My favorite journey: JMJ 2011

      

I could write not one or two pages about this journey that I will tell you about, but more than 20 pages if I could and if I had the time. I would consider this journey the only journey that I have had because it is not the same a journey as a trip. In my opinion in a trip you enjoy everything but in a journey you discover everything. This is what happened to me on this journey, I did not just enjoyed it, I learned things about me, about other cultures, about my religion and my believes and especially about God. Sometimes I even suffered a bit, because it my first long trip without my family.

     My journey physically started on August 11, 2011 and I was going to Spain for the World Youth Day 2011 (Jornada Mundial de la Juventud 2011) with a group of 50 people of my church and from other churches with the same patron saint. But the spiritual preparation for this journey began a year earlier in 2010 when we were chosen to be a part of this journey. I always dreamed of going to this kind of journey and I was really happy to have been chosen. Once the group of people was decided we started to receive spiritual retreats to prepare ourselves for this pilgrimage we would have, but also that we could get to know each other.

     In this whole process I learned a lot more about my religion, about praying, about being in peace with myself and with God, but especially I got to know all the extraordinary people that were going to accompany me on my trip. Some of which, became my really good friends, others my brothers and my sisters and one special boy became and still is the love of my life.

     The whole preparation was really useful and I enjoyed it a lot, but the journey itself was what helped me discover a lot of things about who I am and what gives meaning to my life. We went to a lot of different places in Spain like: Segovia, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Sallent, Vic, Barbastro, Fusimaña and Madrid. All of which I thought they were beautiful and I hope to visit them again, because we mainly went to see chapels in all these places. Although in Segovia we got to meet a lot of people from all over the world where I learned about themselves, their culture, their language, etc. This was one of my favorite parts of the journey, but I also liked learning a lot about my patron saint and about the martyrs of Barbastro.

     Although I learned a lot about my religion and of other cultures, I think what was the most meaningful part of this journey was learning more about myself. I learned that I am strong, and can do things by myself without my family. I learned that I can accomplish anything I set my mind into doing. I learned that I am a good friend and I worry about people and always want them to be happy, but I also learned that I had new friends who were also there for me. I grew as a person and my boyfriend and I grew as a couple. But the most important thing that I learned was that God has always been with me and blessed me with everything. I learned that I would always be able to feel His presence and feel Him with me if I could be at peace with myself and look for Him at the most humble places in life, like when I felt Him in a small chapel in Fusimaña, Spain.