Let's start at the very beginning...

Hello world! This is my first entry in my Spain blog. I am not actually in Spain yet, but I wanted to share my journey to how I was called to go on this trip.

Before we get into the preparation of this trip, here is a little bit about who I am. My name is Sabrina, I'm 28 and I am from Texas. My passions include dance, traveling, musical theatre, graphic design, food and my cats. I am involved in pro-life work, and am involved with a Catholic ministry for young adults. I have traveled to Spain for school (2005) and to Holland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France (2007). I also enjoy trips to Boston, Los Angeles, Florida and most of all, New York City! I love exploring culture, tradition, food, art and history. I love journaling and taking pictures, and I collect postcards from all over the world.

WHY WORLD YOUTH DAY?

For the past 2 years I have grown deeper in my Catholic faith mostly due to my involvement with the Catholic-20somethings. It is such a great group of people who travel with me (in a sense) and help me learn, grow and become closer to God and the The Church.

When I found out about WYD being in Spain this year, I thought that I should go. I talked to a few friends about it and they all told me that it's too expensive to go to WYD. I did some research and saw that with the Austin Diocese it in fact was really expensive. So I just tried to get over it and figure the money is better spent elsewhere.

I kept going on with some small signs about WYD popping up into my head. I would pay extra attention to the ads I saw, or when people mentioned it. My coworker and her husband had been once or twice and she told me about their adventures. I still had it on the brain when one day in the summer my friend Ashley was talking about how she really wanted to go but that she was nervous about the language barrier and not knowing who to go with. We talked about it more later and once we figured out that be both wanted to go for the same reasons (to meet people, grow in our Faith, and experience the biggest Catholic event worldwide) we decided to discern (pray about it) and research some travel options.

Meanwhile, working for a nonprofit, I was wondering how I could afford this trip. I knew I wanted to go, especially before I turned 30. (They have WYDs every 2 years.) I had some things to figure out.

fbt&<3

Sabrina