Totus Tuus 2015 has come to an end. My summer of teaching kids about the Catholic faith is over. Which means this will be my last blog post. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read my posts this summer!
Throughout the summer I learned and grew in ways that I did not plan to. My attitude and perspective on a lot of different things in my life has drastically changed.
In a couple weeks, I will be heading back to Chadron and will be continuing school as a junior. As a journalist, my life rarely has a break from a hectic schedule, but after this summer of spending all my time at the church, praying, and with people who are full of faith, I will be rearranging my schedule to make more time for church.
This summer has changed me. The way I look at life and different priorities in my life has definitely changed and going back to school with these differences are scary.
Every week we talk to the kids about different fruits of the mystery, and my teammates will tell you that Wednesdays were always my favorite day of the week, for multiple reasons. 1. We get to wear jeans. 2. It’s the potluck night. 3. I get to tell the story of my confirmation saint—St. Maximilian Kolbe (http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=370#wiki).
The mystery and fruit of Wednesdays were Crowning of Thorns and moral courage. Every week I would talk with the kids about what they can do when they see other people being made fun of or when they are getting made fun of. I ask them if they have ever been made fun of for being Christian or Catholic. It made me happy every week that there were rarely any hands that went up.
When I was in high school I wouldn’t have raised my hand either. In high school it was easy to defend my faith because most of the people in my class were Catholic. Since going to college though, I have a new outlook.
I tell the kids every week that we can stand up for Jesus when He is getting picked on and made fun of by simply saying we love Jesus. I tell the kids, if we act the way Jesus wanted to act, we are making Him happy. If we walk away from a fight or if we just show those “mean” people love, we will make Jesus happy.
If the kids learned one thing from me all summer, I hope they learned that we are supposed to love everyone, even those who treat us badly. I also hope I’ve learned the same lesson and can be an example of that when I’m back in Chadron, out of my Totus Tuus safe zone.
Jordyn Hulinsky