Hi all,
As you may have noticed, it has been two weeks now since I last updated the blog. It has been a real challenge to get time to update and to get access to the internet. But I plan to start a pen-diary, writing a short thing every day, and to simply type it into the computer at the end of the week.
In any case, I shall give you eager readers an account of the last two weeks and all the adventures we've had...
Last weekend we arrived in Calgary. Highlights of the weekend include praying outside the Kensington abortion clinic. We stayed there from
12pm-2pm on Saturday. Of course, being an abortion clinic, there were very stringent rules as to where we could stand and for how long. We had to actually stay at the playground park across the street from the abortion clinic. The clinic was hard to see from where we were standing. Only 4 of us at any time was allowed along the fence near the road, while the rest of us had to stand in the middle of the field. A sizeable group of about 20 came out along with us, so our presence there was definitely noticeable. Those in the field prayed the first two hours of a prayer book, while those at the fence prayed the rosary. We rotated the 4 people every time they finished a rosary. We got some negative reactions, as well as some positive reactions. Nothing too big happened though. Among those who came out were Cyril's (our walk leader's) brother and his brother's wife, along with Jeremy's mum. Praying outside of clinics will be a regular occurance for us, as tomorrow again we are doing a similar thing outside of a hospital that does abortions here in Saskatoon.
Oh, did I forget to mention? We're in Saskatoon! It's amazing that one week from Calgary and already we have walked past the city of Saskatoon in Saskatchewan. We are in our third province, and by next week we shall be in Manitoba. We seem to be moving on quite quickly. For the past two weeks I have been on night shift - from 9pm to about 9am every night from Sunday to Thursday, I have been walking in the dark with nothing but a flashlight and rosary in hand. It has been very exciting! Night walking, while at times tiring, has huge perks. One who night walks gets to walk alone, first of all, which is nice if you're like me and you like your moments of peace. As a night walker you get to walk in the silence of the night, under the stars, just you and your thoughts. It is much easier to pray as many rosaries as you can in 5 or 6 hours of walking when there is nobody else there to walk and talk with. Praying is, however, definitely a challenge in the late hours of the night. First of all, the cold of the night makes you just want to focus on walking and nothing else - so it takes a bit of an extra push to start praying. Another obstacle is the lack of sleep - it is extremely difficult to meditate upon the mysteries of the rosary when your mind is weary and sleep-deprived. Sometimes one has to make due by praying without meditating. In these cases all you can do is keep the intention in mind and pay attention to words of the Hail Mary's. Another benefit is that, while walking at night can be taxing, you utilize your time much more efficiently than day walkers - either your walking and praying or you are sleeping in the car waiting for the other walker 8 km ahead. This means that during the day you have more time to do other things like read or whatever (but evidently not to write up blogs!) It has been a challenge also to go to daily Mass, and its the truth that night walkers get to go more often than day walkers simply because we aren't walking during the day-time. Thus, as many of you can imagine, the chance to go to one extra Mass is worth night-walking the entire three months.
In other news... we now have an RV that was donated to us by Jeremy's dad. He had bought it for $4000, and it is a 1976 model. So you can imagine that we are a bit weary about its capabilities. We were actually supposed to have a new RV sent up to us from the States by the beginning of the walk, but something (I know not what) happening such that the Central Walk in the States has actually been using it. We are still expecting to get it sent to us eventually, but in the meantime, Ol' Betty (as we so endearingly call her) is proving to be quite useful. Whereas before we received the RV last week the night walkers had to pack and uppack camp every two days, now we have a mobile sleeping place. This means that we can just sleep on the road (or in parking lots, as the case have been). It also means that we can walk for longer hours, since we don't have to spend so much time traveling to and from where we begin and end our walks. We have even decorated Ol' Betty with some prolife messages such as "Crossroads Pro-Life" and "Pro-Life Walk Across Canada" and "Protect Love Respect Life from Conception until Natural Death". Hopefully I can post pictures of her on this blog sooner than later.
Today was a very restful day - Ben and I (Ben is the other guy who night-walked with me this week) basically rode into Saskatoon with the RV and had time to go to the cathedral for a few hours, praying and going to Mass. After Mass, a women tapped me on the shoulder and was impressed by what we were doing (we were wearing our pro-life shifts at Mass, as is our custom). She gave me a picture of her at Medjugorje, where in the background was what looked like a most beautiful and realistic statue of Mary. The thing is, however, that she says the statue wasn't there when she was there, but that it appeared in the photograph after it developed. For those of you who don't know, Medjugorje is a now famous pilgrimage site where since (I believe) the early 80s some children (now adults) have been receiving messages from Mary. The woman at Mass also gave us a rosary from Medjugorje, and donated money. She also made an annoucement after Mass and so many others also donated money to us on the spot. We wished to stay at the cathedral longer, but we had to rush out because our time had expired on the parking meter. However, when we got to the RV we found that somebody had put in an hour worth of coinage into the parking meter for us, so that we returned to the cathedral. We have a lot of little stories like this, this is just a sample.
Tonight, we are staying at Greg's parents place. It is nice - we will get to sleep in beds and get home-cooked meals. I am really looking forward to this weekend.
Anyway, dinner shall be ready soon, so I must go. Thanks for taking an interest in my blog. Until next time,
Etienne
As you may have noticed, it has been two weeks now since I last updated the blog. It has been a real challenge to get time to update and to get access to the internet. But I plan to start a pen-diary, writing a short thing every day, and to simply type it into the computer at the end of the week.
