Spirit On Tour Is Electric

Group prayer after final Rockford site July 13 [Photo by EJS]

Our hat is off to the stalwarts who showed up for the three Face the Truth tour stops in Rockford on Tuesday, July 13. Although the numbers were not quite as large as they were on our first Truth Tour in Rockford in 2000, the spirit of the forty who showed up at each stop was electric.

Great Rockford Tour Date

Following our second site, we were served a delicious lunch by the Crabtree Community Church. A number of pro-lifers were still at the local abortion mill so they could not join the tour. They regularly picket the abortionist, Richard Ragsdale’s, home. There’s geat pro-life spirit in Rockford where we were treated graciously.

Out-of-Staters Join Tour in Chicago

On Wednesday we were back in Chicago at Mt. Greenwood, Gage Park and Bridgeport. It was a red letter day for a number of reasons. Not only did the numbers swell to more than sixty, but Monica Miller from Michigan joined us for our first two stops and had lunch with us. Monica is known nationwide for her pro-life leadership, her writings, and for having formed pro-life groups in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.

[From left] Jack Ames, Linda Ill and crew, Joe Scheidler at July 14 site in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood [Photo by EJS]

Then a short time later Jack Ames, well known pro-life leader from Baltimore, arrived to join our tour for the rest of the day. Jack runs a lively truth tour in Virginia and Maryland every year, several of which we have joined, one as recently as June 15.

At the last stop, Linda Ill and her children and a friend from Des Moines, Iowa, arrived after a six hour drive, to join us in Bridgeport.

Baby Saved in Chicago

But something else that made it even more of a red-letter day, was the Tour’s part in saving a baby’s life. A young man passing the tour site stopped to look at our pictures and began asking about the age of the babies depicted. He asked my wife, Ann, if there were any pictures of a baby ten weeks old, and she pointed to a picture in our brochure.

Face the Truth display along Archer Ave. in Bridgeport July 14 [Photo by EJS]

He said his girl friend had just told him that she is nine weeks pregnant and they had already talked about having an abortion. But now that he had seen the picture of an unborn at the same age his child is — and the strange coincidence of just stumbling onto our display — he believed that this was a special sign that they should have the baby, and certainly not go through with an abortion.

This victory for life makes all the insults, name calling, resistance and complaints, even from fellow pro-lifers, worth while. If all the planing, meetings, renting of trucks, mailings and standing for hours in the hot sun, was to save this one baby, it was all worth it. Anyway, that’s how we look at it.