So I got back to NJ on Friday and we left promptly in the early morning on Sunday to head to Ohio to stay with Preston (a fellow Survivor and volunteer with Created Equal) for the night before we left Columbus on Monday morning. I admit I slept most of the way to Ohio, but my brother and I had some good conversations on the way. He endured my quizzing him a bit on what to say to certain arguments that are brought against pro-lifers. We arrived in Ohio and I was so glad to see Preston, it's a hard thing to be away from someone who you consider to be family.
So we arose on Monday morning, me trying to rush the guys out the door with many threats of "if we're late then they're going to leave without us". So we got to global headquarters for Created Equal (aka Paula's laundry room) and found that we about the second group of people to arrive and waiting on many more. Who knew all my worries would be for nothing, but the important part is we arrived on time ;)
Once we had the team together we got some pictures quick, had our morning devotion and packed up in the vans to head to Cincinatti, Oh. When we got to Cincinatti I had a little nervous feeling in my stomach, it seems like that always happens to me after I take a break with working for the graphics for a few weeks. Plus this Justice Ride would be different as we weren't going to be on college campuses but in main squares and areas in very populated cities. So we unloaded and set up the signs, it was making out to be quite the scorcher of the day, but we were all excited. I got to be paired with a newbie to Justice Ride's, her name is Reagan, and she's just about the sweetest girl ever. I always laugh a little to myself when some of the girls tell the new gals to go with me cause I 'know so much'. I mean I've only been working with graphic images since February but I suppose the years before that doing pro-life work doesn't hurt.
So Reagan and I were standing out on the edge of the square when I saw a young woman who had walked by before walking by again rather slowly. I noticed she just about had tears in her eyes, so I went up slowly to her and asked her what she thought of the pictures. "Oh it's so awful, I can't look at them cause they're making me upset". I told her I did agree with her that they were absolutely awful and that we weren't there to make people upset but rather show them what the term 'pro-choice' really means. So I asked her what she thought of abortion to which she replied that she had had one and just hoped that God could forgive her. I told her that she was forgiven, that we all are forgiven for our sins when we acknowledge that Christ died for us and paid for those sins. I asked her if Reagan and I could pray for her and she said that that would be great. So here we stood not even a half an hour after setting up being able to pray with this young lady for healing from her abortion! What an amazing gift to my heart it was to be able to share the true meaning of the gospel with her and to tell her that there is healing from abortion. Before we parted after praying I gave her some information on some different places she could call in to talk about the abortion and how to heal. The rest of the day went rather quickly and we were able to talk to a lot of people and change hearts and minds.
So we bunked on a church floor that night but not before we got to watch a movie "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler". It's a great movie which follows this brave young woman who saw children being led off to the concentration camps to die and decided she had to do something about it. It's estimated that she saved over 2,500 young children from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. We all were pretty exhausted after a full night that day, but I managed to stay awake for the whole movie with tears in my eyes most of the time. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially young activists!
So we all awoke bright and early the next morning to head to Indianapolis, IN. Such a beautiful city and we were able to stand on the circle which in the middle had a monument dedicated to fallen soldiers (I think, I never spend much time looking at the stuff around me unless I need to). I was super excited to be there and get to visit a fellow blogger and friend Stanley, who had been on the previous Justice Ride in March. So we got there, had our morning devotional and pep talk and set up our signs. It wasn't too long before the wind started blowing over some signs however, which can always serve to disappoint and frustrate some of us. I've found the best way to deal with this is to just suck it up, hold the signs against me, and continue the battle. The day was pretty good, though I had a few interesting conversations that changed minds something that I will share with you was not such a good thing. It was towards the end of the day and I saw two mothers walking with what looked to be two of their sons who appeared to be in Junior High. Now by no means do we target children but I still like to reach out to the mothers if I can. So I went to asked the mothers' what they thought of the pictures. I barely got a few words out before the mother took her hands and covered the young boys ears. I silently thought to myself that I'm sure both those boys have played violent video games and watched movies with graphic images with their mother's consent. But so interesting to me that a mother would do that. It's a protective instinct I'm sure, but how scary is it that instead of teaching our children to fight injustice we instead shelter them and teach them to ignore the injustice happening?
