1. Community structure
2. Dominican identity of the community
3. Prayer life of the community
4. Preaching of the community
5. The learning community (studies)
6. Life community
7. Major concerns and problems
8. Short look to the future

1. The essence of the Dominican Youth Center is evangelizational catholic community "Moons of God". It is community of young people aged 16 to 35, united by pillars of Dominican spirituality. This year the community has 18 members who undertook obligations of praying, studying bible, preaching and attending community meetings. In total, the number reaches 25-30 or even more on special occasions. This year we have 7 new persons who joined our community. The whole community gathers every second week for worship and prayer time and discussing different topics. Also every member of the community can choose the ministry. There are three ministries now - Worship ministry (musical group), Prayer ministry and Preaching ministry. Every new member has to pass a year of formation before choosing a ministry. The year of formation is led by community leader. Also, one can choose free year and attend no ministry, just general meetings. The community is led by a leader who is eligible for two years period. All the main administration and other questions are decided by council, which consists of the leaders of the ministries, leader of community and Dominican brother.

2. From the very beginning the community life was based on the Dominican spirituality, although not so consciously at first. The four pillars of Dominican life are the basis of our yearly obligations, which we assume as the basis of our vocation. For many years we felt lack of attention from Dominican brothers, although we shared the same space and same ideas. So as the situation was very hard in the community of brothers, they could not help us in our way. But last years the situation changed. Firstly one brother, fr. Vladislovas OP, was assigned by brothers to take part in our meetings, to be part of our council and to generally take care of youth affairs. Later brothers decided to renovate the meeting place for youth. Now we have a proper place to meet, with small kitchen, WC, big meeting room and few smaller rooms. This year fr.Pijus OP came back from the two years studies abroad. He was supporting youth activity very much before his leave, so again he was assigned to take care of "Moons of God". So for the time being we feel Dominican brothers' support and care, both spiritually and materially.

3. Prayer is the heart of the community. Two ministries out of three are dedicated for that - worship ministry and prayer ministry. Worship ministry is responsible for worship time in the community meetings, also singing in the youth mass on Sundays and also serving in some other churches as youth worship group. Prayer ministry is the special ministry for community needs. There are 5 persons in the prayer ministry right now and they are ready to pray for the general or personal needs of community members anytime. They keep praying all the time for the evangelizational activities of the community as well as for every member personally. For two years intercession prayer team in the community exists, which is meant more for outer ministry in some big events or evangelizational outreaches. Also men of the community, so as they are minority : started to gather one time a month for a prayer and discussion.

4. The main direction of the preaching in our community is taking consistent care of few young prayer groups in other parishes. Sharing love, knowledge and experience, leading them in prayer and in Christian life is the main goal of evangelizational team. Also, regular outreaches and taking part in different activities and events organized by other parishes, organizations and youth groups are very important.

5. The more answers you have, the more questions arise - so studying and learning more and more about how to be Christian in today's world is an important part of our community life. Almost all general meetings have their topics and guest speakers. We also take part in different seminars and weekends organized by others. This year our community members have been to such seminars as the seminar on bible, identity of Christian, community, inner healing, the peace of heart, etc. We also have community retreat two times a year and a camp every summer. On the past two years during the retreat we went through such topics as God's Kingdome, Holy Spirit, life in community. The summer camps usually also have a topic. Last year it was the topic of Holiness, and this year the topic was John 15, 7 - "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, then you will ask for anything you wish and you shall have it."

6. These past years were the years of coming stability into community life. New people still come, but most of the constant members stay for few years already. We find our community as not only the place of Christian activity, but as community of life, and we believe this is the way to survive as Christian and as young Dominicans. In two years we had 4 weddings in the community, and we have already 3 new born members:. Many of us finished the universities, found jobs and moved out from parents to live on their own. We found this time as the strengthening of the relationships not only as community members, but as good friends, too. We spend much more time behind community activities together than we used to do few years ago. Celebrating birthdays, weddings and assignments to new positions, having fun together made us much closer. We also feel that we are a part of the bigger community - our archdiocese community and even Lithuania catholic community, so we enthusiastically take part in all the events held by others - such as youth festivals and other.

7. Our major concern now is time. So as we raise families, get jobs, we don't have so much time we could fully participate in all the activities. Many members would like to be more involved, but cannot do that because of the lack of time. It is a problem of finding identity and setting priorities in life. Another problem we see is lack of world wide Dominican youth identity. So as only few members have the possibility to take part in an assembly and meet other young Dominicans, many of us have no identity of IDYM. One more problem we see - serving too little to our local parish. We are more concentrated on inner community life and outreaches to other places, often forgetting to take care of the people who come to our church.

8. Reflecting the problems we see, we plan to be more open to local church community next year. We plan to organize open meetings of community once a month, held in our church. Also the prayer group of men, which was mentioned before, is planning to start and "Alfa course" for the people who would be interested. We are also thinking a lot about the lack of IDYM identity, and how could we solve it. We came to an idea to organize a regional IDYM meeting next summer, instead of community camp. It is still in the condition of pure idea and no steps are taken yet, but with the help of other IDYM countries and our wonderful loving heavenly Father we believe that this idea can become true next summer.