Thirty years ago, Friendly Planet Travel, a leading tour operator containing helped thousands experience high-quality, affordable vacation packages to exotic places worldwide, began its enterprise as a group pilgrimage operator. In the past, the company has gained considerable experience arranging pilgrimages to intriguing spiritual and religious locations. Today, Friendly Planet Travel has expanded beyond their previous itineraries, and is announcing 14 new Catholic pilgrimage programs designed to exceed the traditional pilgrimage experience. In addition, these kind of new travel programs supply lower pricing that will location these important spiritual escapades within reach of many more vacationers.

“We take pride in offering the best services at quality prices, and this policy applies to our brand-new pilgrimage program as well,” says Peggy Goldman, President of Friendly Planet Travel. “Travelers experiencing our pilgrimages will look at the most sacred Catholic holy web sites and Marian shrines in the world. Plus, our programs will travel off of the beaten path and to the picturesque towns along the countryside, exposing travelers to the national, artistic, and historical attractions within these regions. Outstanding exchange rates and land price ranges have allowed us to supply superior accommodations, itineraries, and providers at a price among the lowest in the market without compromising on high quality. This is what differentiates our packages from others.”

All new pilgrimages consist of hand-picked, first-class and centrally located accommodations for excellent shopping and dining options; English-speaking guides; entrance charges; many meals; and an accompanying tour chaplain. In addition, these packages include multiple masses throughout ancient cathedrals and chapels, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Santiago p Compostela in Spain, and St. James Church in Medjugorje.

Friendly Planet Travel has eliminated as much one-night stays as possible and constrained groups to 25 vacationers, making for a spacious and also relaxed touring environment. For instance, all travelers will benefit from the window seat, as Friendly Planet Travel’s pilgrimages tour breathtaking web sites of Biblical significance, such as the Sea of Galilee, the 14 Stations of the Cross, Vatican City, and the Sistine Chapel.

The 14 pilgrimages offer the Catholic experience of a lifetime by providing the chance to see major faith based destinations throughout Israel, Rome, Italy, Spain, France, and other locations in central Europe. More sites unique to Friendly Planet Travel’s pilgrimages include stays throughout Rocamadour and Avignon in France, Perugia and also Cortona in Italy, Dubrovnik on the Adriatic Coast, and Regensburg in Germany. Presented pilgrimages include:

· Visit the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared several times around the 13-day La France Catholique tour, from $2,999 per person.

· Bathe within the holy waters of Lourdes and also explore Notre Dame on the eight-day Lourdes & Paris tour, from $1,599 per person.

· Obtain a Papal Blessing and explore Italy’s nearly all sacred sites on the 13-day Fantastic Basilicas of Italy tour, from $3,199 per person.

· See the precise locations of the Virgin Mary’s apparitions throughout Lourdes and Fatima on the 10-day Lourdes & Fatima tour, from $1,999 per person.

· See Jesus’ manger and also walk the Holy Stairs that Jesus climbed prior to Pontius Pilate on the seven-day Rome & Holy Discover tour, from $1,399 per person.

In addition to the 14 published pilgrimages, Friendly Planet Travel offers small and big groups expert customized journey services and personalized elements, providing limitless opportunities for unmatched spiritual and national experiences for all involved. Whether it’s one of Friendly Planet Travel’s designed itineraries, or one that has been completely manufactured by and for a particular group, the assistance and pricing will be outstanding.

To learn about any of Friendly Planet Travel’s pilgrimage specials, departure dates, and also full itineraries, please visit the pilgrimage web site on the company’s website. For more regarding Friendly Planet Travel, please visit Friendly Planet’s website; Friendly Globe Travel’s blog; or contact Jackie Zima-Evans from 610-228-2138 (office), 215-534-2973 (mobile), or write to Jackie@GregoryFCA.com.

ABOUT FRIENDLY PLANET TRAVEL
Friendly Planet Travel makes high-quality exotic travel affordable for everyone. Since 1981, Friendly Planet Travel has been arranging all-inclusive, escorted discount vacation packages and cruises to the most exciting destinations in the world at the smallest possible prices. Each year, Friendly Planet Travel offers more when compared with 30 different group travel packages to Asia, the Middle Eastern, Africa, Europe, and To the south America-at discounts of hundreds of dollars away from similar vacations. With no hidden charges, add-ons, or surprises, Friendly Planet Travel vacations consist of convenient flights and plane tickets; carefully selected, first-class and exceptional hotels; knowledgeable, English-speaking guides; many meals; planned itineraries; as well as happen to be and memories that serve you for a lifetime.

