Would you let your 17 year old daughter go (alone) to India? Danielle Rose's (www.daniellerose.com) parents did. We saw her at Youth Day in LA last week. She is about 23 or 24 now. (or she looks it anyway...) When she was 17 she told her parents she felt called to go to India and help at the orphanage Mother Teresa worked at. She really wanted to meet Mother Teresa and be blessed by her. Her parents let her go. To make a long story short, she never did get to meet her, but she was blessed by her. Apparently, on Mother Teresa's last birthday, Mother took a rose from her birthday cake and told one of the nuns there to give it to the girl from America named Danielle who gave so much of herself and to tell her she was blessed. Cool, huh.

Anyway, we listened to her speak (I cried) and sing (she has a magnificent, pure voice.......sounds kind of like Judy Collins)

Another group we saw there is called ApeX (www.apexministries.com) These guys are great! They are like an old time vaudeville act.....but with a message. They do juggling and magic (very well, might I add) The kids loved them. I'm sure it helped that the girls thought they were cute;) They are also very sweet. Jo and I spoke with them in the late afternoon, and they really live what they believe:)


The whole trip was fun. (Even waiting at John Wayne airport for over 2 hours waiting for our delayed flight home)

Youth Day was fun, exciting, touching and loud;) That night we piled into our bus and went to Hometown Buffet for dinner. Thank goodness we had a private room, lol. We were going to go to Huntington Beach for a bonfire, but it was raining, so we went to the mall instead;-) There, the boys went with John and Tony, and the girls with Alicia, Kathy, Jo, Charmaine and me. We did some power shopping, lol.

When we got back from the mall, we all went up to Jo's room for a retreat. She was on the excutive floor.....with a humongous 2 room suite. We had a beautiful candle ceremony, and the kids did some journaling. I also learned a fun icebreaker. You have a big bag of Skittles...and you have everyone take a handful. When everyone has a handful, you tell them what is going to happen. For each Skittle they hold, they have to give one fact about themselves. Seeing the looks on some of the faces was priceless, LOL. Some of the kids took 25-30 candies. They had to really think then;-)

After the kids finished, they decided that we parents had to tell 10 facts about ourselves as well. It was really interesting. I learned a lot about everyone else:)

Friday was a free day before we flew out. We met Deacon Ernesto for lunch (he used to be at St Mary's) then we went to Downtown Disney. Kathy and I bought crowns at the World of Disney and wore them for the rest of the day.......even on the plane home. (like the royalty we really are.....ROFLOL)