Into Regina

Walking into Regina was a piece of cake compared to our previous walks. With just 250 km to cover (from Saskatoon to Regina) for the week and 7 of us, we decided to do just day walks and walk in two's. What more can I say, warm sunny blue skies. Wind on some days made it even better. Our first stop along the way was Davidson. We were welcomed by this Catholic family for dinner. We got probably our best ammunition from this family, a huge pro-life poster, that we could stick on the back of our RV. What a great gift! We had a great conversation about a priest from Ghana there, who assured us that Ghana is getting a lot of vocations. He seemed pretty excited about the fact that Ghana is into the 2nd round of the soccer world cup.


Our next stop was Moose Jaw. A town of about 35000 people. Apparently, the size of the town has not changed for generations! We were welcomed there by the pro-life group there. They had a bbq dinner awaiting us. We met with the head of the pro-life committee, who took us in for the night. Some hardcore pro-life people were in this group. You can tell that from the bumper stickers on their car!







We welcomed the newest member to our walking group, though he was a bit too young to walk. This was, what we eventually decided, Charlie, the cat. We met him on the way to Moose Jaw on some farm, clearly abandoned by its mother and looking pretty lonely. We fed him and took him with us to Moose Jaw. We could not have met a better person to give Charlie too. The head of the pro-life committee in Moose Jaw, who also housed us for the night. She has be taking care of cats for 50 years! She decided to either keep him, if he gets along with her other cat or give him away to some home. Either way, we were sure Charlie was safe in her care!



Our next stop, of course was Regina itself, but the whether took a turn for the worse as we were approaching Regina. We could see huge dark swirling clouds. Probably some of the strangest whether I have ever seen. The streets of Regina was flooded yesterday from heavy thunderstorms and rain. I with another walker was caught in some heavy rain and hail for about 10 minutes. We were soaked! God had another plan for us. We stayed at the St. Michael's retreat center. It actually hailed huge chunks of ice, when we got there. The biggest hail, I have ever seen. We were fortunate to have a roof over our heads and our very thankful to the OFM's that allowed us to stay in the center for the night.

Today, we were welcomed by sunny blue skies. A sharp contrast from yesterday! We walked right into and past downtown Regina. The reaction from Regina was by far the most we have got on our trip. I am happy to report that majority of the reaction was pro-life. That being said, we did get double-fingered, double-booed and yelled at that "You don't have rights to my body". With over 800 abortions in Regina alone last year, there clearly is a lot to be done. However, a clear pro-life majority response, leads us to believe that Regina is more pro-life than pro-choice. Today, we also met up with former seminarian Lucio, who took us out to his family's Japanese restaurant. We also went out to dinner with Bob, who has taken the responsibility of organizing everything for the walkers here in Regina. We are very grateful for all their help. Without these people to feed and house us for the weekends, this would have been a much tougher battle. That's it for now. More action to follow as we talk in the coming days in the diocese of Regina. Should be exciting! Keep praying for us!

Walking and Talking in Saskatoon

Saskatchewan was a real treat to be in. Our first impressions of Saskatoon were really good. We got 2 really welcoming host families. CCO is really strong in Saskatoon and from what I have been told, Saskatchewan is majority Catholic. After being warmly welcomed by our host families, we set out to prepare for the masses the next day. All of us decided to do a night walk on Friday since we cut one off the previous day (because of heavy rain). In 4 hours, we made about 70 KM, with all 6 of us taking turns walking. The next day we went to the Saskatoon abortion mill which is the city hospital. There were atleast 20 of us, so the numbers showed great support for pro-life. We prayed and demonstrated outside the hospital.

We went for Saturday mass at the Cathedral and it was great to see some young people from CCO after the mass. After mass we went to one of our host family's place for lunch. We shared some stories of the walk with them. They are a strong Catholic family.

Next we were scheduled to go for our evening Saturday masses. I went to Holy family and it was the first time I heard a deacon sing during the homily of the mass. He read the gospel with so much life and spoke about the responsibility and love of fathers in the light of fathers day. We did not have much space to setup at Holy family, so the donations were less than average on that day.

On Sunday, we had a lot of masses scheduled for all of us. I was scheduled to go to the Ukranian church to give our talk and setup our table. Wow, how different the Eastern liturgy is. To make matters worse, our first mass was entirely in Ukranian! We had to bother the people nearby several times for the right page numbers in the missal. My first impressions were, it is really interactive (especially the choir), the order of the mass is different and they serve both the body and blood mixed. The priests were very welcoming and supportive of our group.

