CITY ON A HILL YOUNG ADULT APOSTOLATE

Catholic Challenge Sports' (CCS) motto is "more than a sports league," it offers six sports year-round along with five one-day events, such as wiffleball and cornhole tournaments, to name a few, all offered by a volunteer board of young adults. CCS offers a unique draft system to participants, making it easy to get involved with a sport even without knowing anyone already involved. This initiative lives out being "more than a sports league" as team captains are encouraged to pray with their teams before the games and invite players to unique socials, prayer opportunities, or service events. In the 2023 calendar year, CCS logged 1251 registrations for their sports, including 637 unique players, making it the second largest (and largest religious) multi-sport league in Kansas City for young adults that we are aware of. CCS draws these young adults in the Kansas City area into a healthy, active community where they can build friendships and get more involved with the City on a Hill community...and their Faith. CCS invites them into a setting where they can explore the Catholic faith through the witness of other young adults, and more deeply engage with City on a Hill's other offerings that offer inspiration, formation, and opportunities to encounter Jesus Christ. CCS thus offers a unique entry point to the City on a Hill community for young adults from all walks of life, and even non-Catholics as well. (It is estimated that 10-20% of participants are not Catholic.)

The Guatemala Mission Trip embarked on its fourth mission in 2023, taking a group of 30 including a priest chaplain to the remote town of San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala. Through manual work, the young adult missionaries provided homes, wood stoves, animal shelters and more to local families. Missionaries brought supplies to the sick and played with children at a school that serves the developmentally disabled. The work of the trip itself is secondary to the relationships formed with the families that are served and the spiritual growth that occurs within the missionaries. Missionaries pray together, play with children, and become Christ's presence to His children and our "neighbor". As missionaries encounter the material poverty yet spiritual richness of the families served, they reflect on their own poverty and wealth and are inspired to consider how to incorporate the encounter with Jesus in the Guatemalan poor back to our lives in Kansas City. A priest accompanies the trip to offer daily Mass, adoration, and confession to the missionaries, religious sisters, and others at the convent where the group stays. The group also embarks on a pilgrimage to the site where Blessed Stanley Rother, the first American priest to be beatified, was martyred for the faith (Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala). Participants either pay their own way or collect donations from family and friends to help them cover the cost of the trip.