Friendly Planet Travel offers its extensive, cost-effective travel services to private teams, including universities, religious corporations, alumni associations, and families. Groups who wish to travel together can count on Friendly Planet Travel’s three decades of experience to operate their group travel program professionally and always at the very best possible prices, writes tagza.com.

“Between Heaven and Earth : Tiny Sculptures of Our Lady” will run Wed., Feb. 1, thru Sun., April 15, on the seventh floor of Roesch Library. Hours are 8:30 a.m. To 4:30 p.m. Monday thru Fri. and Sat. and Sun. by appointment by calling 937-229-4214.

Trauth will be available for an artist’s reception in the gallery seven p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the general public.

“There exists a definite contrast between Trauth’s sculptures and her 2 dimensional art,” announced the Rev. Johann Roten, S.M, Marian Library director of analysis and special projects. “The paintings are of strongly figurative nature conveying the tranquil sweetness of kids and nature. Her sculptures show a marked expressionist disposition.

“Reminiscent of some of the famous German artists of the mid-twentieth century,eg Kaethe Kollwitz, her small sculptures illustrate how much homo sapiens find themselves torn between heaven and earth, between the dynamism of the spirit and the gravity of worldly realities.”

The exhibit features 10 tiny sculptures and 15 acrylics and watercolors, many featuring children and the landscape around Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Mary reportedly appeared to children in 1981.

Born in Cincinnati, Trauth graduated from Edgecliff Varsity with a qualification in fine humanities with a concentration in sculpting. She worked as an illustrator for Gibson Greetings Cards Inc, Shillito’s dep store and the Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer newspapers.

University of Dayton’s Marian Library / World Marian Research Institute is a worldwide recognised center for the discipline of Mary, the mum of Jesus, and holds the world’s biggest collection of published materials and artifacts devoted to her. The collection includes more than 100,000 books and pamphlets in more than 50 languages, and a vast collection of nearly 3,000 Nativity sets and Marian art from around the world, writes tagza.com.

Magnus Macfarlane-Barrow’s first experience of delivering aid was to drive a Land Rover bursting with food, clothing and medication from the Highlands of Scotland down to Bosnia. At the time he used to be a salmon farmer : he had taken just a week’s holiday to do it. When he got back, his family shed was bulging with aid that had poured in from pals and friends of friends. He give up his job, sold his home, and learned to drive related vans. Now, about 20 years later, his charity Mary’s Meals feeds 500k kids every day.

But that’s not the beginning of the tale. At least, not how Magnus tells it. The real beginning was 10 years back when he was 14, and he went on a pilgrimage to a tiny town called Medjugorje.

I meet Magnus for tea near London Victoria. He’s tall and in a suit ; his hair is greying a bit at the sides. He is saying he finds it hard to describe the effect that first trip had on him. “It was something in my heart an experience of God’s grace,” he is saying. Later on he describes it as “something God appears to do for many folks there : [he] gives them a cognizance of his love for them”.

It had been a madcap adventure : 10 of his family and friends, all kids, turned up at Medjugorje without anywhere to stay. They had read an article about 6 children having visions of the Virgin Mary and thought if it was possibly true they should visit. They flew in to Dubrovnik and drove there in two hire autos (harder than it sounds, since their map failed to have Medjugorje on it).

After evening Mass a friar, Fr Slavko Barbarous, came over to them and introduced them to his sister, who they ended up staying with for the week and who had kids their age. It was, Magnus says, an “amazing mixture of the supernatural and the mundane” one minute they’d be chatting to Bosnian youngsters about Italian soccer and the next “we’d all be talking about the undeniable fact that one of them was going out with one of the visionaries”.

At the time the six purported visionaries were young kids, too. They invited Magnus’s group into the room where they were having apparitions of the Virgin Mary every evening. Magnus knows two of them still.

What struck him, though, was not the visionaries themselves they were “very nice, very standard people” but the religion of the villagers and the way that they answered to what the six children were pronouncing.

“By the time I came home,” he is saying, “I had the assumption that Our Woman really was appearing in Medjugorje and she was appearing with a message for the entire world.”

He says that he would have liked to try, “in whatever way I could, to retort to her invitation to put God back at the centre”.

About ten years later Magnus was in a bar with his bro Fergus. They were talking about a news item they had seen about refugees near Medjugorje during the Bosnian war. And that’s when they thought about driving help there themselves.

Magnus has a tendency to play down his role in all this. Once the donations came pouring in, he asserts, “it was tougher to stop than it had been to start”. Giving up his place and job was no enormous sacrifice, he insists . He’d been a salmon farmer for 6 years and was “looking to do something else anyway”.