We even had a chance to have coffee with the Ukranian ex-bishop and he was very supportive of our work. Almost everyone gave a donation. In total, we got about $7000 from Saskatoon. What was our biggest treat from the parish is a member of the Knights of Columbus who is the father of the current bishop told us about a 100 foot pro-life cross that he erected in the city. He also donated a huge 6 foot cardboard made pro-life cross to us, which is awesome because it makes a huge difference on those rainy days when we got to cover up our pro-life message on our t-shirts.

The next few hours were spent going to a couple of places for lunch. The first was a fathers day family reunion at a park/zoo. We got to meet this couple who we talked pro-life, I guess so passionately, that one of them wanted to join us the next day as we walked through the city. She was a good witness being a young mother with a 11 month old child, who she bought on the walk. After our final mass, we decided to do a night walk into Saskatoon with a new member, Mathew, who is a friend of 2 of the regular group member's. We walked a mere 25 KM, much to the gratitude of all the mosquito's.

The next day, Monday, we were set for our downtown Saskatoon walk. We were armed with our 6 foot pro-life cross and 6 of us. There was lots of reaction from downtown Saskatoon, mostly positive. Among the negative reactions we got were a woman shouting "We have rights", a number of fingers, bleeping "facists". Among the positives included a number of thumbs up, a woman who was looking to know more about the facts of abortion because of a presentation she was doing. Our most impressive encounter was a woman who challenged us to know the options to abortion, beside just carrying the message. She told us that she was on the verge of committing suicide and she averted that because she felt a call from God telling her not to. We did another city walk after going for a 12 PM mass. This time 5 woman joined our regular team on the walk. I am happy to say that one of the woman will be joining us till Regina and then making up her mind on if she will be joining us for the rest of the way. It is a powerful witness to have women walk because it shows that there are other woman on the pro-life side too. Most of the complaints we have been getting is because we were all men. Complaints like "You cannot get pregnant" and "We are not dependent on men for anything".

An amazing and much appreciated Chinese dinner awaited us at home. After dinner, we went back to the City Hospital to pray and join a young adult group called "Slurpies for life". They are a bunch of young adults who meet every Monday and pray outside the city hospital and then play sports. They used to have slurpies, but apparently don't do so anymore. We prayed with them and then had a little healthy competition of ultimate frisbee. It was great to spend our energy after so much eating and to share with them what we were doing.

That brings me up to speed with this moment. We are on the road to Regina tomorrow, with our newest member Francis Platt. Praise God! Looking forward to your comments guys! Without comments, I have no way to improve this blog or know what to include and what not? Thanks!

The toughest walking day...yet

As we set out for the roads of Saskatchewan we knew we were in for a rough day. There was rain, heavy winds and it was quite cold. The rain jacket that the deacon of Didsberry donated to us came in super handy for me. The winds really were biting. They were relentless and at times they were so heavy that I was being blown sideways in the wind. My pants got totally soaked. Even my water proof shoes could not handle it. My socks were soaked. A 5 KM walk which normally took us 45 minutes to walk took us an hour and a half. They say you experience great joy with joining your suffering with Christs suffering. However "joy" would be the last adjective I would use to describe today. I do know my suffering has redemptive value in saving the unborn. I listened to music the whole time I was walking which made the walking a little more pleasant. After just 4 hours of walking we were all tired. I felt like I could squeeze a bucket of water from my pants and socks!

We were fortunate to meet up with a Viatnamese priest in a nearby town after the walk. He celebrated mass for the 6 of us plus 2 regulars from the town. He also has housed the 3 day walkers in his rectory. We each got comfortable beds and our own private bedrooms. It is so good to have a warm place to stay after such a cold and rainy day. I pity the night walkers, though, who have to go through what we went through during the day. Father also allowed us to have dinner at his place and talking to him about the priesthood was a real blessing!

That's it for now....more from the prairies, hopefully, soon.

