Days 6 and 7

It's Friday after school.  As much as I love what I'm doing here, I will always look forward to the weekend.  Thursday was Day 6, and to be completely honest, I spent both class periods trying to invest in my students, getting to know them more.  So what did we do?  We opened up with prayer, and then I had each of them pull up their favorite songs so we could listen to them and had a brief conversation after each one discussing why they liked the songs and what the themes of those songs are.

Here is a combined playlist of both classes:

Treasure, Bruno Mars

Everything has Changed, Taylor Swift

Care, Kid Rock

You Will Not be Forgotten, Jessica Andrews

Can't Stop Us, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

Ships in the Night, Mat Kearney

Something to be Proud of, Montgomery Gentry

30 Seconds to Mars, Kings & Queens

Live Like you were Dying, Tim McGraw

Sunshine & City Lights, Greyson Chance

Amarillo Sky, Jason Aldean

Drivin Around Song, Colt Ford

To conclude that activity, I summarized how we all long for happiness, greatness, and loving relationships and continued with how our ultimate source of happiness is from God.  When all is right our relationship with Him, more than likely our other relationships will flourish.  

I then guided them to the book of Psalms which is filled with 150 "songs" telling them that these were the prayers that Jesus prayed and how they express the same desires that we do today in the music we listen to.

Another highlight was getting my students to follow the pope on Twitter and checking out what his message was for us.  It was pretty great :)

I will summarize today in pictures:

 

Thank you Mom and Margie for making the curtains to cover up the shelves!  It looks a lot nicer now!

Every human's nightmare...Clearly Satan did not want me teaching today.  

So I decided to switch up my entire plan (because I had no other choice since I didn't back up my lesson plans for today.  But hey, I kicked him in the face today with my students!  Check out the board/agenda.)

We read an article on White Sox catcher, Tyler Flowers and his love for the Catholic faith, talked about how sneaky the Devil is and explained what spiritual warfare is, told saint stories, one being about Blessed Chiara Luce Badano, and taught them a way of praying with scripture called "Lectio Divina."  We did that with the passage on one of Jesus' healing accounts Mark 5: 21-? where Jesus heals the woman who take a risk and touches Jesus in the crowd to be cured of her illness.  Check out what one of my students wrote:

Just beautiful.  I love when people pray.

  Also we recapped on the question of who Jesus is and why He came.  Do you like my image?  The first 4 symbols I borrowed from a lovely Protestant on Pinterest and continued the story of Jesus/Holy Spirit/Church :)

(Jesus came, died, rose, ascended, Holy Spirit/Pentecost, established the Church, the Church is a channel of God's grace, and basically that grace should be found everywhere based on us frequently receiving God's grace through the sacraments and prayer and should also be spread out all over the place.  Let's make a mess as Pope Francis suggests us!)

Now it is the weekend.  A time for rest, a time for service, hanging with my cousin Nick, lesson planning, and whatever else is ahead of me.  

Please know of my prayers for all of you reading this blog.  God love ya!