Submitted by: Thom S. - Our Lady of the Woods Parish, Woodhaven, Michigan

Our Lady of the Woods Parish in Woodhaven, MI had a plan for the ChristLife evangelization process. They decided to spend two years “inside the parish” and then use graduates from two rounds to move beyond the walls of the parish and reach out to those non-practicing Catholics of the area for the January 2017 Discovering Christ program.

They first ran Discovering Christ in January 2015 with both a morning and evening session. After a two week break, they next ran with Following Christ. The participants took the summer to ”grow into" the Christian Lifestyle of prayer, sacraments and scripture, learned in Following Christ. In Fall 2015, they moved onto Sharing Christ. After that first successful run, the parish repeated the ChristLife evangelization process beginning in January 2016 with Discovering Christ, Following Christ, and ending with Sharing Christ in September.

The New Evangelization is in full swing at Our Lady of the Woods Parish.

As Fr. Andrew Czarnecki was recognizing the members of our new Parish Council, he shared the following in their bulletin:

"As I look at the list of the new Parish Council, I realize that pretty much everybody on this list, either has been or is currently participating in the ChristLife Program. WOW! You decide if this is a coincidence or the Holy Spirit at work. In addition to ChristLife, many of these individuals are also actively involved in other programs, groups and ministries at the parish serving the Good Lord and our parish family. What a wonderful, living testimony this is to the life changing power of the ChristLife Program that our parish has been running since last year and will continue to run. Hopefully, many of you, who read this article, will join us in the next round of ChristLife which is to begin in January of 2017."