Day 1 of NCYC

So today was the first day of the real conference itself, which was mostly walking around the different booths. Which, by the way, are in a place called “The Reign Forest”, which is a particularly fantastic pun.

We went around to all kinds of different stands, and saw all kinds of examples of faith, from great Catholic music to a nun playing basketball. We got a lot of freebies, but also were exposed to a ton of aspects of faith.

After we saw a lot of the Forest, we got to walk down to “Kansas City Live”, an outdoor (yet heated) courtyard, where we saw Popple (an awesome Catholic band who are friends with Kate) perform a bunch of songs that really got the crowd laughing. And all the Hopkinton people with us that had never seen Popple before (and Chelsea) all thought they were awesome. Then we went to daily Mass.

Daily Mass was incredible. Besides us and the Hopkinton folks, there’s a group of deaf youth here, part of a larger deaf community joining us. Now, you’re probably thinking, “That’s cool, but a bit of a non-sequitur after introducing daily Mass.” Except that the priest was deaf too. It was really incredible to witness a Mass presided in sign language. There was an interpreter with a microphone, but the fact that we could witness that communication was really cool.

After Mass was the Opening Ceremonies. We wound up in the Grand Ballroom, which is technically the “overflow” room (full of about 3,000 people) from the Sprint Center, but it was really great, especially getting to see the Catholic musician Jesse Manibusan (who we had met earlier) on our stage while the majority in the Sprint Center had to watch on a screen. The opening band, Ceili Raine, was really energizing Irish-style Christian music, and a great way to kick off the Convention. The director of the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministers actually rappelled down out of the rafters to introduce the theme of “Show up, Step up, and Step out”, calling us all to be faithful disciples.

Overall, the first day was great, and I’m really looking forward to the concurrent sessions and workshops tomorrow to get into the meat of the Convention. It should be fun and faith-forming. I’ll blog more about it tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

~ Kevin