Week 1

Hi all,

Greetings from Summerland! First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who came out to walk with us on Saturday around Stanley Park. We had a sizeable group come out, and gave great witness to the pro-life cause. We prayed the rosary and walked to Prospect Point and back. Only two Crossroads walkers were able to make it out - Jeremy and I - while the rest of the gang came out near the end of the walk (they had to be picked up at the airport).

We are 5 permanent walkers - Cyril, Greg, Ben, Sarah,and myself - as well as a temporary walker, Jeremy,who is with us until Calgary. Jeremy doesn't know it yet but he is going to walk the whole way... :) We also have a certain Marlon with us for a few days. In the picture above, we are, in order from left to right, me (Etienne), Greg, Sarah, Jeremy, Marlon, Cyril and Ben. As you can plainly see, we are sporting our pro-life shirts. These are the shirts we wear practically24/7 - we are walking billboards.

Since Saturday, we stayed in Vancouver, sleeping at St. Mary's parish, and gave talks at all the local parishes. It was by far the busiest part of the trip thus far! Each person went to their own assigned parish, and would attend all the Saturday and Sunday Masses there. I myself went to Blessed Sacrament, a french parish,since I am the only french-speaker on the trip. We attended Mass, gave a talk at the end of the Mass, went to the back after Mass and handed out stickers and flyers,accepted donations, and also accepted prayer intentions. I was struck by the generosity of people at every church we went to, both in their donations and in their prayers for us.

We left early Monday morning from Stanley Park, and since then we have been walking day and night until Friday evening, when we arrived here at Summerland. We went through Vancouver, Coquitlam, Hope, Princeton and Ossoyoos. Since then, I have had two day shifts, and two night shifts. The night shifts are particularly interesting - going from 10pm at night to 6am in the morning. Along the way I got to experience the generosity of well-intentioned individuals who stopped to give us rides as we walked late at night.

Normally, we sleep at campgroups during the week. However, this weekend we were fortunate to have a host family receive us and feed us. Tonight, we take off again and are going to be making our ways across the Rockies. Who knows what awaits us there!

Anyways, I hope this description gives you the readers a fair impression of what we're all about. As many of you know, there are many ways to spread the pro-life message. On campus at UBC, our pro-life group (Lifeline) uses GAP displays, which use graphic images to show the horrendous truths of abortion. GAP displays are an awesome way to show people what abortion is and to convert hearts and minds to pro-life. This summer, we are taking a different, but I think very good, approach. We are walking along roads and highways with prolife shirts, true, but most importantly, we are praying and sacrificing along the way. We are meant to pray the Rosary many times every day, along with daily Mass, and chaplets of Divine Mercy, morning and evening prayer, and also to sacrifice sleep and aches and fatigue and food, and basically to live this summer for the unborn. We have to follow Mother Teresa's advice and "give till it hurts". There are always more ways to live our lives for love, doing every ordinary thing in an extraordinary way. Hopefully with the unborn as our sole focus this summer, we will be able to do this in an exceptional way. This is why we need other's prayers as well - so that our apostolate may be fruitful.

Anyway, we are going to be leaving soon, so I best be off. I hope the best for all of you and will keep you all in my prayers.