Crossing another province

I'll try to make this quick. I'm in a mosquito infested place and they are feasting on me right now in the only place I can get internet access. Our time in Calgary was well spent. We headed into downtown Calgary. Not suprisingly, yet sadly there were not a lot of reactions from downtown Calgary. We were then on our way north before heading east to Saskatoon. We were headed towards the town of Didsberry. We were scheduled to meet a permanent deacon there for dinner. Another wonderful Catholic family. We had this music jamming session with a variety of musical instruments that they got. After the jamming we had a great conversation during dinner about the current state of abortion in Canada. We were honored to be joined by our temporary new member Jenna and a priest from Nigeria who was the parish priest in the neibouring city of "Olds". After dinner the deacon kindly obliged to open up the local chuch for adoration and benediction. It was great to spend time with Jesus after so many days of walking. We reached our quota for the week and we were next in preparation for our next diocese, Edmonton. Before heading to Edmonton we all had the opportunity to have confessions with the Nigerian priest and go to mass (which he celebrated). After mass we were invited to cake and coffee with the community at Olds. Each of us walkers shared with the whole community a bit of what we experienced and our background. They generously made a donation to our cause. What is probably one of the greatest acts of charity we have experience on this trip is when the permanent deacon, who owns a pharmacy decided to open up his pharmacy to us to let us pick whatever we needed from the pharmacy for free. The store had a ot of useful stuff for us which included foot ointmets, toilet articles, rain gear. All this helps us a lot in saving the donation money we receive for pro life causes.

We now set our sights for the big city of Edmonton! Two of the group members knew a friend in Edmonton and stayed with him. Four of us were with another wonderful Catholic family. What made their story interesting was that they were recent converts to the Church from the Lutheran denomination. They had the cutest kids who were all interested in soccer which was great because I got to see some world cup action, thanks to their interest! The father took us out to Fort Edmonton and we got a taste of Edmontons history through the ages. It was extremely inforamative and I highly reccommend it for anyone desiring to go on a journey learning about Canadian history. We got our taste of the West Edmonton mall which seemed to have everything from a "galaxyland" with a rollercoaster, ice skating ring, wavepool and an exact life size replica of one of Columbuses ships the "Santa Maria". It was good publicity for our "Pro life" message as we stormed through the crowded mall.

The parishes we targeted in Edmonton was St. Alphonsus, Holy family, Good Sheppard and St. Paul (Korean). The priests were very supportive and the people were very generous throughout the Edmonton parishes. One lady was so touched by what we were doing that she wanted to join our group to Ottawa. She had second thoughts, though, when we met with her the next day and told her the challenges of the journey. She said she might join our group later after she had a chance to think about it more. Considering she was in her 50's, I think that was pretty courageous of her to even approach us on the topic! The next day, we were set to pray around the abortion clinic in Edmonton. There is a pro-life house set up right opposite the abortion mill. It is called "The Back Porch" and is setup to help woman with pre and post abortion counselling. It was sad to see the number of woman go into the abortion clinic in our short time we were there. It was another Morganteller abortion clinic. There were 7 of us opposite the abortion clinic, praying the rosary much to the praise and admiration of many people that passed us. It was obvious that the woman coming out from the abortion clinic (after having an abortion) were hurt mentally, physically and spiritually. It really was a sad sight to see. I do know that God is doing something about this. We just can't see the effects of his plan yet.

We were then back to Calgary from where we stopped our walk. After a weekend of rest and being well fed, we were all anxious to get on the road and start walking. The results of our walk the past 3 days only prove this. We made it from just 40 km north of Calgary to 10 km past the Saskatchawan border in just 2 1/2 days. The prairies really have nothing to them. You cannot see any mountains in the distance. The fields are either brown or green. The land is tilled. You see the occasional house spread out over 10 or so miles. There is not much traffic either. It gets quite windy. There is sudden change in wheather. We even saw a tornado, which was a real treat. It is hard to find places with an internet connection here or even a Catholic church. We have not gone to mass in the past 2 days. We only wonder what other surprises Saskatchewan will bring. We met a guy the Saskatchewan border who told us that what we even encountered would be considered hilly. "It gets really flat". We drove an hour to get to mass today, only to find out the priest might be on vacation. Please pray for the rest of our journey, for our safety and the unborn. Till we meet again, adios, from the prairies!

