Who Are We?

 

When I arrived in the UK, I had no idea whether there was any Indonesian young adult Catholic community here. This was especially difficult during the pandemic, when people were advised to stay at home during lockdown and avoid interacting with others. It was very difficult to socialise with people.

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Sadly, during that time, I experienced that we could not always expect other people to reach out to us first and become friends with us. At the same time, I also found that not many young adults from Indonesia had the care or motivation to go to the Catholic Church and pray.

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Eventually, I found KUK, a small Catholic group for all ages. Since then, I felt motivated to gather people from all around the UK, most likely through PPI groups, to attend Mass together on May 8th, 2022.

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On that date, I finally saw 5–6 people from all over the UK who were around a similar age to me at Mass: Judith from Glasgow, Stella from Southampton, Gio from London, Stacia from London, Agnes L from London, and one other girl from Scotland. That was the first time in my life in the UK that I was able to make friends with people of the same faith during my time here. I could even make Catholic jokes again, the kind of jokes people used to make back in Indonesia.

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Since then, we decided to create a Catholic group, but specifically for young adults. I named it Indonesian Youth Catholic in the UK (IYC UK), as the English version of Orang Muda Katolik UK (OMK UK). Thanks to friends who helped share information about IYC UK, this community grew from only five girls to hundreds of people all around the UK.

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Our first regular event was attending Mass together, or misa bareng, almost every week. It was not easy to create events in this community at the beginning, especially when not many people were interested in initiating good Catholic events. Because of that, in the early days of IYC UK, I tried to look for Catholic events from different Catholic churches all around the UK and gather IYC UK members to join them.

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The first event we joined was “Pilgrimage to Winchester” in July 2022, organised by Assumption Sisters UK. Another event we joined was the Greenwich Picnic in Summer 2022, organised by Catholic Young Adults from St George’s Cathedral. That was the time when I met Fr Dermott, who later often asked us to serve as a choir in almost every Young Adult Mass at the Cathedral. All of these memories can be found on our Instagram.

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I also asked Fr Nico, an Indonesian priest in Richmond, London, whether IYC UK could serve at Mass as attendants, including through choir, lectors, Prayer of the Faithful or Doa Umat, and other roles. I could see that IYC UK members had so much potential to play instruments and contribute to the Church, for example: Daniel as a pianist, Odhi on saxophone, Naya as a pianist, Sesar as a pianist, Jenny on flute, Celine on violin, Hayley on viola, a few professional singers, and many others.

Finally, over time, we started hosting our own events. We grew and began organising our own spiritual talks, pilgrimages, prayer gatherings, socials, and more.

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It is not easy to build this kind of community. There are ups and downs. People come and go. Have I ever felt exhausted and desolate during these times? OF COURSE!

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Every time challenges come, I always remember the main goal of why this community was built in the first place:

To make this community a place where people can come to socialise, feel warm and welcomed, and help friends not to get lost in understanding Catholic culture and faith among young adults, especially when living in countries outside our home country, Indonesia, where we grew up.

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However, from what I have experienced, this community could be created, still exists, and continues to grow because of God Himself. He is the one who keeps this community working by touching many people’s hearts to get involved and grow together, even though there were, and still are, so many challenges along the way.

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Agnes D Palit
Founder, IYC UK