This is not the End

Today is the last day of the Fall 2010 40 Days for Life campaign.  Thank you for your prayers and your prayerful witness at Womancare of Southfield these past 40 days (and earlier).   The end of these campaigns is always a sad time for me. On one hand, these campaigns are exhausting with the time and emotional investment.  On the other hand, I always feel like I am abandoning the babies being taken in for slaughter.  For me (and for others), we must remember that this is God's battle and we are His foot soldiers.  It is His wisdom that dictated that these campaigns last 40 days.  Just as He instructed the Hebrews to allow their fields to lie fallow every seven years, so He tells us to take a break in the battle for life.

Not that we are walking away from the unborn.  The organizers of the Southfield 40 Days for Life maintain an on-going prayerful presence at Womancare along with people who have been praying there for over 25 years on Saturdays mornings, and to a lesser extent, during the rest of the week.
There will be an online calendar at www.vigilcalendar.com/southfield.  It will be a sixty hour calendar (7 a.m. to 5 p.m, Monday - Saturday) instead of the 168 hour calendar that we use during the 40 Days for Life.  It should be up and running on Monday, so please check it out sometime tomorrow.

In the final days of the "Spring" campaign, we were asked to pray for Chris and Michelle's unborn baby, who was expected to have special needs.  We often don't hear any more about how our prayer intentions turn out and - I'll be honest - after awhile, these tend to fall off the list.  I have good news - I learned that Chris and Michelle's baby, Zoe, is doing fine.  Thanks be to God.

During our Fall campaign, 5 mothers chose life for their babies.  Sadly, one of the mothers changed her mind and went through with the abortion.  It was a sad reminder to us that the issues being faced by young mothers contemplating abortion still remain after we talk and pray for them.  And we are immersed in a culture that often offers death as the first solution to problems.  The people at the pregnancy resource centers willingly "walk" with the mothers for the entire pregnancy and beyond, but sometimes the mothers walk away in spite of our efforts.  So as we mourn the loss of this little one and for his mother, let us also pray for the sidewalk counselors and volunteers at the pregnancy center.  When a mother changes her mind a second time and follows through with an abortion decision, it can be very devastating for the others who tried so hard to be there for her and her baby.



Coming Events:
Oct 31, 2010
11:00 PM - 11:59 PM
Closing Hour Service
The Southfield 40 Days for Life team will have a memorial service during the last hour of the Fall 2010 Campaign. Please join us.

Nov 2, 20107 AM - 8 PM
Election Day
Please vote Pro-Life.  (https://secure.rtl.org/apps/voters/ballot  - to generate a personalized pro-life ballot
                              or - if that doesn't work - check out the latest issue of Lifespan's Newsletter -
                                  http://www.rtl-lifespan.org/files/Active%20Fliers/SeptOctNEWS2010.pdf
Nov 3, 2010
6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Fall 2010 40 Days for Life Closing Rally & Potluck
Please join us as we commemorate the Fall 2010 40 Days for Life campaign in Southfield, share your stories of your experiences in front of Womancare and enjoy great food, especially the delightful desserts that someone always brings.
Mother of God (Chaldean) Catholic Church at 25585 Berg Rd in Southfield, Mi. 
Call Ban Gorges for more information 248-361-0269

Week 4 in Review - Looking ahead to the Final week of Fall 2010 campaign

As we complete week 4 of the Fall 2010 40 Days for Life campaign, we look ahead to next week (the last week) and after the campaign. If you have not been out to pray at Womancare this Fall, please come and join us in this final week. We could sure use the help as we have many open hours and some of our "regulars" are going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  Bring your children and grandchildren. The presence of children has a profound effect, their joy for life is truly inspiring, as many of you saw as you read the Day 28 blog entry from the National 40 Days for Life team.

Check out the pictures taken by our own Rich Mucha.  They can be seen at our website, www.40daysforlife.com/southfield or on Facebook 40 Days for Life Southfield.

Please pray for the women and men who will be at the Rachel's Vineyard retreat in Grand Rapids this weekend; pray for the post-abortive people and also for the counselors, that all may experience the loving peace of Jesus Christ.

Special Events:

Please mark your calendars for the Closing hour Service (11 p.m., October 31^st) at Womancare and for the Post-Campaign potluck dinner at Mother of God Church on November 3^rd (6:30 p.m.). The church is at 25585 Berg Road, Southfield.

