A year ago in mid-September, the Knights of Bangkal-Davao Council No. 8824 embarked on a journey of mercy and sacrifice. One of our brothers had been in and out of the hospital for several months already and his resources had dried out. We thought of a fund drive for him but some brothers know better, he needed more than money he needed our prayer.

And so we started praying to Our Lady of Guadalupe by reciting the Rosary using the K of C Rosary Guide. Soon after we included petitions for the Canonization of Fr. Michael J. McGivney, prayer for Vocations, the Unborn Child, and Act of Consecrations to the Holy Family, and our own personal intentions. Each rosary is always preceded with the Opening Ode and a Marian hymn and appropriately ends with another Marian song and the Closing Ode.

There is nothing unusual in what we do except perhaps we do it every night continuously for over a year now. For some, the sight of men kneeling for 30 minutes may also be uncommon. Each week on a Sunday, we move the Icon of Our Lady to another Knight's home. We join the host family as they recite the Rosary with the host Knight taking the lead. It could be his first time and so he may stammer but he surges on. They took turns in the decades, his spouse and children as young as six years old.

We are just human and we did have our ups and downs. At times, only three Knights were there for the prayer. And at one point we considered reducing it to just three nights a week. But it came about that whenever a brother is in crisis, a call for prayer always gets a good response from the membership. And so we persist. Rain or shine the most devout of our brother Knights prayed the Rosary taking inspiration from answered petitions and newcomers who come to join.

We have kept our tally. Already, the Icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe has traversed 30 homes of Council 8824 Knights. As each group prayer takes about 45 minutes we multiplied this to the number of attendees to get the total prayer hours. It is our target that before the Year of the Rosary is drawn to a close (Oct 2003) we hope to have offered 3,000 hours of group prayer.