Posted on 08/07/2007 3:22:13 AM PDT by monomaniac
Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) -- For both the old and young, walking is a great way to exercise but few people would ever envision getting on the highways and byways of America and trekking across the United States. But for pro-life college students, the opportunity to take their message against abortion to hundreds of cities and towns is exciting.
Members of the college pro-life group Crossroads stopped in Boston recently as they wore their standard white shirts with the phrase "pro-life" in bright blue lettering.
Erin Haakenson, a student at Iowa State University who is one of the students journeying 3,000 miles this year, told the Boston Pilot newspaper about her encounters.
“I can’t even begin to comprehend how far we’ve walked in the past eight weeks,” she said. “God makes it possible. He has blessed us so abundantly.”
“I’m walking because I think every child has that right,” she added.
In Billings, Montana, she met a woman who had an abortion just two weeks before the students came to town and Haakenson said she was able to pray with her and help her ask God for forgiveness for taking the life of her child.
“She told us, ‘God can forgive me, but I’m not sure I can,’” Haakenson said. “We need to pray, be involved and offer love and support to women who are alone and scared."
Haakenson and nine other walkers started in Seattle and stopped at the Archdiocese of Boston to meet with Cardinal Sean O’Malley and other Catholic pro-life activists there. They also prayed at a local Planned Parenthood abortion business.
Erik Feltes has done the walk for three consecutive summers and told the Pilot newspaper it's a great way to give back to the pro-life movement and to further the cause.
“It’s just a time of really intense prayer and sacrifice for the babies -- all those in our generation who aren’t alive today because of abortion,” he said.
Crossroads had three walks across the country last year and added a Canadian walk this year to bring the pro-life message to a country that is more solidly pro-abortion than the United States.
Like its American walks, the Canadian trip would be made up of volunteer students from colleges and universities across Canada and would coincide with the American ones.
“A Canadian walk is something that has been frequently proposed by pro-life students from Canada,” Jim Nolan, Crossroads' president told LifeNews.com in a statement.
Since 1995, Crossroads walkers have spoken to over two million Americans at churches alone, and countless millions through local and national media and speaking engagements.
Walking a combined 10,000 miles through 35 states and thousands of towns and cities, the volunteers on Crossroads take the term “grassroots” to a new level.
Crossroads currently sponsors three simultaneous pro-life walks across America each summer, beginning in Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego, and concluding together in Washington, D.C.
The group also sponsors Spring Break walks up the Florida coast, and recently conducted a walk across Europe to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, in 2005.
Related web sites: Crossroads - http://www.crossroadswalk.org
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