The YWOG "pioneers" (2 girls missing from photo)

The first official Young Women of Grace group is now meeting in suburban Philadelphia!

It seems like just yesterday when I began to rework the Full of Grace Foundational Study into language more relevant to teens. It was a driving desire of mine ever since standing in a supermarket one day and flipping through an issue of Seventeen Magazine. It used to be full of fun reading for girls – how to wear your hair, how to tell if a friend was true, the right and wrong way to win an argument in school. Now it reads like a sex manual!

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, that these misguided over-sexed ideas were being poured into the minds and hearts of our young, impressionable girls. This kind of material doesn’t build girls up, it tears them down, makes them feel self-conscious about their bodies and uncomfortable with who they are. It encourages them to mimic the questionable stars whose own lives read like the script of a morally-bankrupt reality show.

No, what these girls need is just the opposite – they need a “magazine” that will introduce them to the truth about who they are - beloved daughters of God imbued with a genius all their own.

It wasn’t long before I realized that the simplest and yet most comprehensive packaging of this vital message was in our own Women of Grace® Foundational Study. And so I set to work revamping the book and the workbook into a magazine-style study that was written just for girls ages 12 to 17.

Sharing time

That was in 2009. Fast-forward to January 29, 2016 and I welcomed 11 girls into the first Young Women of Grace group. Ranging in age from 10 to 18, they are my “pioneers”. Several of them are thinking about becoming journalists, we have one prospective sister, another who aspires to be a stay-at-home mom and several who are still searching for God’s plan for their lives.

For now, we are working on one lesson per meeting – two meetings per month - but we’re flexible. If the girls feel they can read more than a lesson or two (none are longer than 5 pages) along with their other schoolwork then we’ll read more than one lesson at a time.

Our meetings follow the Women of Grace® format very closely. We have the same themes, prayer and discussion time. The only difference is that instead of a video the girls have activities.

These activities were designed by two expert teachers and are included in our Facilitator/Teacher’s Guide which will be available in just a few short weeks. It’s a 3-ring binder which makes it easy for facilitators and teachers to copy whatever activities they want to use for a particular lesson.

These activities include making a variety of foldables such as “How to Be A Saint in Six Easy Steps” and “The Gift of Emotions.” Small group activities include discussions on study material such as “Do You Believe in Ghosts?” or “What’s Your Evangelization Style?” Each chapter in the Guide ends with a “Bright Ideas” page and “Additional Resources” full of more ideas for fun activities.

Because every group is a little different, depending on the girls, my advice to potential facilitators is to use your imagination. My group seems to like music and because we’ve already agreed that singing and dancing is allowed in our meetings, we play our favorite Christian songs from our cellphones and dance away! And because many of our girls didn’t know each other before coming together in the group, we’re also enjoying “icebreaker” games that help us get to know each other.

The games must have worked because by the end of our first meeting, we were already identifying ourselves as “sacred sisters”.

This is going to be an exciting time for the little pioneers – and me! We can only thank God for bringing us together and to Our Lady of Guadalupe who has been entrusted with watching over all Women of Grace, both young and not-so-young!

Stay tuned for regular updates on the “pioneers”!

Click here for more information about the program.

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