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Stories play important role for Catholic youth worker

Telling personal stories and sharing stories from the Bible are at the core of Tim Elliot’s work as a Catholic youth worker, as he shared his own story with the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division’s board on Oct. 17. Based in the St.
Elliot
Tim Elliot, youth co-ordinator for St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Family schools in Estevan spoke to Weyburn trustee Rocky Sidloski, Estevan city trustee Bev Hickie and Estevan rural trustee Bob Cossette. Photo by Greg Nikkel of the Weyburn Review

Telling personal stories and sharing stories from the Bible are at the core of Tim Elliot’s work as a Catholic youth worker, as he shared his own story with the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division’s board on Oct. 17.

Based in the St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Estevan, Elliot told the trustees he’s originally from Newfoundland, where stories are an important part of their culture.

He noted he started a degree at a university in Newfoundland, but found they had no heart for stories, “which is interesting, as in Newfoundland, our entire civilization is founded on stories. I grew up in a town of 51 people.”

Elliot went for a year with National Evangelism Teams Ministries, which is when he fell in love with the Prairies, and where he fell in love with story-telling again, attending St. Therese Institute in Bruno for two years. He said he spent his second year studying what to write in a 26-page paper.

“That’s when I realized that stories and education don’t have to be incompatible. I wrote my paper on the importance of enjoying a child’s imagination in education,” said Elliot, adding that academics and imagination are not opposing ideas, but can work together.

He attended St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, “the smallest university in Canada”, where he studied the importance of story to a culture and to civilization as a whole, finding its “important to our foundation as humanity.”

One of his conclusions is that a community that does not have a spiritual centre or polus will disintegrate, and said this is of vital importance to Holy Family as educators to keep in mind while educating the children in their schools.

He noted he has been working with students at the Estevan Comprehensive School, but as it is a public high school, he has restrictions as to how or when he interacts with students there.