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Kidventure isn’t just in Houston! They are all over Texas helping to build the lives of kids, provide them with opportunities to grow strong, and demonstrate that they can make a real difference in the world. We are excited to have them back for a third year hanging with your preschool- through kindergarten-aged children. Get ready for loads of fun with costumes, make believe play, and even an indoor Gaga pit!

This year, Adore Ministries is super excited to add a new partner for your 3-month to 2-year-old children. Sitting Made Simple is a professional babysitting agency. Get your kids excited about a full day of interactive games and activities. Special thanks to St. Francis of Assisi Preschool for providing all the fun toys!

Mark Hart serves full time as executive vice president of Life Teen, a Catholic youth ministry movement currently being implemented in 1,800​ parishes in 30 countries worldwide. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Mark is a best-selling author of over a dozen books, popular speaker, and SiriusXM radio host. His wildly popular DVD study series, Altaration, Encounter, and T3 are currently utilized in homes, youth groups, and classrooms across the globe. Mark and his wife, Melanie, have three daughters, Hope, Trinity, and Faith, and one son, Josiah. They live in Phoenix, Arizona.

It was the night before her wedding and Katie knew that the next time she saw her husband-to-be he would be standing at the end of a long aisle.  Katie handed Mark a gift that she had been preparing for him since high school; a binder of letters to her future spouse. The pages within were eager to reveal the secrets of a love that began years before the couple had ever laid eyes on one another. Thousands of miles away a teenage boy began his transformation to a life in Christ. In fact the very week that Katie began praying most intensely for her future husband, was the exact week of Mark’s conversion.
Katie Hartfiel received her theology degree from Franciscan University of Steubenville and spent the following seven years serving as a youth minister in Houston. She now feels blessed to spend her days with her husband, Mark, and their four children, while still getting to travel to speak about Jesus. For more on Katie, her books, and your first chapters free, visit womaninlove.org.

Please bring your children to the first floor of the Vineyard Tower. You will be able to check in all ages in one place. Liability forms will need to be signed upon arrival. Please keep your cell phone on you at all times in case we need to reach you. In order to take advantage of childcare at Encounter Texas, you must have registered and paid for your kids in advance. No same-day registration will be available. Purchase of a “Kid Weekend Pass” does not give access to childcare.

Childcare is provided on Saturday only:

8:15 a.m. to 11 a.m.

12:15 p.m. to 5 p.m.

​7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

*You must pick up your child for meals.

Josh Blakesley has acknowledged a simple calling: To make music that moves people into prayer and action.

Josh has been stirred by the rhythms, melodies and chord progressions of contemporary songs long before he was old enough to know what these words meant. As he learned about Mozart, Bach and others, he began to realize that contemporary music is very simply the music of the pepople. The overtures and opuses of the 1700s were the popular songs of that era. People identified with those songs in the same way that today’s “hits” appeal to the masses of this generation. As a songwriter, specifically for liturgy in 2017, the question that provokes him is: How do I create a song that will honor traditions and music yet speak to the modern Church and lead them to worship?

Josh collaborated with his guitar player, Grae McCullough, to write a new mass setting, paying homage to the hymns of the past and the culture of modern worship. “Every week we lead music for school and parish masses, so we knew we needed something that would resonate with all ages. We also wanted it to be joyful, approachable and easy to sing but still fresh, dynamic and expressive,” says Blakesley.

On March 3, 2017 is the release of this long-awaited project called Mass of Restoration. It is available now anywhere music can be downloaded. For sheet music, please visit ocp.org

Josh Blakesley’s last full-length album, Even in This, was recorded in 2015 in Franklin, TN with Grammy Nominated producer/singer- songwriter, Michael Farren. The album features songs co-written with Farren, Mia Fieldes (Hillsong), Dove Award winner Marc Byrd (God of Wonders) and Grammy Award Nominated, Sarah Hart (Better than a Hallelujah).

The title track from the album is a song about finding hope in the darkest valleys of life. It was born out of tragedy after the band’s guitar player, Grae McCullough, lost his one-month-old daughter to a chromosomal disorder called Trisomy 18. “The peace I had the day Lizzie’s short life ended could have only been God. There was an underlying sense of peace in the devastation and the song really encapsulates the situation we were in,” says McCoullough.

Blakesley has been featured on Sirius XM, EWTN’s Life on the Rock, Relevant Radio, KLOVE and has performed with wide variety of Christian artists like Matt Maher, Andrew Peterson, Jars of Clay and the Newsboys; as well as several International Papal events, most recently in Milan, Italy in 2012. He continues to tour heavily with dates booked all over the US and Canada in 2017. He partners with Compassion International as a spokesperson for releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name. He also works directly with the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Life Teen International, Catholic HeartWork Camp, Adore Ministries, as well as many churches, camps and conferences of all sizes in an effort to live out his calling and to “make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:18)

Josh Blakesley currently lives in Alexandria, Louisiana with his wife Heather and their two children, Sophie and Sutton.

