LIFTED Rise and LIFTED Unleashed
On Thursday, 16th May and Friday 17th May, students in Years 7-10 attended the LIFTED Rise and LIFTED Unleashed events held by Catholic Youth Parramatta. Our St Andrews students were able to experience the beauty of our Catholic faith and experience the joy of being in community with others as they attended these days with other students from schools all across the Parramatta Diocese. Students were given the opportunity to listen to reflections on Pentecost, attend prayer workshops and engage in discussions with others. It was a great opportunity to experience the faith as a young person beyond the school gates. Overall the students had received a lot of insight and came back with new perspectives and fun memories. Here are some testimonies from our students:
On May 17th, myself and a group of year 9 and 10 students made our way to LIFTED Unleashed. This experience encompassed various activities to strengthen our relationship with the Lord such as praise and worship through music, and establishing a relationship through the gift of silence with students at numerous catholic schools. These aren’t typical ways to connect with our God, however discovering these new ways indicate that we can find a connection with our Lord simply by sitting alone in a room with our thoughts while sharing our thoughts with the Lord and listening, and singing along to Christian music. Moreover, LIFTED provided us with the opportunity to socialise with other attendees to establish friendships with the people close to our age, and to make connections. Essentially, the lessons I learnt from this experience have undoubtedly made an immense impact on me, drawing me nearer to the Lord, and I aspire to share this experience with my community, the St Andrews College community.
- Sabrina Dutong, Year 9
The LIFTED event lifted me and brought me so much closer to God. I got to dive deeper into understanding God and truly feel his presence throughout the entire journey. Whether it was through soulful music, connecting with new souls or sharing moments with like-minded individuals, it felt like a true blessing to be able to be a part of this beautiful event. Among the various workshops the one that resonated with me the most was the silence workshop. It allowed me and many other individuals to centre ourselves, embracing the quiet to reflect and connect with God profoundly. For someone like myself taking into consideration converting to Christianity I feel that this opened my eyes to the Catholic faith and has helped me get an amazing glimpse of it too! I hope to see more of these events come across as I would love to attend one of these again!
- Siyara Gauchan, Year 9
We look forward to giving students more opportunities to attend LIFTED events in the future and we’d like to thank the team at Catholic Youth Parramatta and the Mission Team at CSPD for the invitation.
Olivia Tan, FIAT (Faith in Action Teacher) Coordinator