The day went on and I was able to briefly talk with a young man who was post-abortive and riding by on a bike but stopped to talk for a bit. He seemed to admit that he regretted the decision but he just didn't think there was any other option at the time. He seemed so geuinely lost, like he knew that his life turned down a path he didn't like at that point. This shows in so many men, I often think that whenever the men come by and are enraged it's partially due to their own participation in a abortion. For some men they may not even be the father's, they might just be trying to help a friend out (or so they think) by driving her to the abortion mill.
Later that day we were so blessed to be hosted by a lovely homeschooling family who took all 25 or so of us in. The most impacting thing of that night had to be when Jim (Created Equal's driver for the Truth Truck) got up and talked. He talked about how his wife asked when he would be home next and how it was hard to be away from her so much. But he told her that just as he fought in the war years ago he was now fighting the "Baby Wars" and that he would be away and fighting this battle until it ends.
While there's so much more that happened on the trip, I mean after all we did visit three more cities (Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh) I'm going to skip to Pittsburgh for the sake of getting this posted.
So Pittsburgh was our last city, and I can definitely say that we all were feeling the effects of little sleep for the week. We arrived in the Square at Pittsburgh and it seemed as if most people on the team had a feeling in the pit of their stomach that this was going to be a very rough day. I shrugged it off, thinking that 'hey at least I know we won't be getting arrested' (this was something I had to worry more about on tour with Survivors). So we set up the display and things seemed to be pretty normal, at an even pace. I managed to get some really good conversations in with some people encouraging them to stand up for Life and vote in the upcoming election.
Then as soon as it hit noon it was if a bunch of angry people were released on us. Of course this would be the lunch crowd, the people coming out expecting to go about their lives as usual and not be interrupted. But needless to say you can't do that once you've seen our graphic images. However just because our images are graphic does not mean they shouldn't be shown to the world. We shouldn't ignore the damages of a mass genocide because they make us uncomfortable. We should help people see the light of what's going on so that we can do something to change it! Plus how often to do you see the slaughter in Africa of children who are dying from wars or malnutrition listed as "CHOICE"? I can tell you not very often do you see that. But every day over 3,000 children are murdered in America for the sake of 'CHOICE'.
We need to bring this issue to light! I generally don't try to debate people to death when they tell me after looking at the pictures that they are perfectly fine with that being done and know how it's done. Often times these people will refuse to see reason. But I can't tell you how many people that walk by and see our signs have had no clue that that's what abortion was. It's got to be thousands who have changed their opinion from seeing these pictures. I've talked to many of them myself but it's still shocking every time I hear a young woman say that she was lied to about what her abortion was.
Needless to say that at noon in Pittsburgh we all felt the wrath of the angry passerby's shouting at us that we were ruining their day, and how awful we were for showing these pictures. But they just don't seem to get it at the moment that we don't show them to ruin people's days or because we're awful people. We show them because we have compassion for them and for these young lives being unnecessarily taken every day. We show them in order that people may find another option that brings them to a much happier and less destructive ending. Overall it was a rough day, but I was able to talk to a older lady who seemed really skeptical at us being out there, but after I had lead her around and showed her why we were out there and talked to her about what was occurring in our own country she really seemed to understand. She told me she would be praying for me as I started doing full-time pro-life work and that really meant a lot to me.
I really couldn't have hoped for more on the Justice Ride, it was such a great experience and so great to meet some new Justice Riders as well as spend some time with my friends from the previous one. But overall the greatest part was having the privilege to not only go on it, but to have my brother join me and then voice that he wanted to continue doing more things like it to help end this injustice (my words not his... haha).
Well stay tuned as I'm sure I'll be writing more very soon since it's less then a month until I start work with Students For Life of America!
Blessings,
Missionary For Life
