Sandal Steps for Pre-Teens, Teens & Confirmation Students

Kelly Ann Lynch is pleased to present her Sandal Steps© Presentations for Catholic pre-teens and teens and students preparing for Confirmation. Inspired by lifelong friend Father Mychal Judge, Kelly became the author of He Said Yes, a co-founder of Mychal’s Message and the founder of Sandal Steps© Presentations.

Please note that a special program has been developed for students preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation. "Living with The Holy Spirit as Your Guide" serves as a foundation for that program and includes real-life stories of the Holy Spirit's presence. The program also teaches and encourages students to begin a life of service in their own communities.

Below is a description of presentations for pre-teens and teens.

Listening for God’s Voice

Kelly will speak to the teens about what it means to say Yes to God, sharing stories of her own childhood, including “The Seahorse Story,” and how she learned how close God was. She will tell them how to recognize and hear God’s voice amidst the busy pace of today’s world and will share the story of her encounter with Christ in a ski lodge in Vermont when she was a teen. Kelly will encourage the children to look and listen for God in order to follow Him and will explain how she did just that when her first child was born with a rare liver disease and not expected to live. Teens will enjoy hearing about the day Kelly sent the Holy Spirit on vacation!


Saying Yes

Encouraging and explaining vocations, Kelly will remind the teens that each one of them is called to a vocation. Reciting a poem she read in high school, Kelly will share how she came to know her vocation as a wife and mother. Kelly will share how her vocation continued as she was called to follow St. Francis in the Secular Franciscan Order. She will show them a large San Damiano crucifix blessed by Pope Benedict XVI, and explain how she felt when she walked into the Portiuncula in Assisi. Then Kelly will tell the teens about Father Mychal Judge, a man she’d known all her life, and how he said Yes to God by following in the footsteps of St. Francis. Kelly will read her book, He Said Yes, explaining that the story doesn’t end, but rather continues with each of us today.

Making a Difference

In a role-playing skit that fosters team building and compassion, the teens will enjoy watching how the lives of 13 ordinary people unfold before their eyes. Then, Kelly will share how an empty violin case changed the life of a homeless man. Encouraging the teens to say Yes in their own lives, Kelly will tell them about her own daughter, Shannon, and how she said inspired a nationally known organization in Father Mychal’s name. Showing the teens a can opener and a lunch bag, Kelly will challenge them to guess how these simple items could change a person’s life.

Living the Life You Were Meant to Live

Kelly will tell the teens about the moment she was inspired to write He Said Yes, how the illustrator and the publisher said Yes, and all she learned during the writing, editing and publishing process. She will encourage the teens to read and write, listen and learn, imagine and dream, and follow their hearts.

Sharing advice received from her own father in high school, Kelly will tell the teens, “It’s okay to be different,” and she will encourage them to embrace and nurture those differences in each other. “Life is a gift,” she will tell them, and “it is up to each of us to accept that gift and to live the life we were meant to live.”

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