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!