22 Days to Go!

G'Day Mates! I am sorry I haven't blogged in forever, but things have been crazy hectic around here! Only 22 days until we leave for down-under now, and the last minute preparations are outrageous!

I know that I have given you a brief overview of everything that we will be doing, but here is a little more information. Every participant at world youth day brings something to 'swap' with all of the other teens from around the world. We decided on hackey-sacks and small beach balls that have World Youth Day: St. Michael-Sharonville OH: USA~ printed on them. (Tom Theis from Adsco helped us design them and he did a great job!) Our tour company, Uni-tours, sent all of us backpacks that we can use as our carry-on. Pam and I have since stuffed them with the swaps and a journal that each teen can use to record their experiences of WYD.

We have received our tickets, and I have to tell you, holding them in my little hands made it seem so much more real. We are really leaving for the other side of the world! (OK, for all of you who know me well, you understand how anal I can be about making sure everything that can be accounted for, is. So this is a big deal to me :)

At our last meeting, the group decided on the 'top 3' things that we would like to see or do besides going to the WYD festivities. We agreed on the Taronga Zoo, the Blue Mountains, and the tour of the Sydney Opera house. Although we might have time for more than this, we didn't want to plan to much so our hopes wouldn't get busted. :) I keep reminding them that over 1 million people will be there, and they are all going to want to do the same things that we want to do, so we have to have PATIENCE!!!! (They seem to be doing much better at that than I am though.)

We have another meeting this week and hopefully I will have the WYD itinerary to share with them. For those of you who live around the Sharonville area, we will be having a 'sending forth' pilgrimage blessing on July 12th at 9:30am at St. Michael's. Please come if you can, and give the teens your blessings for a safe and Holy trip!

Thanks for all of your support over the past three years! We wouldn't be able to go without it!
That's all for now, I'll write more next week. God's Blessings on Your Day!