After 20 minutes or so of chatting Magnus, though really mild-mannered, talks at a phenomenal pace we don’t forget to pour the tea. Over the next 10 years, he explains, his charity Scottish International Relief brought aid to Bosnia, built care houses in Romania and worked in Liberia and elsewhere.

His stories pour out and are examples of the most moving I’ve ever heard. He talks about 11-year-old Romanian orphans so neglected they could not walk correctly. The kids, all HIV positive, had been deserted in surgeries and no one had lifted them out of their cots long enough for them to learn. The doctors, he is saying, “couldn’t see any worth in those youngsters at all and they were dying, numbers of them, every week”.

Magnus recalls an exchange with one doctor who said : “I do not know why you’re building these [care] homes for these kids.” Pointing to one girl, Juliana, he revealed : “She’ll be dead before you even finish building them.” Now, Magnus claims, “Juliana’s a young woman, and a few summers ago I returned for the weddings of 3 of those girls. It’s been a miracle to me because we thought we were building an infirmary where they could have a serious death so truly it has been a superb thing that every one of them are still alive.”

Magnus has masses of these stories, and is used to informing them, I believe. He gives talks in colleges and to fundraising groups. He asserts at 1 time : “I’m sure there’s only a little of all this stuff you want, because there’s plenty of it.” as reported tagza.com.

Journalists of radio station “Mir” Medjugorje constantly invite pilgrims who come to Medjugorje to witness about their apparitions. Here, we will bring some of those experiences.
Davor Terzic, musician and composer from Rovinj came with his wife Vesna to Medjugorje.They were in Medjugorje hotel. Davor is pretty much present at Croatian music scene and he’s continually participating at every holiday of spiritual music. “We visited other Croatian shrines like Marija Bistrica and Vepric, and here we are in Medjugorje, for seventh, eighth time. We try to have a little bit time for ourselves every year. Our work is related to music, we make our living from that. We come here to thank The Lord for everything he has given us in the previous year. Here is where we feel fulfilled.”

The Association “I hear, I suspect, I see” from Zagreb has organised study trip and pilgrimage for younger people and disabled students. While they were in Medjugorje they visited prayer places and participated in the evening prayer program.
The blind student from Prelog, Martina Bilic, announced that best challenge for her was to climb Apparition Hill. “This was always beautiful experience for me, it is physical effort, but one can feel non secular peace and sacrifice which has purpose.”

Andrea Bianco, 41 years old pilgrim from Bolzano, small city on the north of Italy, shared his familiarity with us. As a sophomore student he was in a heavy automobile accident and lost his sight on that occasion. He thinks that he survived thanks to God’s prudence. He’s married and has 4 youngsters. He’s making rosary beads along with his other half and gives those to travellers, but also he is organizing pilgrimages to Medjugorje. “My young days were like of the average young person at that point. I had it all, squeeze, cash, I was studying. I did not fret about spirituality too much. It was all about entertainment. All of a sudden, my life was modified over the night. One day, I was on my way back home, after having a field trip with my squeeze, I would have liked to overtake a truck that hit us and threw us to a tree on the other side. My fiance was fine, but I was seriously hurt . I was taken by copter to the infirmary in Bolzano. It was Holy Thursday, and they did not have enough staff. I was sent to the surgery in Verona and I had surgery there. My doctor was younger, new doctor who had lost his bro in a car accident also. He probably did the surgery and I was in coma for 20 days. I had one hematoma that was pressing my eye nerves and that’s how I lost my sight.” What followed was the period of recovery when he went from infirmary to infirmary. It was in that time that he welt urge to go to sacrament of reconciliation. Shortly after he got the sacrament of Holy Confirmation that he had not received before. Three years thereafter he and his squeeze Lara got married. He said how he was listening stories about Medjugorje for years that were both positive and negative. He came on his first pilgrimage in 1998, and fruits of that pilgrimage followed after. “This is where we will be able to feel heaven, immense grace from our Heavenly Mother. We are coming home renewed, different and we are prepared to return to this place of grace”, said Andrea who comes regularly to Medjugorje biannually since that time.
Fr. Loky Flanagan, Irish missionary in Malawi, Africa, shared his experience as well . He was introduced to Medjugorje through charity organisation “Mary’s Meals” that’s fruits of Medjugorje and feeds every single day around four hundred thousand kids in Africa. He came to Medjugorje in 2003, and participated at the retreat for clergymen and found that a superb religious experience. “Medjugorje helped me to have religion and trust in The Lord God, it encourages me to resume working as a priest. I have more peace. Meeting people and confessions help me a lot. I wouldn’t say that I am continually involved in the events in Medjugorje, but I do have a book with Our Lady’s messages”, said Fr. Loky who plans to come to Medjugorje next year also, writes tagza.com.