Honestly, I was really tired and still trying to recover, catch up, and unpack from DC, but my friend talked me into saying yes and I ended up having a really great time.
The amazing thing about the trip was how incredibly Pro-Life it was. Being a Catholic conference, it would be expected to be Pro-Life but so I've found that far too often we, as Catholics & Christians, shy away from talking about abortion and the hard topics like Life issues. This was not the case at FOCUS. The first night's keynote speaker was Lila Rose. Lila is the President of LiveAction Films and she has been one of my personal heroes for a while now. She is truly an amazing example of the Pro-Life movement among the youth and does an amazing job utilizing the media as she promotes a culture of Life. Just this week LiveAction released a video showing some less than moral happenings in a Planned Parenthood. Lila has done undercover work exposing the illegal treatment of minors within Planned Parenthood also and really just embodies a spirit of morality and justice and bravery... and she has great hair, so all in all she is just awesome.
When Lila spoke that night people listened. As a Pro-Lifer, it made me so happy that they were bringing this issue up at the beginning of the conference; they didn't push it to the side and make it an optional talk or just mention it in a speech- it was the first message people heard. I looked around to watch people's reactions as she spoke and it made me really happy to see the impact Lila's words were having on my friends and the other students. This is what we need to hear, I thought.
After an amazing speech (by the way, Lila didn't look down at the podium a single time during her entire speech; her words came straight from the heart), a friend of mine found me and told me that Lila was upstairs at a booth with some LiveAction info. Well... I was running up there to meet her. It was like meeting Fr. Frank Pavone all over again (have I written about that in here yet? Oh man...).
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| info card from the LiveAction booth |
So I got to meet Lila and it was awesome and she is just my hero.
The rest of the conference was really great too because Lila wasn't the only person to mention Life issues. The topic just kept coming up! It was great to see people, Priests, religious sisters, and even the band L'Angelus mentioning the tragedy of abortion in their speeches, homilies, and in song. Just goes to show that this isn't just an issue for women or for babies, it's an issue for everyone. People in churches need to hear the message just as much as people outside of churches. I was just so proud of each person that mentioned Life.
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