At St. Joseph’s we are blessed with a vibrant Youth Group, who has so much potential. Our main goal is to help the youth establish a healthy, personal relationship with Jesus, and the community, to grow in faith, wisdom and human values. (Lk 2:52). When we see this growth in a youth, we as community celebrate and live out this conversion story in our youth group; we also expect the families of the youth to give them the moral support to continue in this life of conversion. We acknowledge the effectiveness of our youth ministry as we experience this transformation in our youth as they respond to the gracious activity of God in their lives. To make these changes and conversion of life a life lasting one, the youth need the support and encouragement from the families. The youth coordinator of St. Joseph’s Church, together with the pastor would like to help the families in different ways to embrace the spiritual growth their teenage sons/daughters are going through. As we see a mutuality of involvement here, we always welcome the support of the parents and the family members in this journey of faith. We make every effort to create an atmosphere where the parents can share this knowledge and concerns about their children. We do realize and understand the struggles and concerns the parents have. We also recognize that the parents know their teenage sons and daughters better than anyone. We hope and pray that we as one community can give our whole-hearted support and understanding to this growing generation of faith, in whose minds and hearts lies the future of the Church, the Kingdom of God.
Activities of the Active Minds:
Our goal is to have an activity every four to six weeks, August to May. That might not sound like many opportunities to get together, but we also rotate through the evening CCD classes and give talks, show movies and do activities with the youth, so they get together quite regularly and develop the feeling of belongingness. Some of the activities we have done in the past are bowling, swimming, skiing, visits to the nursing home and Seibel funeral home. We have also had many guest speakers come in and visit with our youth on a variety of subjects from career planning to the dangers of drinking and driving.
 Annual Steubenville Conference:
The BIG trip is the annual Steubenville conference in Saint Paul, Minnesota in July. This year we have 30 youth from St. Joseph and 9 from our sister community in Hazen, along with 13 adults making the trip. These youth work really hard all spring doing fund-raising to pay for their trip. Please keep the youth in your prayers, they need to know they have the support of the people around them. Let them know you care.
“My dear young people, you too offer to the Lord, the gold of your lives, namely, your freedom to follow Him out of love, responding faithfully to His call.”
John Paul II