Here are some pictures and stories from previous conventions! We need more photos and testimonials. Please contact the webmasters if you have something to contribute!
We are Roger and Diana in Manville New Jersey. We wanted to let you know that a convention with international flavor is starting to excite us. Our international journey started with Father Mario Barbero, a missionary from Torino, Italy who was encountered in Africa. He presented our weekend here in New Jersey 18 years ago and has also done weekends in the Washington D.C. area as well. Now he is living and presenting weekends in Kinshasa, Congo. On our weekend he described Italy and Africa with such feeling that mentally we where there. Father Mario is immortalized by author Elizabeth Ficocelli in her book "Children‚s Guide to the first Holy Communion."
On the 25th anniversary Housing committee (convention theme: "Companions on a Journey") we continued our international journey by opening our small home to a 21 year old woman, Daughter of an encounter couple in Chile. She stayed in our home for 3 months to practice her English. We have also invited a couple from Spoken, WA and a couple from Oakland, CA, that we had met at the Minnesota National Convention. (A Saturday convention small group sharing can be enough that you become close friends.) Each of them had brought another couple. Father Paul, who was in charge of the East Coast Spanish section of ME, stayed that Thursday night. Then father Javier From Mexico arrived with no place to stay. Lucky we had enough beds. It was like playing musical beds. Our international journey does not end there. The journey continues when the executive ME couple from Bombay India grabbed us and a New York couple for Saturday sharing where they told us that they share for as little as $8.00 a couple for a weekend in India.
This got Roger thinking a few years later. "Our weekend is $320.00. That amount could put on a whole weekend somewhere." We took this idea to the world leaders Bill and Maryanne Boylan. (Lucky for us they where living close in Philadelphia, PA.) They liked it and since they where scheduled to go to the Pan African Convention they requested $10 a couple. We got our area to come up with money and a stack of prayer letters. One of the highlights of the world team going to the Pan African convention was getting to personally carry this gift over Africa, Madagascar, then 2,000 miles out to an island in the Indian Ocean, where they then presented it to the Madagascar leaders, the gift of a fully paid group weekend. They returned with a thank you note for us, first written in Madagascanese then translated to French before being translated to English. Afterwards the thank you note was written on a hand painted card with a picture of a native couple dancing.
At the National Convention in Baltimore we heard from the leaders that they needed money to help get the Marriage Encounter in the Amazon in Brazil. By luck at Sunday breakfast we got to sit down with the world leaders from New Zealand and a priest from Australia. We shared our African story with them and suggested challenging an American group to help financially. Now we wonder if God had challenged us personally to help or was this a challenge for us New Jerseyans or couples from the National Convention. We look foreword to seeing a lot of new faces and old faces at the national convention and enjoy the international flavor.
The 3 photos below were sent by Roger and Diane Sieberg.
Homily Bishop Dudley with 400 priests seated in front
The couple from NY, Diana & Roger, and the executive ME couple from Bombay India
Roger & Diana with friends
James and Shaharriet Houchins, a presenting couple from Alaska had this to say about the 2005 National Convention:
Hooray! All the months of anticipation ended on 7-7-05. We kissed Grandma and 8 of our nine children, called the ninth and prayed for safe travel. We left home and arrived eagerly at the airport like a bride & groom heading to get married. Our flight from Alaska left at 1:56 a.m. and after a 5 1/2 hour layover in Seattle, and a plane change in Phoenix we arrived in Baltimore at 11:05 p.m. At the baggage claim we were greeted by Flavio Mendez, our Community Housing Host Couple holding a sign with our names. We were hard to miss in our matching ME T-shirts. (Click here to read more!)
A dancer performs at the Towson, Maryland National Convention
Drummers accompany the dancer. 
One of the most awesome experiences is the mass celebrated by so many priests at one time!
The "Orange" contingent at the convention in Maryland.
The Section 11 Banner 
Testimony continued: After arriving at the Mendez home, we met his wife Ailsa and daughter Lea and were given an entire bottom floor room complete with our own refrigerator and shower/toilet. A Welcome sign including Spanish adorned the wall. As we conversed an instant ME bond began to form and as always in ME we felt welcomed and at home. Only ME couples can enter the home of complete strangers and feel this love and comfort. Our feeling was like a baby wrapped tightly in a blanket held close to his Mother.
The next morning the bonds of Marriage Encounter began to take form. We began by being picked up and treated to breakfast with our dear friends and former Snake River Encounter circle members Kevin & Barb Acker. After getting lost in Baltimore there was laughter and remembrance of ME Conventions and camping trips from the past. Our feeling was like the MasterCard lost dog commercial with the ending line “Coming home ~ Priceless”.
