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Palmerston North Youth to Melbourne & World Youth Day

Tori Prendergast

What I learnt about the world

• What I learnt about life
• What I learnt about my faith
• The highlight of my pilgrimage and why
• What surprises I experienced.
• The most moving moment and why?
• The funny moments
• What I found challenging.

Where do I go from here...........before and after wyd......

Well I flew from home to Wellington on Monday the 7th July and met four other boys I was travelling with, whom I’d met on the previous Passionist retreats. The fun started right then on the way to the airport reminiscing about the previous times we’d been together and we talked and talked and talked right through the airport, the flight, the next airport and the drive to our host parish in Melbourne! We were welcomed by a few of the locals from The St Paul Apostle parish in Melbourne and started mocking each other’s accents right away.

After sorting out the official stuff we were picked up by our host family, Helen and Garry who were absolutely fantastic! We were taken to their house and met two of their children and had dinner with them. The next day we spent in Melbourne city enjoying having free time to catch up even more with each other! This was a day full of laughs and times we’ll never forget!

The next day kicked off the youth encounter which was absolutely fantastic. Here was where we met other pilgrims from all over the world, from all different backgrounds but with the same goal...learning about the Passionist’s and their sharing of the passion and compassion of Christ, also preparing ourselves for WYD08 and making new friends!

Over the next four days we enjoyed some of the best and most exciting times of our lives! We had a daily mass, small group sessions, free time to bond with the people we’d just met, time for music (and dancing!) daily prayer, guest speakers with amazing and inspiring stories, the Days in the Diocese Mass at the Telstra Dome in Melbourne and finally a thirteen and a half hour bus ride up to Sydney.

Something that stays in my mind, even a month after this amazing encounter and something I’ll carry with me forever is the friendships we’ve formed and the fun that we had. A memory I will never forget is the first time I experienced mass in a huge crowd, there were about fifty thousand of us at the Days in the Diocese mass at the Telstra Dome that night and the atmosphere was awe inspiring.

There are too many funny moments to mention but... I’m sure the boys and I will never forget the song “Big Girls’ Don’t Cry” by Fergie and especially never forget Daniel singing it on the train in Melbourne. Also as I love music I had a great time as anywhere we went the boys got out the guitar and we had sing-alongs everywhere imaginable from buses to trains to the lounge to bedrooms to parks...you name it we had a sing-along there!

For anyone interested in doing something like this I would highly recommend it, it was the best experience of my life and I definitely can’t wait for Madrid. I would also like to thank all those who made this possible, with special reference to Kerry and John for your fundraising, and especially a big thank you to Fr John and Bridget of Endeavour Hills Parish Melbourne.

We were very privileged to attend this encounter and appreciate all your hard work.

God bless, Tori