At the end of high school, everybody in Alberta has to take standardized tests in core subject areas. When I took them, my English grade was about 25% lower than my average for my other four courses, so I figured that wasn’t my strength. At the end of Philosophy, almost all Legionaries get letters for their apostolic internship. I figured I would not be any good at speaking to kids and always go over their head.
What a surprise it is to me that I have written a big section of the Conquest program. Both kids and writing, the two things I thought I couldn’t do.
It all started when I needed an explanation of apostolates for the Conquest clubs I worked with. I searched around and asked everyone – nobody had what I needed. Many fathers and brothers had a few apostolates but each one had their own formatting and way of describing them. I needed a bunch listed that followed the same scheme. In the end, I collected 40 apostolates and rewrote them in a set outline.
Later, something similar happened with weekly activities for the boys. I am not quite sure how I managed to do that all but somehow it all came together.
Right now we are doing a rewrite of the formation material in Conquest. We are moving from what we want to teach the kids to answering the questions they have. We had compiled and categorized the questions but we still needed to answer them. Somehow the Conquest and Challenge national office trusted me to write 7 of the 60 and do a bunch of editing. This is the project I mentioned in my last post.
Doing this project led me to reflect on God’s providence and our talents. If when I entered the Legion someone told me I was going to be doing this, I would have laughed. My judgment of my talents put neither kids nor English near the top. However, as I put myself to it, God reveals talents I didn’t realize I had. How easy it is to limit God’s providence by saying that we don’t have a certain skill.
