What a Weekend!

This was the most fun I've had in one weekend in a really long time.

On Friday my friend Jon arrived from Bellingham, we got fed a lot by my mom and we headed out to Richmond for the last ordination mass in the Vancouver Archdiocese. We met some of my friends from my home parish there. Luckily, they saved us seats in the third row!!! It was really crowded! In Vancouver the ordinations are done separately and each one is done at the seminarian's home parish. It's done like that for the seminarians and as a vocations promotion tool to revive and keep up the parish's good work. It was a great mass. I think the coolest part of the whole mass was right after Fr. Henry was made a priest when the Archbishop said something like "there are special graces associated with blessings from a new priest, and no one needs it more than I do," then he took a knee to the new priest and received a blessing from him. Talk about being a servant, for the Archbishop to kneel in front of the newest priest to get blessed by him....wow!! After the mass we got to eat more and wandered around and talked to some of the priests we knew and got blessings from the newly ordained priests and one of the other priests ordained that week. We also got to chat with some sisters who were there, we saw the missionaries of charity wandering around, and asked a few priests in cool habits questions about their orders etc. I was also introduced to a few seminarians because apparently my friend Kristine knows them all! From a vocations standpoint it was sooooo wonderful to see a man become a priest. It's so beautiful to see God inspire and work through people. I can't describe how amazing it was to watch him say his first words of consecration and the feeling in my heart to know that there are two more hands that can bring Christ in the flesh out to our starving world. It was amazing. Yay for Fr. Henry Yeung!! It was so wonderful seeing all the priests and the sisters and seminarians there. It really felt like a family affair, sisters and brothers coming together with God as our heavenly Father. So awesome!!! It was also the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, what a great day to be ordained!!
Since we were already in Richmond we headed out to the night market. We got a little lost so we only had about an hour there, but it was really fun. Donne and Jon had never been to anything like it before. Jon ended up buying this cool looking decorative dagger thing, it's not sharp so hopefully he won't have any troubles getting it across the border. I almost thought he was going to buy a samurai sword, but he opted out of it. That was an adventure, the night market is always fun. We ended up getting home around...1am I think.

Saturday morning we went to confession and headed out to playland. We got there around 12:00 and started the day off with the Hellevator. If you don't know what that is....well it's basically a ride where you sit back and are harnassed in and you get shot up about 12 storeys into the air and get dropped again. That was crazy!! It was really fun though. We met up with my church friends again around 1:00. We went on a lot of rides. I went on a lot of rides I wouldn't normally go on, but Jon is a persuasive guy and so I got suckered into going onto rides like "The Scrambler"....yeah you can imagine. My favorite is always the classic wooden roller coaster from the 50's that gets up to 90km/hr. Yep, it's crazy and you feel like you're going to fall out of it. Halfway through our day at Playland we took a trip to Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. It's such a beautiful Cathedral. Beautiful stained glass and gothic architecture. Jon saw his first communion rail, but got a little confused at Communion time and got into the regular standing reception line instead of the line for the rail. Oh well, maybe next time. I love mass at the Cathedral, it's so great. We headed back to Playland to get our money's worth and went into the Haunted House, did the Coaster and the Hellevator again and went on the log ride where my friend's cousins proceeded to soak us by splashing after the actual ride down the splashy hill. We came off looking like we jumped into a swimming pool. That was crazy, but it was really fun. The Haunted house was hilarious and actually pretty scary. I know I screamed a lot... more than I was expecting to. The actors in it did a great job of growling and sneaking up on you, it was creepy. My friend's cousin Liya was screaming like she was getting stabbed or something she was so scared! Ha ha ha!
After saying goodbye to Playland and getting some much needed cotton candy we headed out to Robson Sushi, an all-you-can-eat sushi place in downtown Vancouver. It was great. A fun experience for Jon who didn't even know these types of places existed. We ate waaaay too much but had a ball of a time. Unbeknownst to me this was supposed to be a belated birthday celebration day o' fun for me, so my meal was paid for and my group of friends sung an incredibly loud and embarassing "Happy Birthday" in the restaurant. That was really funny, I guess it was so loud that other people in the restaurant were singing and the cooks were clapping in the back. Ha ha! After sushi, my parish friends took off for home and Jon and I decided to snag some Gelato on Denman and check out English Bay. It's been a while since I've had Gelato from that place, it's almost as good as Florence.....almost.

Today was wonderful. We went to Saint Clare's for my nephew's baptism, which is a beautiful parish. Right now everything is done in the parish hall, but it's prettier than many parishes I've seen in Canada and the States. Fr. Craig Scott did an amazing baptism service and spoke about the continuity of baptismal promises throughout a person's life. It was great. He's such a cool priest. After the celebration at St. Clare's we headed to my sis' place for the reception. Lots and lots and lots of ....you guessed it....eating!! It was a fun gathering with the family and Joy and Peter's friends. As always I love seeing the babies.