Bishop Rutilio prepares for the Mass of Sending at WYD08.

Greetings from Sydney Australia from Sue Williams/St. Alexander's Parish in Villa Park, Illinois, I have come to Australia for World Youth Day with a private group led by Fr. Jerry Simonelli and Mary Miller, along with a seminarian from Poland named Martin and another youth minister from Joliet named Jayme. We have 16 young adults with us - mostly college aged kids, but including three high school kids - my daughter, Nancy, Margaret and Jacob. Fr. Jerry and Mary Miller have led four other world youth day groups and Jayme and three of the other pilgrims have experienced at least one other World Youth Day, so our group is very "experienced". For me, this was a whole new experience and I very much appreciated the knowledge and savvy advice of the ones in our group who have done this before.

Our trip started by all meeting in San Francisco on July 11th. We all came in on different flights, met up at our hotel and then went into the city to explore San Francisco. We walked for hours, ate on the wharf, rode on trolly cars, took subways and really got a good feel for San Francisco. Mary's brother, who lives int he area met us for dinner and chose one of his favorite reastaurants right on the ocean. The next day we took a private charter boat on the harbor and saw Alcatraz, Angel Island and the golden gate bridge - it was wonderful! We then went back to the hotel and Fr. Jerry said a private mass for us. At the end of the mass, we blessed and gave us each a wooden cross made by prisioners in Bolivia, ona mission trip he tooks years ago. We all put on our crosses and headed off for the airport - for our very long journey to Australia via Aukland, Ne w Zealand.

I am happy to report that our flights wents very smoothly, and after leaving San Francisco on Saturday night (July 12th) at 9:00 p.m., we arrived Monday monring, July 14th at approximately 8:30 a.m. We lost a whole day. Our tour guides met us at the airport and filled our day with a very comprehensive tour of Sydney. We were able to get out of th tour bus several times for lunch and along the way. We stopped at one part along the ocean and met up with a group form Boston. We circled and sang some songs (they were very musical) and then kept going. We really started feeling like we were at World Youth Day. THat would be the first of many groups we spontaneoulsy met up with, talked and shared stories with. On the tour, we all fell in love with Bondi Beach, so we decided to go back to Bodi Beach the next day.

On Tuesday, we headed to Bondi Beach and had a relaxing day, laying on the beach, swimming in the pacific ocean and walking along the shoreline. Th sights were magnificnent. Martin, Mary and I took a long walk along the beach and onto rocks. At one point, we were high above the ocean looking out and really felt the magnificnence of the city and water! Later that day, we headed off for Barangaroo for the opeing mass. It was a huge walk and the mass was beautiful. After the mass, there were concerts and fireworks, but we were too exhausted. We wnet back to the hotel. The next morning, we got up early to go to St. Mary's Cathedral. We were able to read about Bless Pier Georgio Frasetti who was a courageous yougn man who died at the age of 24. He came from a family of privielge and instead of enjoying his family status, he went to University and protested the facists who were coming to power in the 1920's, worked with the poorest of the poor, including lepars and started studying for the priesthood. He is an amazing person and is one of the patrons of World Youth Day.

We had a private mass with Bishop Kaffer on Friday at our hotel. Bishop Kaffer is also an amazing priest. He gave us an inspiring homily. After the mass, we talked about how our week was going and prepared for the upcoming days.

I will sign on later to talk about the staions and the vigil. This is all for now.

Sue Williams