After literally being blown down the road with winds of about 30 mph, we spent a very interesting two hours meeting with the pilgrims we are going with including Archbishop Nauman and three members of the diocesan office: Lesle Knop, Executive Director of The Catholic Foundation of NE Kansas;  Michael Scherschligt, the Catechist for the Holy Family School of Faith and Michael Podrebarac, Liturgist for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. (I can tell that remembering names, at least for me, will be very easy if everyone is called Michael!) Also with us was Belinda Held our tour guide and fellow pilgrim from Unitours, the touring company assembling all the parts for this pilgrimage;

Ms Knop

Archbishop Nauman

One tidbit that Archbishop Nauman let everyone know is that this will be his first pilgrimage to Fatima! We will be in good hands! He will be providing the Mass coverage and will handle the Confessional while we are traveling. I'm not sure how confessing to a Bishop is handled, but I guess we'll find out. Most of us who live in rural parishes that are served by one priest who are responsible for two or three far-flung parishes rarely have the opportunity to have a long confessorial moment with him. Having at our disposal confessors is unique for us out in the hinterlands. 

Ms. Held as the Unitour representative gave us the preliminary information we needed to prepare ourselves and our belongings for the journey, including a short video describing our journey. The video is  further down the blog

Mr. Scherschligt, there is not a test on the spelling of Michael's name at the end of the pilgrimage!  Michael, this is easy to spell, has a PhD in Marian studies and the diocese is fortunate to have him both as a Catechist and as a Marian specialist. He will also be our "go to" guy on the Marian sites we will be visiting, how lucky is that? Michael gave us some preparatory spiritual activities to do prior to going on the trip, one was to pray the rosary and inform ourselves on the Marian sites we are visiting. Michael too has not visited all of the Marian sites personally so he will also be a newbie with us.

Ms. Held uploaded a YouTube video after the meeting, which describes the trip and its route:

So, here we are: the first day of the journey. Our preparation is ahead of us, by getting in shape for the trip, both physically and spiritually; we are up for the task. Five short months and here's hoping that the Passports come quickly without any mistakes! 

Remember our blog updates will be infrequent from here on out unless something important happens. So stay tuned. I will send out reminders a week before we leave. Depending on WiFi service (it may be far and few in Span and Portugal) I hope to get something on this blog every day. I hope also to be able to turn on the comments after we leave so that may be a way for you to communicate with us while we're "deployed." In the mean time, send us your prayer requests.

As an addendum to the original starting page, if it becomes feasible to open the comment section of this travel blog, you will be needing a Blogger account. Most of you use Google and have Google accounts which can be used for the Blogger sign in. Go to your Google account to set it up.

This next Sunday, March 30th, we start our "adventure" when we meet Archbishop Joseph Nauman of Kansas City in Kansas and the rest of our traveling hoard who will leave Kansas City on October 7th and return on October 17th. The itinerary includes Fatima, Portugal; Lourdes, France; Santiago De Compostela, Spain and Rome. For those of you who are Catholic will recognize Fatima and Lourdes as spots that Our Lady visited on this earth and are venerated as important religious places in the Catholic Church. Many documented miracles have historically been part of those holy places and as such catholics who visit as pilgrims are offered many graces in their quest of holiness. While we're not looking for miracles for ourselves, we are accepting prayer requests for you and your family for us to leave at these holy places. We will certainly and automatically place each of our personal email recipients' names at those holy places plus those who we know as needing of Our Lady's help of intercession to her Son.

For those non Catholics, here are a short summary of those places we will visit.

First we will visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal. The name "Fatima" is an Islamic woman's name purportedly the name of Mohammad's daughter that was left to this small town in a valley during the Islamic victory over the Spanish during that particular war. In 1917 Mary appeared to three little children-shepherds in the hills above Fatima during the day, the apparitions started on May 13th of that year and every month on the 13th with the exception of one month, when the children were imprisoned, until October 13th when the "Miracle of the Sun" was witnessed by more than 60,000 pilgrims. There is much more to Fatima than I can relate here, so please visit their site at www.fatima.org. As we go through the Shrine, we will certainly fill you in on that holy place.

Santiago De Compostela, Spain.  Spain is important in the history of Our Lady of Fatima and for the history of St. James the Apostle. As the three children of the Fatima apparition became older, two of the children died very young: Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The third Lucy dos Santos lived to be quite old and was a nun first in Portugal and ending in Spain. Lucy was the "spokesperson" for Fatima, limited by her order's custom of silence, Pope John Paul II wanted her to speak out as much as she could about the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, so she has written many books about herself and the events of Fatima including the three "Secrets" of Fatima of which the third was released not too long ago. The "Secrets," two of which have become true, the third secret is not very well understood and is said to have already happened but is confusing as to its meaning. You can read more at the link above. We will certainly blog while we are there and hopefully fill you all in on what we find out. There is a lot of mystery about Fatima and some are true but most are false. We hope to find out for ourselves the truth.  For more about Lucy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lúcia_Santos

Spain is also important as the Way of St. James the Apostle who left Isreal after Pentecost to spread the Gospel. We will travel through some of those areas that he traveled. Find more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_St._James. The Cathedral of Santiago De Compostela in Galicia purported to have the remains of St James there.

Lourdes, France. In 1858, Our Lady appeared to an uneducated girl in what was a grotto near a trash dump where her father deposited the city's trash for his job. Lourdes is an important point of reference for the dogmatic belief of Mary's Immaculate Conception, during one apparition, Mary told 14 year old Bernadette Soubirous that she was the "Immaculate Conception." Naysayers have written that the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception was initially put forth four years earlier by then Pope Pius IX, but one has to remember that information didn't travel through wires as it does today, but through letters which sometimes took years to get from point A to point B. In any event, Bernadette was illiterate, as was most French who lived in the boondocks at that time. As we visit Lourdes we will fill you in on more details. For those who confuse the "Immaculate Conception" as Jesus' conception in Mary's womb, the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary's conception in the womb of Mary's mother Ann. Go here for more information: http://en.lourdes-france.org/

In all of Mary's messages, the Mother of God wanted us to pray for peace, pray for the conversion of sinners and to pray her Rosary often.

And to end our pilgrimage, Rome. We will spend more time in Rome than any of the other places. There will be so much to see and to write about that I'm sure I'll be busy every night doing so. Most of you have seen many of the places in Rome that are important, but I hope to blog the things that most people don't see and pictures they will NEVER see, so stay tuned.

Until we leave in October, there won't be much writing in this blog unless there is a story that needs to be told, like how the government screwed up our passports or some other factoid. I will blog the meeting this Sunday for you and hopefully have pictures of the event. For those of you who have made the trip before, any input about how to pack and prepare for our trip will be appreciated. I have already heard about the potential of being pickpocketed, so any tricks from you will be helpful.

I'm afraid of outside bloggers accessing this blog and leaving anti catholic BS, consequently I'm turning off comments until I get a handle on how this blog will work and I may turn comments back on once the trip starts. If you want to connect now or the future use either of our email's.