So you've been asked to be

a Mentor Couple to the Engaged...

It is often said that “the best way to learn is to teach”.  The most effective way to sustain your  own marriage and keep it vibrant and healthy is to build opportunities into your life that encourages you to learn new things about relationships and practice them. If you have already experienced an marriage enrichment course such as Celebrate Love, mentoring is a great way to consolidate the experience and maintain it’s vibrancy in your relationship. PMRC Mentoring offers you the opportunity to further explore the insights and practices of Celebrate Love that are so powerful in building relationships.

Mentor couples also provide an important service to the community. Preparing couples for marriage is even more important today than it ever was – there are so many challenges facing couples in this age, it is vital that they are given the tools and support to be successful in marriage from the very beginning.

Engage is a six session, home-based course presented to one engaged couple by a qualified ‘Mentor’ couple. Using DVD to present 20 minutes of content in each session, the role of Mentor is to flesh out the content with your personal examples. The course is designed to be very interactive, so there are several simple exercises for you to facilitate, and then questions to put to the engaged couple to stimulate discussion and further exploration of the topic.

Some of the advantages of this mentoring based programme include:

• Being one-on-one, you do not need to have group presenting skills or feel confident in front of a room of people.
  
• A twenty minute DVD will present the core content of each session, so you do not need to be experts in all the course content.
  
• The schedule is entirely flexible.  You can easily reschedule any particular session, should it clash with another engagement
  
• You decide how many engaged couples you will mentor – as few as one  or as many as 10 a year.
  
• You don’t need to arrange babysitters as the sessions are held in your home; this is the ‘domestic church’ in action and bringing it into your home makes it ‘real’.
  
• The programme is designed to help you keep your relationship fresh and vibrant. Before each session, there are simple exercises for you to do throughout the week. When you mentor your engaged couple each week, you can speak with the authority of experience.

What qualities does

a Mentor couple need?

1. You need to be married at least 2 years. If you are married less than this, we still encourage that you begin the training as it will be so helpful in keeping your relationship healthy.  You can be involved in other ways until the time is right for you to become active Mentors.
2. You need to be married in the Catholic Church or in a marriage recognised by the Church. PMRC Mentoring is specifically designed to prepare couples for Catholic marriage. While it’s insights and many of the tools are applicable to all marriages, the theology is specifically Catholic. It is an important part of the transmission of the course, that the Mentor couple be a living sacramental witness. If you are not sure whether your marriage is recognised by the Church, speak to your parish priest - in many cases it is a simple matter to have your marriage confirmed. He will advise you on your situation.
3. You do not need to both be Catholic, but you do need to have a commitment to regular Church attendance and supportive of Church teaching.  The course is unapologetically Catholic and supports the teachings of the Church on marriage and sexuality as the best possible vision for couples to live the fullness of their potential. Part of the training process will include the opportunity for you to reflect on how comfortable you are with these teachings, which will be explained thoroughly. If you cannot support them wholeheartedly, there will be other ways for you to be involved. In either case, participating in the training will be very worthwhile for you.
4. You need to see this as a couple commitment. While we appreciate that in most marriages, one spouse is usually more active than the other in the organisation and planning, the course can not be presented by one spouse only. One of the charisms of Celebrate Love and Embrace is the attention given to sexuality and understanding our sexual differences. It really requires both spouses to be involved if this is to be presented fully.
5. You don’t need to commit to mentoring more than one couple at this stage.  To consolidate the insights, ideally every Mentor couple will run the programme for at least one engaged couple within six months of the core training. Following that, you can decide in collaboration with your trainers how many couples you can manage.

If you:

• are passionate about your marriage

• were married in the Catholic Church

• attend church regularly

• have been married at least two years

• are prepared to mentor at least one engaged couple a year,

...you can become a PMRC Mentor Couple!

Overview

• Presented to one engaged couple at a time in your home.
• No need to organise baby sitters - in fact having the kids around brings an element of reality.
• On a schedule that suits you. Ideally, six consecutive weeks, but if something comes up, you can easily reschedule a session.
• As many as ten or as few as one per year, according to what you can manage.
• Six sessions of 2 hours duration. All sessions include take home exercises and tools to practice before the next session.
• DVD input minimises your preparation - you open each session with some guided discussion on the topic, then play the DVD (20-25 mins), before directing your engaged couple to the exercise in their Couple Pack.
• Comprehensive Mentor’s Guide includes a commentary, suggestions for adding your personal examples, instructions for the exercises and tips for building your own intimacy.
• Each engaged couple receives a Couple Pack with summaries, exercises, stories and insights from Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

More information and resources about John Paul II’s Theology of the Body including presentations and books by Christopher West can be obtained from Living Well Media.

Just for Fun

Talking couples down the aisle

Lori Borgman | Monday, Feb 08, 2010

The husband and I have been invited to be mentors for newly engaged couples.

This would involve getting together with couples and talking about marriage and communication. We think it would be a fine thing to do because we find that talking about marriage is always so much easier than actually doing marriage.

One of the kids picks up the letter from the kitchen counter and says, "You'd think they'd have a better screening process for this sort of thing."

"For the engaged couples?" I ask.

"No, for the mentors."

Being that the husband and I are both highly skilled communicators, we simply ignore her.

"Whatever you do, don't give them the life is hard speech," she says.

She is referring to our speech about how marriage is not boy meets girl, they ride off into the sunset in an SUV, get the starter mansion with the four-car garage and have 2.5 kids who are always healthy, honor roll students and letter in every sport.

Marriage is really riding off into the sunset in a car that needs new rear brakes, starting out with a small place, making do with furniture that doesn¹t match, and one day having children who will break bones, dismantle your small appliances and drive at least one teacher into early retirement.

"The speech stays," I say. "One of the greatest benefits of marriage is that you don't ride off into the sunset alone; you have someone who has promised to ride with you. You have someone to talk to."

"Someone to lean on," the husband says.

"To complete your thoughts" I say.

"-and sentences," he adds.

"Marriage demands that you think beyond yourself, that you nurture another human being, and take responsibility for them," I say.

"It also demands some verbal skills," the husband says. "These couples should learn how to argue."

The man has had a Dr. Phil moment. How can you navigate conflict if you don't know how to argue?

"We could give them a demonstration," I say. Perhaps I have had an Oprah moment. Coupled with the husband's Dr. Phil moment, all we need now is to get a large, plushy couch or some very tall chairs.

The twenty-something says we are both having insane moments.

"Marriage is the most fundamental social and economic building block to society," the husband asserts. He pauses for affirming applause from the kitchen audience, but nothing.

"Somebody once said, 'A wife is something a girlfriend is not.' You know, the entire world sees you differently when you marry," I muse.

"So does the IRS," the husband interjects. His laugh line elicits one small chuckle. From me.

"But your main point will be that marriage is about love and commitment, right?" the twenty-something asks.

"Ours definitely has been," I say. "That and the fact that no one else could put up with either one of us."

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