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SALT LAKE CITY – This year at Juan Diego Catholic High School junior and senior students will have a unique opportunity.

The Kairos retreat strives to help students deepen their faith and religious understanding. The participants at the retreat will have the opportunity to experience talks, activities, prayer, and liturgy in a four-day overnight retreat at Camp Tuttle in Big Cottonwood Canyon on March.

"Kairos is a retreat opportunity to deepen the faith of young people but also to build community," said Amee Garcia, Director of Campus Ministry at Juan Diego Catholic High School, which is one of the organizers of the Kairos retreat. With the support of Principal Galey Colosimo, administration and faculty, Garcia reached out to Bishop Manogue Catholic High School in Reno, Nev. for the insight to the Kairos retreat program.

"The impact of this retreat is far reaching and it will certainly be the case that the Juan Diego community will be fervently prayed for during the retreat," said Tucker Burton, science teacher at Juan Diego and another of the retreat organizers.

This is the first year that Juan Diego is organizing this retreat, which is offered at many Catholic high schools in the country.

Six students have been selected as the leaders for the retreat.

These students will be sent to Bishop Manogue Catholic High School in Reno, Nev. for training.

The six leaders were selected after faculty made recommendations of students who are easy to talk with and representative of the diversity of the school. The selected students are all juniors: Kyndall Doughty, McKay Howard, Elizabeth Lustig, Ryan Schlehuber, Addy Silva and Andrew Tita.

"We picked a collection of diverse kids," Garcia said. "We want to make sure that everyone could relate to them in this retreat, so we have three boys and three girls. They are all involved in different sports and in different clubs."

In addition to Garcia and Burton, two other faculty members – Noel Drew (English) and Erik Nelson (Social Studies) – traveled last October to experience Kairos at Lake Tahoe, Nev. side by side with the Bishop Manogue Catholic High School students and staff.

"Since then we have been working hard to find our first group of student leaders to attend and eventually lead Kairos this spring," said Garcia.

For this first retreat at Juan Diego they expect to have the participation of 35 to 40 juniors. The school is starting with the juniors because "our plan is to make this a senior retreat opportunity, but we are starting with the junior class so they can help pass on the tradition," said Garcia. "It has been a long standing goal of Juan Diego and myself to host a true retreat program for high school students, with the hopes to bring a deeper sense of spirituality, strengthen community and build self-esteem. Please pray for these students and adult leaders as they continue to experience Kairos and bring this opportunity to the Juan Diego Community."

The students are asked to not bring cell phones, computers or any other distraction to the retreat.