In any case, I shall give you eager readers an account of the last two weeks and all the adventures we've had...
Last weekend we arrived in Calgary. Highlights of the weekend include praying outside the Kensington abortion clinic. We stayed there from
12pm-2pm on Saturday. Of course, being an abortion clinic, there were very stringent rules as to where we could stand and for how long. We had to actually stay at the playground park across the street from the abortion clinic. The clinic was hard to see from where we were standing. Only 4 of us at any time was allowed along the fence near the road, while the rest of us had to stand in the middle of the field. A sizeable group of about 20 came out along with us, so our presence there was definitely noticeable. Those in the field prayed the first two hours of a prayer book, while those at the fence prayed the rosary. We rotated the 4 people every time they finished a rosary. We got some negative reactions, as well as some positive reactions. Nothing too big happened though. Among those who came out were Cyril's (our walk leader's) brother and his brother's wife, along with Jeremy's mum. Praying outside of clinics will be a regular occurance for us, as tomorrow again we are doing a similar thing outside of a hospital that does abortions here in Saskatoon.Oh, did I forget to mention? We're in Saskatoon! It's amazing that one week from Calgary and already we have walked past the city of Saskatoon in Saskatchewan. We are in our third province, and by next week we shall be in Manitoba. We seem to be moving on quite quickly. For the past two weeks I have been on night shift - from 9pm to about 9am every night from Sunday to Thursday, I have been walking in the dark with nothing but a flashlight and rosary in hand. It has been very exciting! Night walking, while at times tiring, has huge perks. One who night walks gets to walk alone, first of all, which is nice if you're like me and you like your moments of peace. As a night walker you get to walk in the silence of the night, under the stars, just you and your thoughts. It is much easier to pray as many rosaries as you can in 5 or 6 hours of walking when there is nobody else there to walk and talk with. Praying is, however, definitely a challenge in the late hours of the night. First of all, the cold of the night makes you just want to focus on walking and nothing else - so it takes a bit of an extra push to start praying. Another obstacle is the lack of sleep - it is extremely difficult to meditate upon the mysteries of the rosary when your mind is weary and sleep-deprived. Sometimes one has to make due by praying without meditating. In these cases all you can do is keep the intention in mind and pay attention to words of the Hail Mary's. Another benefit is that, while walking at night can be taxing, you utilize your time much more efficiently than day walkers - either your walking and praying or you are sleeping in the car waiting for the other walker 8 km ahead. This means that during the day you have more time to do other things like read or whatever (but evidently not to write up blogs!) It has been a challenge also to go to daily Mass, and its the truth that night walkers get to go more often than day walkers simply because we aren't walking during the day-time. Thus, as many of you can imagine, the chance to go to one extra Mass is worth night-walking the entire three months.
In other news... we now have an RV that was donated to us by Jeremy's dad. He had bought it for $4000, and it is a 1976 model. So you can imagine that we are a bit weary about its capabilities. We were actually supposed to have a new RV sent up to us from the States by the beginning of the walk, but something (I know not what) happening such that the Central Walk in the States has actually been using it. We are still expecting to get it sent to us eventually, but in the meantime, Ol' Betty (as we so endearingly call her) is proving to be quite useful. Whereas before we received the RV last week the night walkers had to pack and uppack camp every two days, now we have a mobile sleeping place. This means that we can just sleep on the road (or in parking lots, as the case have been). It also means that we can walk for longer hours, since we don't have to spend so much time traveling to and from where we begin and end our walks. We have even decorated Ol' Betty with some prolife messages such as "Crossroads Pro-Life" and "Pro-Life Walk Across Canada" and "Protect Love Respect Life from Conception until Natural Death". Hopefully I can post pictures of her on this blog sooner than later.
Today was a very restful day - Ben and I (Ben is the other guy who night-walked with me this week) basically rode into Saskatoon with the RV and had time to go to the cathedral for a few hours, praying and going to Mass. After Mass, a women tapped me on the shoulder and was impressed by what we were doing (we were wearing our pro-life shifts at Mass, as is our custom). She gave me a picture of her at Medjugorje, where in the background was what looked like a most beautiful and realistic statue of Mary. The thing is, however, that she says the statue wasn't there when she was there, but that it appeared in the photograph after it developed. For those of you who don't know, Medjugorje is a now famous pilgrimage site where since (I believe) the early 80s some children (now adults) have been receiving messages from Mary. The woman at Mass also gave us a rosary from Medjugorje, and donated money. She also made an annoucement after Mass and so many others also donated money to us on the spot. We wished to stay at the cathedral longer, but we had to rush out because our time had expired on the parking meter. However, when we got to the RV we found that somebody had put in an hour worth of coinage into the parking meter for us, so that we returned to the cathedral. We have a lot of little stories like this, this is just a sample.
Tonight, we are staying at Greg's parents place. It is nice - we will get to sleep in beds and get home-cooked meals. I am really looking forward to this weekend.
Anyway, dinner shall be ready soon, so I must go. Thanks for taking an interest in my blog. Until next time,
Etienne
1 comment:
A pastor once told me of how Saint Pio of Pietrelcina [Padre Pio] pray the rosary substituting the with the Memorare for the Hail Mary's. It takes a bit longer, but it sounds like this might be a welcome idea:
"Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known
that anyone who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help,
or sought thy intercession,
was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence
I fly unto thee,
O Virgin of virgins, my Mother.
To thee do I come,
before thee I stand,
sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in thy mercy hear and answer me.
Amen."
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