We are interested in hearing about your experiences while praying at Womancare, so please give it some thought and come to our potluck.

After the Fall Campaign

At completion of the 40 Days for Life, we will set up the on-going vigil calendar to allow people to sign up for vigil hours during the daytime business hours. As you have noticed, Womancare only has business when they are performing abortions, so we try to maintain a prayerful presence at these times. It is a blessing to be able to pray for the babies during their final hours on earth or to pray for the persons who caused their deaths as they leave the facility. It is a blessing that Womancare staff do not perform abortions everyday, so it is a blessing for us to be there during their quiet days to pray for them. It is also a blessing to be able to recognize and mourn these infants as their remains are placed into the Stericycle truck (on Mondays and Thursdays).

Please continue to come to pray at Womancare Monday through Saturday; I will plan to be there most Fridays from 11 am to 1:30 pm.

Praise

Some questions came up regarding the Praise prayers that I mentioned last week. There is a book, “Power in Praise,” by Merlin Carothers, recommended by Marie  (who was the inspiration for my remarks). Putting the recommendations of the book into practice, her family praised God for everything, good or bad (in their judgment). They found that they could trust God more because He didn't really ever abandon them. So how do we praise God?

Our 40 Days for Life Prayer and Song booklet has a number of praise hymns (e.g., How Great Thou Art) and psalms (e.g., Psalm 36, 139 and Daniel's Canticle). Also, two of the most beautiful praise canticles are one by Mary, the Mother of Jesus, her Magnificat and another by Zechariah, found in Luke's Gospel Chapter 1:46-55 and Chapter 1:68-79, respectively. Verses 78-79 bring tears to my eyes when I read them.

Week 3 In Review (Oct 10 - Oct 16) by Barb

We've had a number of clergy-led prayer vigils during the past week.  We have pictures of these posted on our Facebook (look for 40 Days for Life Southfield and "like" us); We also have some posted to our website (but it's easier to upload to Facebook).

I received a lesson in how to pray from a young family who came out yesterday.  Marie brought her six children to Womancare and the older ones led us in the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  Plus she told me about Praise God prayer and how that should be our first words to the Lord.  My habit in prayer has been to kind of lay down my list of needs to Him and ask Him to take care of them.  However, we should be grateful for His abundant blessings in our lives and honor Him because He is God (and a good One at that).  The false "gods" of our culture are not good and cause a great deal of human misery.  But we are blessed with His peace when we give Him honor and praise.

While I was praying there last Sunday, a woman stopped by and asked if I had ever been in a prison.  She explained that some people would have been better off if they had not been born, since they had such lousy parents and drifted into a life of crime and now were in the pen, languishing, etc.  I suggested that perhaps we should ask these inmates if they would like to die.  She said, of course not.  Why not?  As anyone who watches the police shows on TV knows, you can get anything you want in prison.  I'm sure you could get euthanized.
I wonder why so many people think that killing off "problem" people is a solution.  And she never got the irony of us executing innocent babies who might grow up poorly.
Taking human life is never a solution to social problems, it just causes more.  Abortion is an excellent example.  The justification for it was - every child wanted and loved - yet our children feel unwanted and unloved and many suffer from abuse, physical, sexual or psychological.  Far more than before abortion became legal.  I wonder how long it will take for the social scientists to figure this out.

Week 2 In Review (Oct 3 - Oct 9) by Barb

During my prayer time at Womancare this past week, my thoughts were drawn towards the reality of the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus. In obedience to the civil authority (Caesar Augustus), Mary and Joseph journeyed the 80 miles or so from Nazareth to Bethlehem. This would be no big deal except that Mary was due to deliver her Child any day and traveling 2000 years ago posed significant challenges to a pregnant woman. When they arrived, Bethlehem was packed with others “returning home” and they could find no lodging. How insensitive the people of that time appeared to me, not willing to give up a bed for a very pregnant woman. I thought of how God blessed His creatures, the lowly animals, by His Son being born in their presence and how Heaven exploded with great joy as the angels sang out their alleluias. Finally, I reflected on how distressed Herod “and all Jerusalem with him” at the news of a new born king. I wondered why all Jerusalem would be distressed. They should have been happy at the news of the arrival of the Messiah, after waiting for Him for millenia. Perhaps they feared a disruption of the status quo. Maybe they had achieved peace in their time with the Roman occupation forces and didn't want to rock the boat. I thought how fickle people are. Of course, we should know that. Just look at the sea change in the opinion polls regarding Jesus' popularity from the time He entered Jerusalem amid acclamation to His Death on Good Friday, five days later.

