My Long Weekend - it was great!

What to do over a 4 day long weekend?

It was a toss-up between diving Green Island with Rae and perfecting my non-existent underwater photographic skills or, a Marian pilgrimage to Hualien.

Guilt won.

The pilgrimage took me to
- 2 churches. The main church of Hualien and the tiny chapel in the mountain of Hualien where we spent the night.

Main church in Hualien City

Tiny chapel in the mountains of Hualien

The view of Hualien city as I walked up the mountain to the tiny chapel where we spent the night.

- 2 tourist spots. Taroko Gorge where we marveled the beautiful marble cliffs created by God and, the Promised Land resort where we all sat around, bored.

Me in Taroko Gorge - after some China tourist got hurt by falling rocks, everyone needs to wear a hard hat now.

- 2 good meals out of the whole weekend. The seafood meal at Nan-Ao, I think I learnt this from 小川, steamed prawns with wasabe is just heavenly ; and a decent Chinese lunch at the Promised Land resort.
- 2 takeaways. I learnt about our Lady of Banneux - Virgin of the Poor. Our Lady appeared in apparition to an 11 year old kid in a remote village in Belgium. And the other message which was repeated again by a different priest over Sunday's sermon on Pentecost Sunday, free your mind.
You know, I've never been very much of a Marian person despite coming to know Jesus through Saturday Novenas. But reading the little booklet (provided by the church on a hill), thankfully they had the English version, actually sent shivers up my spine. Hey, I live alone u know... and I was reading it at 1am before falling asleep.

I gotta repeat our Lady's message at Banneux, nontheless.
- she called herself "Virgin of the Poor."
- she said she "come to alleviate suffering."
- she promised "believe in me, I will believe in you," repeating John 20:29 to believe in Jesus.
- and she admonished, on 2 occasions "Pray hard."

My other takeaway, the priest up in the mountains mentioned we have freedom to believe. God granted us free will. The freedom to choose to believe in Jesus. And on Pentecost Sunday at St John Bosco church, Fr Cary's sermon had a common refrain. He said that we need to free our minds to accept God's word. That same term - freedom. We were free, we had choice, we should choose Jesus, not the other stuff that we today choose (all the materials things we cling to). hmm...

On a lighter note, being on a weekend trip as a total stranger amidst people who all knew one another quite well was rough in the beginning. But once they realised I wasn't Filippino (as in, I speak Chinese), they were nicer, actually really very much nicer. It was mostly elderly women - a couple had husbands in tow, all Chinese speaking. From the English mass, it was 3 overseas Chinese from India (is there no escaping the Ah-Neh accent? Clearly Jesus has a GREAT sense of humour) and 3 Filippinas - yes they were maids. And then, there was me! Mostly I was the loner - I don't care really, I was there to grew closer to God.