hello from down under

hello everyone,
this is michelle young and gina young.
today is sunday july 20th (Australian time) and we are sitting in the cafe sown the street from the hotel.
our pilgrimage started off yesterday after the USA mass. that mass alone had over 50 bishops involved in the mass. it was outside at the domain, which is an open field within hyde park. after the mass we all went and got lunch and then had to rush back to the hotel and pack for our night under the stars. the entire diocese of Venice all left together at about 1:00. the walk alone was about an hour and half and it was all up hill. and let me mention that we are from florida where there are NOOOOOOOOO hills! so needless to say it was an "up hill battle". but we all survived and we finally made it to randwick racetrack. before we got in the gate we received are dinner, breakfast and lunch all at the same time. when we were walking to our section all that we could see were massive amounts of pilgrims. every time you turned around you saw someone from another country. Michelle, Justin, Paige, and Sarah went for a walk around to have other pilgrims from other countries sign a shirt that we are bringing home. this is where they passed out the chaplets and buttons and necklaces to the other pilgrims so then they knew that we were representing OLQM. after all the set up which included laying the tarp out and blowing up the rafts. which after a long walk it was challenging. =] but after that was all done we awaited for the Pope to arrive for the vigil. it was amazing to hear all the different languages that the Pope could speak fluently. everything started to wind down at about 9:30 and this is when it began to get cold. this was going to be the most challenging thing all of us were going to have to deal with. to start off you couldn't have enough blankets to cover yourself ( emergency blankets didn't seem to work to well) and even though you were off the ground with the raft the raft itself was freezing. we believe that the temperature had to be below zero but Jeff and Steven both agreed that it was probably anywhere between 40-45. it almost seemed like you couldn't have enough clothes on to stay warm. the only smart pilgrim was Steven Matthews. his sleeping bag was more like a cocoon then a regular sleeping bag. the only part that you could see of him was his face and even that he covered with his sweater by putting it on backwards. the lack of sleep brought Jeff, Gina, Michelle, Anndria, Paige, and Justin to tears because we were laughing so hard because of things that Paige was saying. for example that her toes were going to fall off because she had frost bite (even though it wasn't below freezing). =] =] =] everyone was up by 7 because you were to cold to sleep any longer. after this then we started waiting for the Pope to arrive around 9:45 am. first he flew around in a helicopter then he landed and drove around in his Pope Mobile. this is were Jeff was able to get a video of him waving to everyone. the mass was extremely important to all of us knowing that this could be a once in a life time experience to celebrate mass with the Pope. can't wait to show everyone the pictures and the memories that we gathered while here.
tomorrow we are having a mass with our very own Bishop Frank in the hyde park in a little chapel. then we are going to go site seeing and possibly to the space needle. we will try to blog more tomorrow to let you know about how everything is going.

take care in florida,
much love and keep praying for us

OLQM YOUTH MINISTRY
=]