So we should remain at peace while we pray at Womancare, often as solitary figures, one hour at a time. We follow a Master who was mostly rejected by the people of His time and even to the present time. Sadly, many of the people who reject His Teachings say they are His followers. But they have reached an accommodation with abortion and they don't want to rock the boat.

Thank you for coming out and being a witness to Jesus Christ's Gospel of life. We are in better shape for the coming week than we were a week ago; thank you, dedicated prayer participants who have committed to times. But we still have open hours (especially Saturday afternoon and Sunday early evening).  If you are a night owl, we have open hours in the wee hours of Sunday, nice opportunity for some quiet time with God.  Also of the hours that have been filled, most have only one person signed up (two or more are preferred, in Jesus' Name).

We are now on Facebook and have posted some pictures of our Fall campaign on Facebook (40 Days for Life Southfield) and on our website (under eCommunity, then photo albums)

Life Chain at Womancare (by Rich)

There were a total of 52 people at WC this afternoon (Oct 3) at 2 to 3 PM.  Fr. Michael Wilkes of St. Hugo of the Hills Parish lead the group in prayer.  This total included 16 people from Brother Rice High School, 5 adults and 11 young men from Warriors for L.I.F.E.  Toni passed out 10 new prayer booklets and a bunch of signs.  After the prayer vigil we all moved over to the curb on Southfield Road  and formed a Life Chain.

Week 1 in Review (Sept 26- Oct 2) by Barb

Before I get into my monologue about our local 40 Days for Life campaign, I have wonderful news to share. Our faithful 4 AM guy, Steve, is out of the hospital after a 3 ½ week stay. We don't know what the future holds for Steve and Judy. Cancer can be a pernicious disease and just when you think you have it at bay, it pops up somewhere else in your body. So we don't expect Steve to be covering the 4 AM time (God answered his prayers and sent the Clawson K of C) but he and Judy did make a stop at Womancare to pray after he was discharged. And they said they'd be back. His picture is posted at our website and it exudes the peaceful joy of this man.

We completed our first full week of the Fall 2010 40 Days for Life with two churches (St. James in Novi and Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak) each adopting a day. Novi Right to Life also came out for 3 hours Wednesday evening. I cannot adequately express my appreciation to the various Knights of Columbus councils who have been coming out in the nighttime with no prospects of seeing anyone change her abortion decision. And a special thanks to those individuals who have pitched in to cover the open hours (often with little advanced notice); you are an anchor which provides stability to the schedule and encourages others to come out to pray at Womancare. May God bless all of you in this life and the one to come.

David Bereit, the National Director of 40 Days for Life, was in Michigan this past week and he visited each of the 40 Days for Life sites in the metro Detroit area on Tuesday. In Southfield, 21 people were on hand to welcome him and to pray with him. Having the For Sale on the Womancare facility as a backdrop was a nice touch, but we all know that the battle for life continues. He reminded us to include the fasting aspects of the 40 Days for Life. Jesus, Himself told us some demons can only be driven out by fasting and prayer and the abortion demon is indeed powerful. For some insight into just how powerful the abortion demon is, I'll share this story from one of our sidewalk counselors:

After he called us sacriligious, I knew that here is a confused young man, in more way than one.  I asked if he goes to church.  "yes I'm catholic".  ( Oh no! )  Which church:  No name given, but it's in Lansing, Mich., and the priest is very liberal, he said.  He does not read the bible but thinks that abortions are okay with Jesus, because He wants us to make decisions so we are happy.  ( We do need more bible studies for young folks. )

And my own experience with a young woman last week went like this: As she got out of her car, I greeted her with a “good morning. God bless you. Would you like to pray with me before going in there? There is much evil in there and you should pray so that you have spiritual armor” (as I smiled). She said “no thanks. Jesus forgives us our sins.” I told her, “yes, Jesus does forgive sins but when we commit sin beforehand with the expectation of forgiveness, it trivializes the Sacrifice He made on the Cross. Our sins caused his Suffering and we should avoid sin.”

So this is why we do 40 Days for Life twice a year; to reach out to young people (and the community) with the Truths of Jesus Christ and to ask His pardon for the sins which so offend Him (especially the sin of abortion).