Confirmation Trip
Confirmation is a sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church that strengthens and establishes faith, building upon the foundation laid by infant baptism. It typically follows instruction in the catechism and involves receiving the Holy Spirit. Before confirmation, a camp is often held to teach confirmands about the Holy Spirit and the significance of confirmation.
From June 21 to June 23, 2024, St. Joseph’s Church in Sentul hosted a confirmation camp in Port Dickson, in collaboration with St. Anthony’s Church (Jalan Robertson, Pudu) and the Church of the Risen Christ (Jalan Ipoh). The camp had 31 attendees: 18 from St. Joseph’s, 8 from St. Anthony’s, and 5 from the Church of the Risen Christ.
Before departure at 3.00pm on 21st June 2024, we had a 15-minute briefing and prayer session in the church, which was led by teacher Nelson Dass. Once that was done, at 3.25pm, we were ready to depart from St. Joseph, Sentul, to Port Dickson. The confirmands had a fun time in the bus as we were enjoying music together in the bus. After a long, fun ride, we finally reached our long-waited destination, Champagnat Youth Centre, Port Dickson, at 5.20pm. As soon as we reached, the confirmands got down from the bus to get their luggage. At 5.30pm, registration was held, followed by tea time for the confirmands. After a long, tiring day, we checked into our dorms at 6pm and got some rest to continue with the program planned out for us. After getting some rest, the confirmands had to gather at the hall. At 6.30pm, we had a welcome and intro by Teacher Richard. At 8pm, we had our first praise and worship, which was held by Sister Jeromya, Brother Shegith, and Brother Maria Immanuel, and soon we were ready for our first session at 8.30pm with the title “Who Am I?” This session was fully handled by teachers Kevin and Precila, who had come from the church of Holy Family, Kajang. This first session taught many of us about our true identity in Christ and our expectations. With that, the first day of our camp ended at around 10.45pm, which led us to supper. Soon after supper, we all headed to our dorms at around 11pm. This brought us to the end of our first day of camp!
The next day, on 22nd June 2024, the confirmands woke up at 6am to get ready to start our next day of the camp. Before going for breakfast, the confirmands gathered in the hall for their morning prayer at 7.50am and then headed for breakfast. Our second session started at 8.40am with the title “Who do you say I am?” This session was held by teacher Precila. This session has taught us how to build our relationship with Jesus and how to make it stronger than usual. This session ended at 10am followed by a tea break at 10am. Around 10.30am we had our third session led by teacher Nelson Dass. The title was “Sin and Salvation.” This session was more into the effects of sin and how we could prevent it. It also covered the types of sins and many more things. Right after session 3, there was session 4 with the title “Parent-Teen Relationship” by teacher John Bosco. This session was really emotional, as it explained many things about our parents to us. This session had many activities associated with it, as we had to write letters for our parents on what we had been keeping in our hearts for a long time, and we had to also read the letters written by our parents for us. Many confirmands felt touched and healed at this point in time.
It was indeed a really touching moment for many of us! This session ended at 1 p.m. From 1.00pm until 1.50pm, lunch was served to everyone. From 2.00pm to 3.00pm, the Eucharist was held, and it was done by the confirmands during our camp. Mass was celebrated by Rev. Fr. Fredrick, who is the parish priest of St. Joseph Church, Sentul. Right after mass, there was a tea break from 3.00pm until 3.30pm. Right after that was the long-awaited time… the beach time! At 3.30pm, right up until 6.15pm, we had our team building and our personal beach time!!! There were many fun activities that were planned out for us there. These activities was to be done in a group of five in each team. Right after solving many hurdles during our game, we finally had our personal beach time. We had a lot of fun at the beach. At 6.15pm, we had to head back to our dorms to shower. Around 7.15pm, dinner was served! We were also given ice cream as we all participated well during the team building activity at the beach. At 8.00pm until 8.15pm, we had our praise and worship, and at 8.15pm right up until 10.15pm, we had our session number 5, which was an inner healing about “restoring brokenness.” This session was done by both our speakers, teachers Kevin and Precila. During this time, many of the confirmands could work on healing their inner selves; for example, they could finally forgive people who they felt had been hard to forgive for a long time. After a long time of finally getting healed, we had to light candles after praying as a way of sacrificing our problems to our one and only God! The parent committee distributed T-shirts for us to wear the next day. At 10.15pm, right up until 11.00pm, we had light refreshments, and after that, we had some entertainment done by our confirmands. We all gathered together and sang many songs together, and some of us played games together as a family. Finally, at around 1.30am, we headed to our dorms to sleep after a very tiring day.
On the last day of our camp, which was 23rd June 2024, we all woke up at 6am as usual to get ready for our day. We started off our day by having our breakfast at 8am. Our last praise and worship was held from 8.45am followed by the session at 9am, titled “New Life.” This was more about the power of confirmation through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The session led by teachers Kevin and Precila. Right after this session, we had a short tea break from 10.45am right up until 11.15am.During this time, many of the confirmands were writing notes for other candidates, speakers, facilitators and teachers, as we had to put them into their individual envelopes. This was a really good idea as it was a source of encouragement for many of us. With that, we had our final and last session for the camp, which was about “summoned and sent.” This session was ended by teacher Richard Ganesh, which took place from 11.15am until 12.30pm, and ended up with a Thanksgiving praise, which was held from 12.30pm right up to 1.00pm. We had our lunch at 1.00pm, then headed to our dorms to clean up and pack our bags to leave and head back to Kuala Lumpur.
Before leaving, we took many pictures together to keep them as memories. After taking so many pictures, we finally headed down the road at 2.40pm. We had a lot of fun during the travel. We had a pit stop to stretch and then got back on the bus to continue our journey.
We laughed and laughed along the way. Some of them were taking a nap as they were very tired. Finally, we reached St. Joseph Church, Sentul, at 5.00pm. We were very excited to finally meet our family after 3 long days. We surprised our parents, as they did not know that we had already arrived at church. As we entered the hall to meet our parents, the parents clapped in joy that we had reached home safely. Many of us burst out in tears as we missed our parents a lot, and the sessions that we had gone through had taught us a lot too. We realized our mistakes and the way we acted with our parents, and we also realized how much we had hurt them, and we really regretted it. We apologized to our parents and chose to turn over a new leaf as we are heading toward our confirmation.
By Adeline Maria
View photos by Jeromya and Ruben Peter
View videos by Latisha
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