Tuesday \u00a0began with a big breakfast: scrambled eggs, cheese, cold cuts, toast, various \u00a0jams, and Nutella. It is so easy to fill your plate when all the food is put \u00a0in front of you, and you don’t have to do any of the preparing or the cleaning up!<\/p>\n
After breakfast, we walked to town for mass. Although I was wearing a Fitbit, I never actually measured the distance from our residence\u00a0to town,\u00a0but\u00a0my estimate is about\u00a0a mile and a half. We walked on country roads and then on muddy \u00a0paths between crops. We learned that Medjugorje’s principal crop for decades had been tobacco, but not too long\u00a0ago, \u00a0vineyards replaced the tobacco plants. There were also vast potato fields. I’m sure potatoes\u00a0are a long-established crop there,\u00a0because they were \u00a0served as part of every dinner.<\/p>\n
As we were walking, JoAnn told me that when she and Gregg were in Medjugorje, he phoned\u00a0his wife, Loren, and told her that he wanted to marry her in a Catholic\u00a0ceremony. \u00a0 Back at home, a\u00a0\u00a0group of their fellow travelers who \u00a0were now\u00a0our \u00a0fellow travelers gifted Gregg and Loren with \u00a0an after-ceremony party\u00a0that included\u00a0food and music.<\/p>\n
Having arrived in town,\u00a0JoAnn took me to a park near the church in which there was a very tall statue of\u00a0Jesus weeping. The statue is so tall that the highest we could reach was Jesus’ knee. Sometimes, but not all the time, the knee of Jesus weeps. Scientiests have examined this\u00a0phenomenon, but they \u00a0have found\u00a0no explanation as to how\u00a0a metal statue could produce “tears.” We joined the line \u00a0of pilgrims to \u00a0reach the statue, with\u00a0JoAnn \u00a0ahead of me. As she prayed before the statue, \u00a0 I saw \u00a0droplets of water\u00a0 streaming\u00a0from the knee of the statue. I was stunned! Was\u00a0Jesus was letting JoAnn\u00a0know that He understood the pain of her loss? Did the tears from\u00a0the statue represent God’s mercy?\u00a0\u00a0What would happen during my turn to pray before the statue? \u00a0I approached\u00a0\u00a0hesitantly. I prayed. \u00a0 I left the statue\u00a0feeling less\u00a0burdened.<\/p>\n
We walked to\u00a0the Church of Saint James, the patron saint of pilgrims, which was built before the apparitions began. While it was under construction, residents of nearby\u00a0towns asked\u00a0builders why such a small \u00a0town needed a big church. The locals kept building. The church now offers \u00a0daily masses in a different language each hour, including Croatian, German, English, and Italian, and each mass is filled to capacity. Our mass was at 11 A.M. Afterwards, several of our group said they knew a good \u00a0place for pizza. Off we went. On the way, we passed stores that sold snack foods including fresh fruit, and junk food such as bags of chips.\u00a0There were many shops selling\u00a0religious items, from small, such as rosary beads, to large, such as statues of the Blessed Mother. JoAnn said to hold off buying anything, because she would take us to a\u00a0shop\u00a0that\u00a0donated its proceeds to the priesthood.<\/p>\n
Bosnia has its own currency, but they also accept the \u00a0Euro and in\u00a0many cases, American dollars. Although I was told there was a place to change currency, I never found it. However, on the last day of \u00a0our most recent trip to Europe, Nick exchanged a couple of hundred dollars for Euros, saying this would guarantee that we’d go back to Europe to spend them. Never did we imagine that\u00a0I would be spending them\u00a0 in Bosnia while he was back home.<\/p>\n
After lunch, JoAnn and I, along with Mary and Rula,\u00a0\u00a0started down many dirt paths that we thought would lead \u00a0back to our lodging, but none of them seemed right, so we turned back. After doing this a few times, the four of us took a \u00a0cab. The cab fare was different depending on whether the\u00a0currency was dollars or euros, with us getting more for our money by using euros. I paid in euros and everyone else\u00a0 reimbursed me\u00a0in dollars.<\/p>\n
Back at our lodging, Rula\u00a0discovered that her cell phone was missing. She checked her handbag and her shopping bags a dozen times, and began to get distraught. She was certain that it had fallen out of her pocket in the cab, but she \u00a0was in \u00a0the front \u00a0seat \u00a0while the rest of us were\u00a0in the back, so we hadn’t seen her phone as we left the cab.<\/p>\n
Saint Anthony is the patron saint of \u00a0lost items. Traditionally in my family, when you\u00a0lose something, you\u00a0say a prayer to Saint Anthony. When the lost item turns up, Saint Anthony is thanked with another prayer. \u00a0I saw\u00a0that this custom extended \u00a0well beyond my\u00a0family\u00a0when the four of us\u00a0who had been in the cab \u00a0began to pray to Saint\u00a0Anthony. Ivanka called\u00a0the cab company, and\u00a0they asked her for the\u00a0number of the cab or the name of the driver. Did we know either? \u00a0Of course not. Suddenly, our cab returned, and the driver \u00a0handed the phone to an excited, \u00a0relieved Rula.<\/p>\n
We \u00a0had arrived back in time for confession. Confession has changed \u00a0since I was young. At my church, it is more like discussing something we need help with, face to face, as with a therapist.\u00a0Two priests were among our group of pilgrims, Father Bob from Massachusetts and Father Dan from Iowa. When it was my turn,\u00a0\u00a0I discussed my desire to be more forgiving. I found Father Dan’s\u00a0words to be very practical. He said that the ability to forgive\u00a0would probably not come immediately, but it \u00a0would more likely require prayer and effort on a daily basis. This made so much sense me!<\/p>\n
Next we \u00a0all gathered \u00a0for our pre-dinner rosary. We\u00a0were joined by\u00a0 two new pilgrims, Dianne and John, who arrived by car. They had decided to spend a few days driving through Europe before joining the group. \u00a0After dinner (soup, salad, roast pork, mashed potatoes, and polenta, with cake for dessert), we went\u00a0back to the chapel. At that time, we took turns\u00a0introducing ourselves and explaining\u00a0\u00a0what brought each of us\u00a0to Medjugorje. Many were seriously ill themselves, or had seriously ill loved ones. Two came in thanksgiving after surviving stage 4 cancers.\u00a0JoAnn wanted to be back where \u00a0she and Gregg had found peace so she could find it\u00a0again. I explained that my cousin invited me to join her, and after I accepted, \u00a0I learned that\u00a0\u00a0either both Nick and I\u00a0had cancer, or one of us had cancer, or neither of\u00a0\u00a0us had cancer. My fellow pilgrims explaind that JoAnn was merely a messenger. Invitations to Medjugorje\u00a0come from the Blessed Mother.<\/p>\n
We left the chapel feeling much closer to each other. From that evening on, John and Dianne called me their “Little Buddy.” As it was still light, several of us decided to walk back to town. When we left, it was very dark and all the dirt paths looked the same. Father Bob had a flashlight, so I and several others follow \u00a0him.<\/p>\n
We had taken 19,900 steps that day and walked 8 miles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuesday \u00a0began with a big breakfast: scrambled eggs, cheese, cold cuts, toast, various \u00a0jams, and Nutella. It is so easy to fill your plate when all the food is put \u00a0in front of you, and you don’t have to do any of the preparing or the cleaning up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medjugorje-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":729,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions\/729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}