Heading into downtown Calgary

Another pretty hectic day. Today after daily mass, we joined up with a new member, Jenna. She will be with us till Friday. After mass and breakfast today, we setup to walk towards downtown Calgary. We set out as a team of 7 because we were heading into the big city. Before we set out to walk we went to pray at the abortion mill in Kensington. No sooner than 10 minutes that we gathered beside the abortion mill, we were approached by the cops. They were called in because of a complaint from the clinic. It was a great thing that the cops came because they clarified exactly what the rules were according to a court order. They are very strict with praying and demonstrating outside abortion clinics. People have got arrested for this. We were told the specific areas that we could pray and demonstrate. We noticed atleast 6 people pull in to the abortion clinic in our short stay of 2 hours. It was good to gather in numbers and pray for the unborn. After praying we set out to walk from where we stopped. There was heavy rain. It was cold and there was a lot of wing. But this did not stop in. We walked as a group of 6 down the highways heading into downtown Calgary. We did not meet a single rejection on the highway. There were many honks of approvals and thumbs up which was good to see. In the end, we walked a mere 10 km, but all of us were soaked to the core, and cold! We were scheduled to go to Greg Woodard's family's house for dinner. Now I was told that my former spiritual director Fr. Fernando Mignone was going to be there. However, it was a huge surprise to also see Mr. Turner, my drama teacher from the seminary. It really is a small world. We had a great gathering and talk about travel, religion and art. After a healthy lunch of burritos we are now set for the night walk. We recruited yet another member temporarily - Greg Woodard, who will be walking with us tonight. Should be fun. Got to go for the night walk. Till next time - Pray hard for the unborn!

Impact in Calgary

Today was another very eventfull day. We started the day with mass as usual. After mass, I had probably was my best breakfast yet! I have to describe this - waffles with peaches and cream with maple syrup, bannana loaf bread, cantelope, choclate liquor cake and coffee. The lady who we are now staying with is spoiling us like never before. "Death by charity" is what our team calls it. She definitely has a great heart and you can tell how devout a family is sometimes by the number of holy statues and books they have in the house. This family has tons of those!

After a heavy breakfast, the day walkers which included me had to hit the roads. The scenery is amazing in Alberta. You just have these endless green fields. Some areas have these herds of cows. You have the rocky mountains in the backdrop of what I would call a "sea of endless flat green fields". We got a few thumbs up, but as we entered the busy highway we got a lot of fingers. I enjoyed the last 3 km with my friend Jonathan Deuling singing the divine chaplet, praise and worship and making our own chants for Calgary. The day walk made about 60 KM and we are just 50 KM away from Calgary!

We all had a much anticipated evening as we were scheduled to go to Cornerstone put up by CCO. CCO does a 4 months mission project called IMPACT during the summer in different cities accross Canada every year. This year it happened to be in Calgary. There were easily over 200 young adults at this event! The keynote speaker of Cornerstone was the founder Andre who talked about mission and holiness. His main point was that we are all called and built to be a missionary just as we are all called and made for holiness. Tomorrow we are scheduled to pray and walk by an abortion mill with a few others that will be joining us. Together we hope to send a powerful message to stand up for a culture of life in Canada. More numbers = More miracles. As is said in Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." With more people to pray for the end to abortions, I have no doubt that the impact will be huge!

Okay enough with the "impact" puns. That's it for now. Adios!

Catholics in Calgary

We started the day of going to various parishes around Calgary to distribute our pro-life material. I went to St. Joseph's where I was permitted to give two talks. People were really generous there. The assistant pastor who celebrated the mass was from India, so we had a nice conversation about our roots. After two good masses at St. Joseph's I was picked up and we were invited to have brunch at this Catholic family's place who knew two of the members of our team. Their 6 year daughter had the sweetest smile! The father was a software engineer so it was great to get a feel for how the tech industry currently is! What impressed me about their house the most is the number of devotional pictures that they had. They had this huge calender with a picture of a saint for the particular saint's feast day. After the brunch we had a bit of down time to count the money from the morning masses. Part of the crew left for the early evening masses. The night walk crew left for Fernie, which was where we stopped our walk. I together with 2 others did the 7:30 PM mass at St. Luke's. Here we met up with Impact Calgary, part of a CCO mission that goes on over the summer. We were invited to share what we are doing at one of their events, Cornerstone, on Tuesday. There will be over 200 young adults at this event! After 7:30 mass, we went to an ex-seminarians, Greg Woodard's house for dinner. What a wonderful huge Catholic family. 10 kids! We prayed the rosary together with them and shared our vocation stories with the family. We also got to hear some of their life stories too. I have an early start & a long walk tomorrow. I better get going to bed. Adios! Oh, one more thing. There are tons of jackrabbits in Calgary. Those animals are the cutest things ever!