We arrived at Towson University and in the parking lot we met a couple from our original MEWE location in Austin, Texas in Section 10. It was like returning to our ME roots when we saw and hugged Raul & Dora Gonzales, members of our very first circle.
After Registration and the Welcome dinner we began to see familiar faces that we bonded so deeply with in May on our DEEPER Weekend. Hugs from Paul & Wendy Stauffer, MD., Scott & Holly Oakes and children, MI, and Robert & Yvonne De Leon and children from TX. began the parade of states, ME style.
We arrived in the Convention arena and chose seats for our Section 13 family and as time passed they began arriving. Some seen from far away, like dear friends Jack & Karen Baker in neon orange and fluorescent yellow safety eMatrimony vests. Couple by couple more of our family arrived; Rob & Heidi Martin and children, John & LaVonne Doherty and grandchildren, Ray & Marisa Mackin, Rory & Dawn Myers and children, Carrol & Kathleen Mitchell, Ken & Cheryl Nagel, Dan & Charlotte Ackerman, Tom & Kathy Dauer, and Lynn & Linda Shupe all filed in.
As the convention opened we yelled with excitement like Lance Armstrong winning his 4th Tour de France when Section 13 Execs. Steve & Kathy Somnitz and sons, and Fr. John Rashford carried our section banner across the National stage.
As all the excitement was going on more and more ME love surrounded us during the breaks. We began to run into and hug more members of our deeper family; Doug & Wendy Jorgensen, ME, Ralph & Julie Bostick, IL, Tom & Becky Dollman, AL, Sharon & John Cervino, PA, and Marc & Patty Nestorick, from CO. As we hugged and conversed we saw our Deeper Team “Surrogate Parents” Gene & Mary Leduc, CA, and Fr. Tom Griffith, MA. We felt exhilarated like a cool shower on a hot muggy day. Our exhilarated was like when our dear friends and National Ecclesial Team Bob & Joy Hernandez, and Fr. Chuck Kosanke hugged us as we rode the bus to Convention.
The Convention air smelled like the best perfume and we felt giddy like two teenagers in love. The colorfully coordinated Section t-shirts shined like the lights of our Alaska Northern Lights. The love and romance was so thick we could imagine a big ME S’more. Wall to wall, bleacher to bleacher, full of couples and kids and priests sharing in dialogue made us feel liberated like animals released from capture into their natural habitat.
Every presentation focused on the theme “In God We Trust” left us feeling accepted like a much-anticipated adopted child. Hearing or reading the presentations as well as the Masses in Spanish and Korean reminded us of the ME diverse culture but universal love. The testimony by the World Council Leadership Team was most touching. They shared how they had been together from ages 5 and 6 and that their love had been solidified in marriage for more than 32 years. This testament of “trusting in God” was at the heart of our convention theme. Trusting, God provided for them a love groomed from childhood. On the day they married, the priest that now serves in leadership with them celebrated 10 years as a priest. Dual anniversaries/dual leadership, that is truly “In God We Trust”.
Our Korean Lovers shared deeply of how our ME Movement changed them as a couple and that change spilled over to their children. The husband went from a stern, show no emotion Korean background to become a husband and father who opened up like the rose about his feelings. The change in him was so apparent his daughter’s teacher called the wife to ask “what has happened in your house”? That is a resounding “In God We Trust”!
The Mass was the highlight for us. ME convention Masses are like celebrating a wedding at “High Mass”. All these sacramental signs hand in hand, arm in arm receiving Jesus. Our priests, deacons, archbishops, and cardinals from all over the USA concelebrating the Mass and in such a large number they filled the national stage turned altar. Upon the entrance hymn priests started waving “I Love You” signs and couples were shouting “We Love You” as if it were rippled and no one could stop. Our ME Movement was alive and truly a beacon. Our beacon of light inside the building we imagined was so illuminating that all the couples in Baltimore could see. We could even imagine them being pulled off the streets like a magnet to find out how they could feel and be a part of what we have.
In conclusion, our first National ME Convention experience will remain with us always. We made new friends and found new common bonds. Even at the end of the Convention we had a Deeper Weekend Reunion party at the home of one of the couples parents. We helped one celebrate a Birthday and another a 23rd Wedding Anniversary complete with ME made cakes. The ME children will forever be influenced by what they witnessed from their parents, grandparents and ME family. The ripple effect will be felt for generations to come. Who knows, some of those same children one day will represent our future as ME couples or priests because after all we pray “In God We Trust”!
James and Shaharriet Houchins WWME Catholic Presenting Team
Alaska Weekend Pillar Leadership--2004 Alaska Parents of the Year