLUMBUS – Annunciation school kindergarten students “stomp” through the hallways for their annual dino parade on Wednesday, Oct. 4. When the students complete their studies of the prehistoric beasts, they get to dress up and act out a little. (Photos by Katie Fenstermacher)
COLUMBUS –Father Jeffrey Waldrep shows second-grade students how a baby is baptised during a role-play exercise at Annunciation School.
GREENVILLE – Bishop Joseph Kopacz visited seniors at St. Joseph School on Thursday, Oct. 19. The bishop makes a point to visit each graduating class at some point during the year. (Photo by Missi Blackstock)