Stepping into the Rockies

Yesterday night we walked a mighty 60 KM. It was a quiet & cold walk. I had a 5 KM down hill stretch where I just jogged the whole way. I had the snow capped rocky mountains as a backdrop, a cool morning and a peanut butter sandwich that energized me for it. I loved every second of that jog. The night walks continue to be very challenging since we don't get much sleep during the day. We take the RV from one city to the next during the day and usually do a lot of shopping, while the day crew walks. I continue to fear animals, but with time, more familiarity with the place and my safety equipment I can let my fears slide and concentrate more on enjoying the walk and Gods wonderful creation. Today we drove 4 hours from Fernie and are currently in Calgary. I went to a beautiful huge parish called St. Lukes in Calgary to fund raise. The other teams went to other parishes around Calgary to do the same. One incredible story that came from one of the other teams was that a person came up to them and told them about their daughter that was going to have an abortion and saw our prolife sticker and decided not to go ahead with the abortion. We met up with a seminarian, Greg Woodard at St. Luke's and he gave us a tour of a beautiful park overlooking the "Bo" river and the city of Calgary. We are now setup for what smells like a yummy dinner. I better get eating. As I mentioned before, we were not given permission by the Bishop to do the talks in the diocese in Calgary. However, we were still permitted to setup our table and distribute our pro-life material. Please continue to pray for our safety, for a culture of life in Calgary and for the unborn. Bye for now!

Made it to Fernie

We did a lot of mileage yesterday. The night crew covered 80 km and made it from 20 km east of Creston to the base of the rocky mountain forest resort. We made it past our first time zone! The indifference continues to be the major reaction. The day crew made it from where we stopped, to past Cranbrook, and another 80 km from where we stopped. We are now stationed in the city of Fernie. I can see the Rocky mountains from where I am. They are still snow capped and simply beautiful. They rise up into the mountains and I cannot even see the top! Walking through the night is pretty scary. We walk alone for 5 km in complete darkness on the highway with nothing but wilderness around us. We take a loud horn to scare away bears, a torch light to guide our way and a rosary. Last night I heard some hustling in the bushes which freaked the hell out of me. It turned out to be a huge elk. They are pretty harmless creatures. The owner of our camp site in Creston were some Catholic Koreans. She treated us to a wonderful Korean dinner and then the next day to a brunch. She is an amazing artist and she showed us her studio of both oil and water color paintings. Definitely was a burst of color there. Before we left, she gave us a number of things to take with us on our journey. Some lemon slices that take care of sun burn, so cucumber slices that refresh us when we walk and some after bite medicine that takes care of any nasty bites. Shows how thoughtful people are! We are now headed for talks in many parishes in Calgary which is only about a 4 hours drive from where we stopped walking. Got to rush for breakfast. Pray for our safety. More importantly, pray for the unborn.

Marching forward to the Kootneys

The last few days have been really busy. During the weekend we were hosted with some really hospitable people in Summerland. We talked at parishes in Kelowna and Summerland. People were really generous and supportive at St. Charles Garnier. Not so much at Immaculate conception, mainly because we were setup outside. We met this Korean couple who owned a motel right outside the summerland chuch. They were so amazed by what we were doing that they treated all of us including the local priest to a pool side bbq lunch. Later that evening we had adoration, dinner and a discussion with the youth group in Summerland. It was great to share with the youth what we were doing. On Tuesday we joined some people outside the Kelowna hospital where they do abortions. We were treated to a lunch there by the Kelowna right for life society. Much thanks to their generosity. Another cool thing that happened when we went for mass in Summerland was we met up with an ex-seminarian who just got ordained, namely father Edwin Kulling. He concelebrated the daily mass with us and preached a wonderful short sermon. He gave us all a special blessing and blessed our whole RV with holy water. What a blessing to get a brand new priest to bless our RV. Who needs bullet proof windows when you got a brand new priest to bless your RV!

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and today we did some intense walking both day and night which took us from Princeton right through the towns of Grand Forks, Castlegar and now in Creston. We attended masses in each of those towns. It was neat to see the style of churches in each of those towns and the history of the towns. Today we stayed at an RV park owned by some devout Catholic Koreans. They treated us to a wonderful Korean dinner. All in all the walk has been quite tiring, especially the night walks. We walk in rain and lightening. We are terriefied of bears despite the safety equipment. However it is all worth it knowing we are speaking and walking for the unborn. We are using our lives to spare those whose life might be snuffed out. Got to rush for the night walk. Bye for now.