My name is Christiane.

I am 24 years old and from a little village in the west of Germany. After school I spent a year in west Africa and then went to university in Leipzig.

However, having lived in Middlesbrough for almost a year, the path I have followed on led me to Walsingham.

There are various reasons for why I choose to spend a year as a volunteer at the Shrine of Our Lady. In general, I enjoy learning from new experiences in life and I want to gain a deeper understanding of God and the world in which we live. As a Sociologist I think that the encounter with all the pilgrims who come here and bring their life and faith stories is a great opportunity to widen my horizon and to get closer to God by listening to what they have to say. In return, I hope that I will always be able to be there for everybody who visits here and might need some help that I can offer.

Especially, the work with children and young people is very important to me as they are not only the future but also a very important part of the present of the Church. Furthermore, I hope that this year can help me to discern what I shall do with my life to truly make the best out of it and for it to become a real asset to the world.

Hello there! I’m Samantha, currently 23 years old, from the not so little town of Burgess Hill in West Sussex – within the Diocese of Chichester. I have always been a Christian, having been brought up into the Christian life by my family. I first came to Walsingham on pilgrimage with my parish church of St Edward the Confessor in 2003, and I found it so powerful and moving that I have been coming here on Pilgrimage with my parish for the last 8 years. This year, I happened to go twice with 2 separate groups, and it was in doing this that I met Fr Stephen, who mentioned the Year 4 God scheme to me, leading me to apply - and so, here I am!

Over the last 8 years I have grown to love Walsingham, and it certainly is a place where I feel so very close to God, and I have been able to work on my relationship with Him. So having the opportunity to actually live and work here is fantastic. Before I applied for this scheme, I had been working for a year, having graduated from the University of East Anglia in summer 2010. I was looking to do some volunteering after saving up for a year, and preferably some that meant going travelling. It was therefore quite exciting to be offered a volunteer placement in Walsingham, that not only meant I avoided dithering about what volunteering to do and where to go, but that it also gives me the opportunity to travel to South Africa later in the year! A place I have been dying to go back to since I volunteered there in 2009.

Being on this scheme is a God-given opportunity, and privilege, to really do God’s work, and work with His people, especially helping the younger generations in their Christian life pilgrimage. I hope to do my part in the Year 4 God team, really making this place somewhere special for everyone, no matter how young or old.

Hi I’m Alice and I’m 22. I’m originally from Southend, Essex (!) but for the last three years, I’ve been living with my family in Exeter, Devon. I first came to Walsingham when I was 9 on the Children’s Pilgrimage and I’ve basically been in love with the place ever since. As so many other pilgrims do, I instantly felt the overwhelming sense of peacefulness that you get here and a true sense of being very close to God. I have yet to experience that anywhere else I’ve ever been so far. Because Walsingham is such a special place and so many people young and old and in between come here, I really feel that it is a place where we can make a difference and reach out to people. Through the Children’s and Youth Pilgrimages, I’ve really been able to explore my faith and make it my own. I realised that, even though I’ve  been going to Church with my family all my life, it is actually something that I, on my own, want to do and something I feel is really important and since then, I’ve made my faith my own. Growing up, when it can be very hard to keep your faith, Walsingham helped to know that there was always a place in the Church for me and I always felt safe and encouraged here. So I went round local Churches and told people, especially youths, about the special pilgrimages such as the youth pilgrimage that happen here.

When Our Lady came on tour to Exeter, the night before the big event in the Cathedral, Our Lady stayed in my church and there was a small service for the youth of the parish that I spoke at. Bishop Lindsay and last year’s yr4God team were there and they told me all about the scheme and here I am! I think that the power of young people should never be underestimated and, with all the struggles that our Church is going through in recent times, it is important not to forget that us youths are the future of the Church and we need to be nurtured and supported. I want to help other young people to explore their faith and be proud of who they are and what they believe in. It’s always encouraging to know that there are other youthful Christians out there so I want to be a support to them. I don’t know what I might end up doing after my year here; maybe at the end of my time, something will come up for me but if I can give to just one person what Walsingham has given to me, then I would feel I have achieved something truly great.

My name is Stuart Grout.

