WYD Cayman Update - JULY 10

I've decided to post the 'Update' letters I'm receiving from O'Neil Miller, the Director of Religious Education at St. Ignatius parish in the Cayman Islands. He is in Australia attending the WYD with the Cayman Islands pilgrims. (We are a 'missio' under the admin. of Detroit, thus our Bishop is John Quinn.)


JULY 10
"Hi All,

We have arrived safely to Melbourne since Tuesday (Monday your time) and have been settling in nicely. We are staying with families from the St. philip's Parish in Blackburn North and they have done an excellent job hosting us. We are breing hosted along with 70 French, 2 germans, 3 Canadians and an Italian.

The French led Mass yesterday and we led Mass this morning (Thursday). They all like our singing and Parishioners were happy to hear a Mass with so much singing as they have not had that in a long time. Fr. apul gave a great homily and all were impressed with the celebration.

We took part in the welcome Liurgy of the Word and Adoration followed by Benediction which was led by the Archbishop of Melbourne, Archbishop Denis Hart. This was held at the Cathedral of St. Patrick's. We were fortunate to receive tickets to attend, thanks to our host Parish who reserved them. The church could only seat 2000 and there are 22,000 internantional pilgrims in Melbourne, so we were really blessed to make it.

While walking to the Cathedral today we saw Fr. Stan, who was heading to a concert venue to do some soud checks where he is performing tonight. He was very happy to see us. We will not go to his concert as our hosts made other arrangements for us.

Tomorrow, the big event will be the commissioning Mass at the Telstra Dome. They are anticipating 80,000 people will attend. I just picked up our tickets for that event. Luckily we have two sets as i reserved a set online and our host parish had tickets reserved for us. We will give up one set though.

And in a few minutes we will be off to the Bush Dance that is being hosted by the Australians from 7-11pm.

The weather has not been too bad. Our first day we had a lot of rain. For the last two days as we went into the afternnon hours it has gotten even better.

It's great to be in touch! Please continue to pray for us! It's been great so far! No problems really except that Krystle has not gotten her suitcase yet. So please pray that all will continue to go well for us while we are away. Spread the word that we are doing fine and all is going great so far!"

(O'Neil Miller)