The Life of a Pilgrim

The past 36 hours (well it's been 37 but I am not counting the past hour) have been some of the most challenging hours of my entire life.

Last night was the World Youth Day vigil, which basically is a big camp out on a massive field where the Pope comes to speak and there is lots of prayer and music and whatnot. Well, I don't know if you know anything about the weather in Germany but it was absolutely freezing like night, as in, I could see my breath kind of cold, and the ground was muddy and the constant threat of rain was on the horizon. We left the hotel at 7:45 in the morning to stake out our place (section A, which means we were pretty close) and basically spent the entire day killing time and hanging out (and in my case sleeping) on the field. It was cold all day, but when the sun went down, oh man, it was insane. So sleeping was quite a challenge, and let me just say you get to know people you didnt know very well, very well when circumstances call for it. So needless to say, I didn't get any sleep last night. Not to mention the toilets there were backed up and overflowed which left bathroom out of the picture and we hardly had anything to eat.

So after a nice, cold, 2 and a half hour Mass with the Pope this morning, as pilgrims we set off to what was supposed to me a 4K walk to the train station, but when we got to the train station all the trains were out of order, and this was the case for the next station which was another 5K off...Needless to say, from 1 o clock to 7:30 we were walking across Germany.

I really don't know if I have ever pushed my body quite so hard, but it's insane how God can deliver strength.

Ok I only have 39 seconds left and I need to get this up...more soon.