I am 23 years old and I am from a large village called Hanslope set half way in between Northampton and the new town of Milton Keynes in north Buckinghamshire. I was brought up in the church and went to church with my mother and sister when I was little. It is worth me saying that when I was 8 years-old I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (a mild form of Autism) so I struggled at school, was bullied a lot and had quite a tough childhood. But thanks to God and my parents I have come to terms with the condition and have improved dramatically. People often say to me it is almost un-noticeable.

In my teenage years after I was confirmed I started to drift away because I found services boring and I was being led astray by false shepherds at school ("wolves in sheep’s clothing" as the Gospel quite rightly puts it). Then the new vicar came and I was asked to be an altar server and was told I was going to be more involved with the life and work of the church in my parish i.e. being on the reading and intercessions rota which gave me a lot more to do on top of just church bell-ringing and that really brought me back into church because I felt useful and wanted.

Then in early 2005 I and another group of youngsters including my sister were told that we were going to the Walsingham Youth Pilgrimage. I was wondering for weeks what that was going to be like and I was very excited but nervous in a way because it was a new thing to me. When we came on the youth pilgrimage I found Christ again in my life and I was absolutely blown over by it all.

The priests that were there were a real inspiration to me in their preaching and their teachings. I won’t embarrass any by naming any names, they know who they are. Not just that, but I loved the worship. I was used to singing ancient and modern hymns, which I loved a lot, but now we were singing worship songs and that put a whole new perspective on things.

I used to just see the church as all serious and a bit boring but this made me think very differently about it.

(Click here to go to Column 2)

I was amazed at all these different ways of worshipping God even though the focal part, the Eucharist itself, stays mainly the same. When the day came to go home I sat in my tent and cried because I didn’t want to go home because I had had such an amazing time and had fallen in love with Walsingham and this is where my love for the place, my true love for Jesus and the Virgin Mary was re-kindled within me.

Since then I have been coming to the Walsingham Youth Pilgrimage ever-since as an adult leader with my group as well as the National and the Pilgrimage for Healing and Renewal. Last year we came on the Bible Week which was truly amazing and we got to study two of my favourite books in the bible, the epistles to SS Timothy and Titus. Going back to the youth pilgrimage, this year I thought after all these years of coming as a leader within my parish I thought it was time to step up to the plate and apply for the ministry team and at the same time the YR4GOD team because I was starting to sense a vocation to the Priesthood. My parish priest and people in my congregation had been talking to me about it for quite a long time, so I felt this was the ideal way to try and test my vocation even though I was doing a 'St Thomas' and doubting for most of the time.

So I applied and was successful in both and the Ministry Team was the most amazing fortnight of my life and the absolute highlight of this was having an upfront role in the preparing and the facilitating of the pilgrimage as well as being with young people and their leaders whatever situation they may have been in.

So we are now in our eighth week of the YR4GOD scheme and it has been truly amazing. So far we have been working in and around all departments of the shrine e.g. The Norton Room, the garden, Shrine Shop, Sacristy and Welcome Centre.

(Click here to go to Column 3)

We have spent loads of time developing the weekend programme for children as well as planning and preparing for the Families' Pilgrimage which happened this weekend, and - just like the Youth Pilgrimage - it has been a fantastic experience especially as I had never been on it before. The best bit of that for me was the liturgies and the worship because we got to produce and act in dramas that put the story of the theme across, the theme being Holy House - Holy Family which tells the story about how the Holy House started off with the Lady Richeldis experiencing three visions of the Virgin Mary and how this all links in with the story of the Holy Family starting from the Annunciation all the way through to the Presentation. The weekend concluded with funky sprinkling (which included our own sprinkling drama which we produced), Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and Last Visit to the Holy House. The highlight of the YR4GOD scheme for me has been the involvement with the healing liturgies especially the Laying on of Hands and Sprinkling at the well. This is because I have felt so privileged to be able to be part of these ministries here in this place and I have felt amazed that God wants to use me, unworthy as I am to carry out these ministries in his name and to be under his authority.

I would like to conclude by saying that - so far - I would encourage anyone between the ages of 18 and 25 to come along to Walsingham and apply for the scheme. I would also encourage anyone at all who is in his/her teenage years to have a little think about the scheme and whether God may be prompting you to give a year to God in Walsingham. If you are interested, I urge you to download one of the leaflets which tells you all about the scheme and what you can get out of it. I continually pray for the growth of the scheme, that more and more people may start to think about it and - most importantly - that we have a team of four to replace us next September.