Dave leads worship from a heart that knows his own need for salvation. He’s not interested in fame or accolades, he’s interested in connecting to Christ in his own music and leading the listener into his prayer. Dave’s worship is free, organic, creative, and powerful, with a depth that moves the hearts of the kids in the back of the room with their arms crossed. Dave is talented, to be sure, but it is his spirit of authentic love that makes him a truly gifted worship leader.

I pride myself on customer service. I stay in constant communication with clients, I seek to fully understand the vision of the event, and with the dawn of streaming, I now have access to virtually every genre – so this way I never miss your favorite tunes. I also give my clients the option to create and share playlists, so I can come as prepared as possible to make sure the event exceeds expectations, and that nobody goes without grooving to their jam.

Matt Regitz took an unlikely path to ministry by taking over his struggling home parish youth program in Houston, TX after 5 years as an oilfield salesman. More than a decade later Matt is still sharing the Gospel with the teens at Prince of Peace Church alongside his brother, Dave, while reaching thousands more beyond their parish walls. Matt has an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M and a masters in theology from the University of Saint Thomas. He and his bride, Stephanie, have been blessed with 5 children, but their oldest daughter, Mary Clare, beat them to heaven.

Rooted in the beautiful ordinary & dreaming about the magical impossible. @meaningfulmarket @abidingtogetherpodcast @the_greenhousecollectivemsha.ke/michellebenzinger

After two decades of full time ministry, Cana and Ennie Hickman have set out to empower and encourage individuals and families to live on mission in the ordinary, in their home, their neighborhood, in the everyday.
Del Rey Collective is not about events that bring thousands of people together (although those aren’t bad).
It is about giving formation and encouragement to ordinary missionary disciples to open their homes (and porches) and host their own life giving dinners and gatherings. We believe this has the potential to change the world!

Intrinsically linked to the human condition are the desires to be known, understood, and heard: to count for things that matter. Echoes, the newest studio record from Matt Maher (Essential/Sony) is a collection of declarations in the midst of dealing with human suffering. After writing most of the songs for the record, Maher lost his father, and “Echoes” took on a whole new personal dimension for the artist. “Worship music paints with broad strokes for large groups of people, that stem from intimate stories and experiences; the challenge, as a creator, is to somehow let the former come out of the latter.”

Bishop Michael Fors Olson, S.T.D., M.A. was born in Park Ridge, Illinois on June 29, 1966. He was raised in Des Plaines, Illinois where he attended St. Mary’s Parochial School. Bishop Olson graduated from Quigley Preparatory Seminary North in 1984 and began collegiate seminary studies for the Archdiocese of Chicago in August of that same year. In 1985, his family moved to Fort Worth as part of the corporate relocation of GTE/DC. In 1988, Bishop Olson officially transferred as a seminarian to the Diocese of Fort Worth. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Fort Worth on June 3, 1994, and began his priestly ministry as the parochial vicar of St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Bedford, Texas, from July 1994 through June, 1997.

Bishop Olson was a recipient of the Basselin Scholarship at the Catholic University of America from which he earned his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in philosophy in 1988 and 1989 respectively. Bishop Olson also has degrees (M.Div. and M.A.) in theological studies from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He was a charter recipient of the CRS Global Fellowship in 1993 through which he traveled to Egypt and Burkina Faso to learn about global development in social justice. He is also a past recipient of the Presidential Fellowship of Saint Louis University where he studied at the Center for Health Care Ethics in the Catholic Tradition between 1997 and 2001. In March of 2011 he successfully earned his doctorate in moral theology at the Academia Alfonsiana in Rome.

He has served as a community representative on the Ethics Committee for Research Involving Human Subjects at the University of Texas Medical Center in Houston. He was a member of the formation faculty at Saint Mary’s Seminary in Houston, Texas and lectured at the University of Saint Thomas School of Theology between 2001 and 2006. From July, 2006, through June, 2008 Bishop Olson served in the Diocese of Fort Worth as Vicar General and as Pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church. Since July 1, 2008 Bishop Olson has been serving as the Rector of Holy Trinity Seminary. On May 6, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI granted him the Papal Honor of Chaplain to His Holiness with the title of “Monsignor.”

On January 29, 2014 Bishop Olson was ordained bishop and installed as the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth at the Fort Worth Convention Center. Over 10,000 people from across North Texas and beyond were in attendance.