St. Francis by the Sea Catholic Church & School

Every other year, Catholic young people and their chaperones—youth ministers, campus ministers, parents, catechists, priests, coaches, and scout leaders—come together to pray, learn, and grow in their faith. In addition to opportunities to receive the sacraments of the Eucharist and penance, NCYC participants attend general and breakout sessions on topics relevant to living as a disciple of Christ in today's world, visit with organizations that provide resources and other support to youth and youth ministry, spend time in personal and communal prayer, and engage in service to others. 

On November 15th, a group of four teens with adult chaperones from our parish will be traveling to Indianapolis, IN to attend the 2017 National Catholic Youth Conference. It will be a great opportunity for our teens to experience the magnitude and diversity of our Catholic Church. Please pray for us. God bless you.

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 Day One - November 15th

The group took off early this morning to Jacksonville, FL!  Pray for a safe flight!

We started our journey to Indianapolis, IN.  We were super excited because is was an experience that we all could never imagine.  After a long wait for this day to arrive, we finally landed in Indiana and as we headed towards our hotel, we talked about how blessed we all were for being able to be here.  After getting settled in the hotel, we headed across the street to a restaurant that Hector made reservations for our first dinner together.  The restaurant's name was The Weber Grill.  The food was amazing!  After that long day and such a wonderful meal, we were all ready to get some rest.  When we arrived back at the hotel, there were so many teens from all over the nation and we all had one main thing in common, our "Catholic Faith" .  We were all so very excited for NCYC to begin!

Day Two - November 16th

Today we were so excited and happy that this day has finally arrived.  We met in the lobby of the hotel very early in the morning and headed to Cafe Patachou to have breakfast together and plan our day.  After we ate, we went outside and went to visit the State Capital Building for a self-guided tour.  As we walked towards the building, we started to notice the attention to detail of the structure and all the history within.  After our tour, we headed to the Circle Center Mall to explore and to have lunch before the big opening of NCYC.  The time has come!  We headed towards the Indiana Convention Center.  It was so big, that we did not know where to start!  We decided to start at the Thematic Village which was filled with hundreds of vendors from books, jewelry, music, and lot so of interesting people to talk to from a Priest to a singer who sang Rap and Hip Hop, to another Priest that did magic tricks for us to Monks, Bishops, International Speakers, artists, and so much more.  It took us four hours and we were only able to cover 1/3 of the ground of the Thematic Village.  We headed towards the Lucas Oil Stadium to attend the entertainment and general session.  We waited outside on the East Gate for 45 minutes and finally they opened the gate and we were ready for the show to begin.  Toby Mac opened the show, followed by Chris Stefanick, his talk was very deep.  It was an incredible day, full of events and we headed back to the hotel to get ready for another day.

Day Three - November 17th

Friday morning, we met in the hotel library and then headed back to Cafe Patachou (we really liked their breakfast) to plan our day.  We went back to the Thematic Village to cover more ground and this time, we were able to almost finish!  After that, we headed over to Hall H to see one of the artists that caught our attention, "El Padrecito & Foundnation".  Yes, we spelled it correctly, it is FOUNDNATION.  This was followed by Bob Perron and Chris Padget with a talk called "Run Mary".  The music was very good and we could not believe that a Priest with a prothesis on his leg was dancing and singing Hip-Hop and Rap.  Bob and Chris' talk was extremely funny, but at the same time, very deep.  We decided to go to the stadium early so that we would be the first ones to enter.  Today's entertainment was performed by Matt Maher followed by a talk by Roy Petifils.  The music by Matt Maher was unbelievably good and the talk by Roy about stress and anxiety was great also.  We headed back to the hotel for the night, super tired and happy.