'Missionopoly' A game with a purpose

To enable as many schools as possible to participate in these “Lenten Mission Assemblies,” the gatherings are being held at four geographical hubs March 3-6. Each assembly is open to students in grades 3-7, although the individual school determines which grade or grades it wishes to take.
 

“It’s really just a fun day for young students to learn about mission and being  a missionary,” said Laura Arand, director of the archdiocese of New Orleans’ Missionary Childhood Association (MCA) Office. “It also shows that we are one family in mission; we’re all here together in one archdiocese,” she added.
 

The schedule is:
 

Tuesday, March 3, 9-11:30 a.m.: West Bank schools will assemble at Immaculate Conception in Marrero.
 

Wednesday, March 4, 9:30 a.m.-noon: River Parish schools will meet at St. Charles Borromeo in Destrehan.
 

Thursday, March 5, 9-11:30 a.m.: East Bank schools will gather at Cabrini High in New Orleans.
 

Friday, March 6, 9:30 a.m.-noon: Northshore schools will convene at Mary Queen of Peace in Mandeville.
 

Each assembly will begin with music and group games designed as icebreakers, followed by a prayer service led by seniors from Cabrini High, who will serve as teen chaperones at all four Lenten assemblies.

Students from each participating school will carry up various mission objects – a globe, the World Mission Rosary, crosses and other items – in the opening procession. 
 

After a brief introduction to the work of the MCA and its simple mission of “Children Helping Children,” the young participants will learn about Christians’ baptismal calling to be missionaries every day, at every age and wherever they live.
 

This concept of children’s shared humanity will be taught through play, with the young particpants being invited to “travel” around 18 table games designed to teach them about the lives of children living in every part of the globe and to also pray for them.
 

The activity stations will include Chinese calligraphy, map-of-the-world puzzles, animals of the world, origami, a mission acrostic, Tibetan ping-pong, making a peace pole and playing with toys made by local schoolchildren out of recycled materials.
 

The “Roller Ball Maze” will put the youngsters in the shoes of a child seeking clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing – a daily task shouldered by some of their peers in the developing world.

New on the games front this year will “Missionopoly,” a special adaptation of the popular board game created by the local Mission Office. Students will move tokens around a 36-by-36-inch board and draw corresponding cards informing them of the real stories of children and families living around the world.
 

The Missionopoly tokens also have a chance of landing on the World Mission Rosary, whose color-coded beads ask children to pause and pray for their peers in every continent.
 

Mission Office Manager Kristie Vollentine noted that the assemblies’ intimate setting inside school gyms will enable students from multiple schools “to connect with one another.” The games-playing groups will be deliberately intermingled so that students will not necessarily spend the morning with the children they came with. 
 

“It’s an opportunity for kids around the archdiocese to come together as a group, to be with one another,” Vollentine said. “Our MCA mission is children helping children, and that mission is that they, as children, are called to know and help children around the world and at home.”
Each assembly will conclude with the Stations of the Cross led by the Cabrini students, followed by lunch.
 

Students and their chaperones must provide their own lunch and drinks. Schools that have never attended a Lenten Mission Assembly or that have not attended in some time are invited to learn more by contacting Laura Arand at mcamission@arch-no.org or 527-5773.