Approaching Penticton

We hope to make it to about 150 km east of Hope by the end of today. The night crew is already busy walking as I type this. It is 10:15 PM right now. It was really wet walking for the most part today. Uphill , windy and surrounded by wilderness. The beauty around you is just breathtaking! At one point I just had to stop to take in the beauty of the whole valley. Not much reaction from the highway traffic, other than a few honks. We think they were positive. We are now staying with host families in Summerland. Tomorrow we join a vigil outside an abortion clinic in Kelowna. My first experience of this kind. It should be really exciting as well as a serious eyeopener into the reality of abortion. The warmth of the people who are hosting us just amazes me. These people want to do nothing but serve us. They have taken us into their homes, fed us, washed our clothes and just want to talk to us. They are not pushy in any way and just welcomed us to use their homes as if it were our homes! One of the host families has an adopted girl who was taken from a family that did crystal meth. She was the eight child. She is different from the rest of the family. She is extremely extroverted and very energetic. The first thing she wanted to do, was hug us all as we walked into the door. Quite impressive for a 9 year old! I better get going to sleep. We got a full day of talks and praying to do tomorrow in Summerland, Kelowna and Penticton. Look out Oakanagan, the Lord is here to bring life to your cities. Here we come!

Day 3

Day 3 started with us meeting some really nice ladies from St. Mary's parish. They are lay Fransiscans. They know one of the group members and they came with us to breakfast. They agreed to do a lot of shopping for us and the love they showed us just overwhelmed all of us. We started our day shift walking on No 1 highway in Hope and soon moved on to the No. 3 highway. I guess the most exciting encounter was a baby bear that we saw along the way. It crossed the road and went into the forest on the other side. Traffic was moving really fast on the highway. There were no reactions from most of the people. The walk was uphill with lots of blind spots and really rainy. We ended the day completing about 30 km in about 7 hours. We came back to the RV to some well cooked speghetti and mash potatoes. One unfortunate incident that happened while we were washing dishes is the toilet water started running into the floor of the RV. Turns out the water tank was full so the drained dish water started overflowing from the toilet. To make things worse, Bro. Paul's laundary and suitcase was in the toilet. Woah! After a lot of sighs, we did clean up the RV floor and one of the guys outside helped us drain the water tank. Live and learn, eh? Well, more highway walking tomorrow and from the looks of it, its going to be wet. We are heading towards Penticton. Can't wait to hear mass at Our Lady of Good Hope in Hope tomorrow. Adios for now!

Day 2

Did a lot of walking today. Mostly in the rain. The day started with 3 of us going to the abbey for mass. It was beautiful to bring out the old graduale and chant the latin chant in Latin. The monastry even smells reverent. Don't ask me how they do that! After a quick breakfast, we resumed our walk from the outskirts of Mission. We took turns walking 5 KM in groups of two's. 2 of us went to return one of the rental cars. Another welcome addition to our family is the big RV. This is my first time in and RV & I have to stay, this is modernism at its best! A living, traveling house. Wish I was younger to experience this. It comes with 4 beds, tons of cabinets, a stove, micro & fridge. This is our traveling evangelizing centre. This is our home, the 6 of us have to make as we travel across the country for 3 months. To sleep, eat and live in something you can drive in. Why did I not think of this concept a long time ago!

Back to the walk, John and I had an interesting incident as we were walking. A lady pulls up to talk to us. She asked us why we were not putting all our money into contraception instead of walking across the country. We told her what we knew of the Catholic church's stance on contraception and about natural family planning. She was also wondering why a bunch of guys was doing a walk on abortion. We told her about the walks happening all across N. America, that there were girls doing a number of the walks and that it was the job of the man to protect the woman and the child. She answered that she needed "no one to depend on but herself". At this point, one of us had to leave to lunch, so we left it at that. But I think this captures the N.American attitude completely. That individualism, self-dependance, which is not evil in itself, but if you only have that without a relation to others, then you are not living your true humanity. In any case, we are on or way to Agassi. We are about 15 km away from Agassi. Some of us are night walking as I type this. We all hope to go to mass with the poor clare sisters at 5 AM. Better catch some sleep. Bye for now!

Day 1 Completed

I have just finished with day 1 and I have to say I am a bit exhausted. We started the walk in Wrek beach after a touch down in the Pacific ocean. We went all the way from there to SFU. Did not quite make it to Langley, but we called it a day after 10 hours (and 25 kms) of walking. The majority of the responses can be summed up with one word "indifference". People saw our loud t-shirts but us peaceful Canadians didn't care too much to take a stance either way. However, we did receive a few responses both positive and negative. Negative responses included finguring, abusive language and foul remarks. Most of the pro-choice people did not quite stay to have a conversation with us. There were also positive remarks which included thumbs ups and a guy that recognized us in the BC Catholic, supported us and commended us. The warmest support we received was from a guy back at St. Stephens, N.Vancouver that was just filled with pride and amazement at what we were doing. He just wanted to join hands and pray with us, which he did and you could tell he was passionate about what we were doing. Tommorrow we start from Couquitlam. Stay tuned. More exciting news to come. As always we welcome your comments and prayer intentions.

It all begins now

This is it. The start of what will hopefully be a very long walk. We begin tomorrow from StanleyPark. How do I feel right now? Absolutely exhausted! I just spent the whole day fundraising at Saint Joseph the Worker parish. Needless to say, we raised over $2000 for various pro-life projects and for CrossRoads. Tomorrow, we hope to make it from Stanley Park to Langley. We leave tomorrow right after the 9AM mass at St. Stephens, North Vancouver. We have a general idea of where we are are going, but in the details , I'm not sure what to expect, but will trust in God's providence in the long road ahead of me, literally!!!

I'm going to leave it at this for now. More from me (hopefully) when we reach Langley. Take care & God bless!