Billings, MT

Ok scratch some of the info from that last blog...we were on 12 until shortly after Shawmut, where we turned onto Highway 3. From there we will take Highway 3 into Billings and then hop back on I-90 for a short distance. Then we'll get on 212 and walk that into South Dakota hopefully by the end of this week! Montana has been nice... but I'm ready for a new state! I haven't had many opportunities to see the "Big Sky" out here because of the rainy/cloudy weather we've had these past two weeks while I've been on night shift. There was one night last week that was stunningly beautiful though; the sky was clear and the stars seemed infinite. I don't mean to be a downer...but there was still some light pollution on the horizon so they didn't appear so low to the ground. The night I'm waiting for is one that is so dark and so clear that, once your eyes leave the horizon, everywhere you turn your head you see stars until the sky meets the ground and you're looking at the earth again. I was told that western Montana would be flat...but that South Dakota would be even flatter. I hope that's true because I won't leave these flatlands until I see those stars from horizon to horizon!
This weekend we stayed in Billings- the largest city in Montana (which really doesn't say much, but it actually is a rather good size...about 126,000 people. Much bigger than Burlington!). The group split up this weekend and was hosted by four different families. I stayed with Margaret, Kate, Faith, and Barbara at Diane's house. Diane is a wonderfully generous woman who fed us delicious dinner and breakfast all weekend and opened up her beautiful condo for us where she allowed us to sleep, do laundry, and relax our bodies and our minds. : ) Thank you Diane for your welcoming hospitality! We all thoroughly enjoyed our stay at your home. Thank you for sharing with us not only your home but also your thoughts and experiences. We are pleased to have gotten to know you as much as we did in such a short time.
The rest of the walkers were split up and stayed at their respective host homes, and we were all shipped off to different parishes last night and this morning for mass. We had six different churches to go to this weekend! We normally go to 4 (give or take one) per weekend, so this was a busy one for us. I had the honor of attending mass at St. Patrick's Co-Cathedral twice, once Saturday night and once this evening for 5:00 mass. Beautiful church and mass. We had a fun experience on Saturday while we were praying outside of Planned Parenthood...which sounds bizarre but bare with me! As we were praying our first set of mysteries I saw a little girl walking down the sidewalk in our direction with a basket of brownies in her hand. All of a sudden Brad ran our from the line and hugged her and picked her up! I had no idea what was going on at first but soon learned that the girl was his little sister! Their sister Emily and their parents drove two days out from Sacramento, CA to meet them for the day and night. It was such an exciting surprise for everyone and obviously such a treat for Brad and Barb.
I'm on day shift this week! Woot hoo! Night shift was cool but I'm excited to walk in sunlight for the first time in two weeks. I'm exhausted so I'm gonna head off to bed. I apologize again for the disorganization of my blog. I'm tired!
Let me know if you have any questions so I can have something specific to write about!
Love you all and hope all is well :o)
God Bless

BTW Dave Bathon was here for the weekend. He's one of the guys that works behind the scenes to set up weekend mass locations and times and host family houses and allllll of that fun stuff. Thanks for all you do Dave! On a more personal note...Dave was the one who was at the booth at the FOCUS National Conference that I attended this past Christmas Break. I learned about Crossroads by talking to him and right off the bat I told him "I'm in!" He knew I was being sincere and he gave me a free Crossroads Pro-Life tee right then! If he hadn't been at Conference I probably would never have learned about Crossroads and I wouldn't be here right now. So thanks for being there Dave!

OK bedtime!