I saw the Pope!!!

March 11, 2009
This morning we had tickets for papal audience. We got ready and headed out around 8:00 for St. Peter’s. Rachel had class so she was going to meet us. As we neared school, she called and said that class had been cancelled so we met her and walked the rest of the way together. When we got closer to the square I started to think that maybe an hour and a half early wasn’t early enough. There were already several hundred people filling the square and filing in through “security.” Which was really that they made you open your bags and they glanced in and let you through if you had a ticket. We made our way through the crowd and towards the seating area. We decided to sit in the second section because it would be pretty tough to get through to sit in the very front. We sat in the first row right behind the wooden barricades. The group surrounding us kept trying to talk to us. Their coordinator lady tried to explain that the boys wanted to talk to us. We just pretended like we had no clue what was going on and eventually just ignored them. We started to realize as it got closer to 10:30 and more guards walked out that the pope was going to come right by us. That was the only logical explanation at least. We heard people start to clap and cheer and saw on the big screens that the pope was headed out on his pope-mobile. He drove around the first section then headed down the side aisle and turned towards us. Kristin and I had worked out that one of us would take pictures and the other would video. It worked out well and the Pope drove right by us. It was absolutely amazing. I can’t even explain how I felt to be that close. He ended up driving by again before he made his way up the steps of St. Peter to his little covered seat. The rest of the service was said in German, Spanish, French, Slovakian, English and finally Italian. The pope welcomed all the groups that had come from each of the respective language speaking areas. He then blessed us and our families. The end of the service was the Lord’s prayer in Latin and a blessing. Today was one of the most exciting days I've had in Rome, it was so amazing to be so close and hear the Pope live!