In 1973, Sister Josephine Stewart, a family counsellor at the Catholic Renewal Center in Fort Worth, Texas and a divorced friend, Jo Lamia, attended a Marriage Encounter weekend with the intention of developing a program for engaged couples. In the course of the weekend, Ms. Lamia adapted the Marriage Encounter process to face issues and concerns in her own life that had never been addressed. At the close of the weekend, Sister Josephine saw a profound change occur in her friend.
Sister Josephine and other professionals in grief resolution, counselling, psychology, education and spiritual renewal, adapted Ms. Lamia's writings to outline the process for the Beginning Experience weekend.
The copyrighted program was soon in motion throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Great Britain and Ireland. Today, certified teams of peer ministers present the program in communities in nine countries on three continents.
The Beginning Experience, Auckland
This is how the Beginning Experience started in Auckland.
A married couple called Nick and Joyce Devich came across the Beginning Experience in Australia, where they had been looking at Marriage Encounter courses. They returned to New Zealand in great excitement, and lost no time in informing Bishop Mackey who gave them his blessing and encouraged them to get the programme off the ground.
After ringing around lots of parishes they came up with 13 names of widowed , divorced and separated people. The Deviches talked to them about Beginning Experience, and a couple of weeks later, Nick asked who would like to go to Sydney, to take part in a weekend, and as an added incentive, whoever was brave enough to go , would get a free trip to Australia!! Seven of the group accepted, and they also took a priest and sister as well.
On 3 June 1982, eight very nervous people left Auckland to take part in a Beginning Experience weekend, and out of that number three were invited onto the team. After another Beginning Experience weekend in August in Sydney, one other person joined the team so that when the first Auckland Beginning Experience weekend took place, the team comprised of 5 New Zealanders and 5 from Sydney. This was in January l983 in Auckland, and 3 weekends were run that year. The highlight of the year was a visit from Fr Guy Gau, the executive director of Beginning Experience from the USA . Support groups also sprang up in the Auckland diocese including a Young Adults Beginning Experience programme.
In 1984 four BE weekends were run.
ln 1986 Beginning Experience was part of a TV Religious programme, which gave us
lots of welcome publicity and from that a team was started in Wellington.
Weekends continued to be held right through to 1991 a big year because Auckland hosted the Regional conference on Akoranga Campus. The Regional Conference is held every 2 years. Some of us recently (2007) went to Perth in Australia for the most recent Regional Conference, and we also attended a Beyond Beginning Experience programme. The next Asia Pacific Regional Conference is being held in Singapore in 2009 and the next International Conference is in Phoenix USA in July 2008.
Over the intervening years Beginning Experience has had some good and not so good
years, but it has managed to keep going. In 2005 Fr Guy Gau passed away which was a great loss to us. Sister Mary Thomas also retired from the Auckland team, where she had been responsible for much of the day to day administration publicity and general co-ordination of resources. This was a major change and the role of weekend coordinator had to be reassigned and a new Spiritual Director found. We are very fortunate to have Sister Anne Warren as our new Spiritual Director.
The teams now consist of the Auckland team and the Wellington team.
That brings us up to date to January 2008.
Update: January 2015
In September 2013 members from the Wellington and Auckland teams attended an Asia-Pacific Regional Conference in Lismore, Australia.
In July 2014 three Auckland members attended the 40th Anniversary at an International Convention held in New Orleans, USA. This was a special event because it commemorated the life of one of the founders - Sr Josephine Stewart, who died on 8th May 2014.
Unfortunately the Wellington Team have not been able to get enough numbers to continue running the program and have disbanded.
In 2014 one Weekend was held in Auckland - September 2014
Auckland is the only city in New Zealand currently holding Beginning Experience Weekends. The plan is to hold two weekends in 2015 - May and September.
Subsequently Weekends have been held in Auckland every year, the most recent one on 6th -8th September 2024.
A Harkness (Auckland President)
12/9/2024