What is the goal of the Engaged Encounter program?
The goal of Engaged Encounter is to bring couples into a deeper relationship with one another, to bring God into the center of that relationship, and to help couples recognize that their Christian marriage has an important role to play in the life of the Church.

What does a weekend look like from start to finish?
The couples arrive on Friday evening and talks start after registration. The presenting team (junior couple, senior couple, and priest) presents a series of short (usually 20 minutes) talks throughout the weekend.

The format, for the couples, is to listen to the talks, which provide concepts that the couples may need to address. After each talk, the couples separate for writing time. The couples are given workbooks with dialogue questions and are asked to write on one or all of the questions during their dialogue time. They can choose those they think are most pertinent to them. They are asked to write for the entire dialogue time, and this writing may include anything they are thinking or feeling about the questions, their experience, or whatever. After writing time is over, the group in the conference room returns to the dialogue rooms to join up with his or her future spouse for discussion time. During discussion time they exchange notebooks and talk about their thoughts, concerns and feelings about what they wrote.

While the talk/write/dialogue format comprises the main flow of the weekend, the team tries to “break it up” with activities here and there, and there is also a prayer session on Saturday evening that tends to be very moving. The weekend concludes with Mass on Sunday afternoon.

What do couples say who attend?
“This was a really good weekend for us. We both went into it a little hesitant (him more so than me) but got a lot more out of it than we had planned on. We have been together close to 5.5 years and it was great to see exactly why he loves me--not just "I love you" anymore but "Now you know why I love you". It made us think of stuff that we hadn't even dreamt of thinking about, and of course we had the attitude we thought of everything and talked about everything before this weekend. It also brought us even closer, if you could imagine, as a couple. The "Two-by-Two" letter was great. It really touched my fiancé, and if you met him in person he would appear to not be the sentimental type. It really made us think of all we have been through already and what we have to look forward to. I told my fiancé after going through this weekend, I would not have wanted to get married before going to this now that I know how great an impact it had on us.” -Angie and Jeremy

• The weekend gave me and my fiancé a chance to pray together for the first time.
• It’s gotten me excited about becoming more involved in my parish, and reminded me that no matter how much my fiancée and I love each other, our marriage can’t survive without God.
• My fiancée went to confession and we decided to wait until we were married for sex.
• The greatest experience was the fact that I think our relationship was strengthened and God was made a bigger part of it.

To register or to find out more about our Evansville Engaged Encounter weekend visit – http://www.evansvilleengagedencounter.org

Download the Engaged Encounter Brochure