Faith in Action—Christ Our Life Conference, August 31, 2026

Tune into Faith in Action at 9 a.m., Monday, August 31 on Channel 88.1 FM, Siouxland Catholic Radio. Host Joanne Fox talks with the organizers of the Christ Our Life Conference in Des Moines. 

Faith in Action is brought to you by Mary's Choice, a Sioux City Pregnancy Resource Center. Previous Faith in Action programs can be found at siouxlandcatholicradio.com, on YouTube, and on several other podcasting platforms. Programming is subject to change.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:01

As a listeners of channel 88.1 FM F K F H C Caucasi and K-O-I-A-Storm Mike. We are so tickled that you are willing to join us for Faith in Action. I'm your host, Joanne Fox. And if you tune in at 9 o'clock on Monday, or if you tune in at 7 o'clock on Saturday, you can also tune in at your convenience. And that's just by going to our website at the radio.com and click on local programs and click on Safe Connection and you can listen at your convenience. We are also on a number of other podcasting platforms. And that's all due to the generosity of America Prognatic Resource Center, which is the exclusive underwriter for this shelf. So again, I welcome all of you to the shelf. And I know I take this show sometimes seriously and sometimes a little lightheartedly. And I gotta tell you, listeners, if if you have been under Iraq for the past several years, you then are not aware of this wonderful Catholic conference called Christ Our Life in Des Moines, Iowa. And so now is a good time to go get a piece of paper or a pen or a pencil and write this down. It is at September 26th and 27th. It's at the Case State Center in Des Moines, Iowa. And it is two days of absolutely fabulous speakers and everything imaginable to enhance your faith life. And it's been going on for a while, and that's why I joked a little bit that you know you'd have to be under a rock if you are not familiar with Christ Our Live. And so with me today are two individuals, two very lovely ladies who are going to talk with me about the event. And so I want to welcome to the show uh Ellen Miller and Marilyn Lane. We are on the phone with them. So welcome, ladies, and thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to enlighten our listeners about this wonderful opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Yes, we do too. So, Ellen, why don't we start with you? Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Well, I am um I have been married now for 43 years to um Kevin Miller, who is from the Sioux City area. Uh I was like, oh, he went to Immaculate Conception, is it parish there in Sioux City? And grew up at Heelon. And anyway, we've been married 43 years and have three children and 14 grandkids. And um I um we have traveled the state of Iowa as my husband has worked with the Fairway grocery stores, uh, traveling from different towns and finally settled in uh Indianola, where our children are, where our grandchildren are, and um where I've had the wonderful opportunity to become such good friends with Maryland. So a little bit about myself.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

I just love the small world connections. Like you could have said, Oh, and my husband Kevin, you know, he grew up in Dubuque, Iowa, and and the listeners would have gone, Oh, that's very nice. But they're nodding and smiling that he has a Sioux City and the Healing High School connection, so that's really special. So thank you, Ellen, for sharing that. Well, Marilyn, uh on to you. Um, the girls are passing the phone back and forth, and and it works for us. Tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Okay. Um, well, I I was married for 40 years to the best husband anybody could ever have. I'm prejudiced. Unfortunately, my husband did uh pass away last year. But we had uh great life. Uh we have um between the two of us, we had uh eight children surviving, and I we had one naturally together. And um that that young one that we had, um we just had our newest, we have a five, a three-year-old boy at Grandson's, and I had a little granddaughter the other day, and so we're excited about that. And I mean, literally, she's just two weeks old. And I was um a graphic designer professionally all my life, and I um the longest I was uh I became associate director of public relations at Drake University and worked there for quite a while when I was younger. So that's a little bit about my background. Born born in Chicago, but thanks be to God, I ended up in Iowa.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

I'm so glad to hear that too. Nothing against the you know, Chicago folk, but uh we love our Midwestern roots. So are you also in Indianola or somewhere else? Oh no, I'm West Des Moines. Yeah. Well, really, it's it's all a stone's throw from each other pretty much. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Especially in this day and age where we don't have to hook up with each other in covered wagons.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

So yeah, that'd be bad. I don't think I'd be too good at horseback riding, so I'm glad that that's no, me neither.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

So mm I'm curious as to how the two of you are involved with Christ Our Life. And Marilyn, maybe you could maybe start with, you know, how did you become aware of it? And then how are you so involved that I'm interviewing you?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Well, first of all, we'll go back a little bit because Ellen and I met in 2005. Uh, we both were uh with other I was with my son and husband, and she went with a really good friend to Mejgorya. And that was the first time for both of us, and we met each other. And um that started, I think we think it's definitely a God thing because um we feel a lot of fruit has come from that. And um fast forward to 2008, uh, Ellen can go into some detail about uh the specifics, but we were both inspired at about the very same week separately. We were talking to each other uh to um put on a large conference, and we had never done it. This conference did not exist before 2010. We thought it was a one and done, it was not. And um, Alan, I'll turn it to you and you can tell your part of that story.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Well, a little bit of my background is that I was a high school youth leader, uh cosmetologist, high school youth leader. What a combination, right? Very much so. And I was always telling my uh students, you know, how many yeses do you give to what's going on with school and your coaches and your parents, rightly so. But how many yeses do you have at the end of the day for your relationship with Jesus? So when I was on the treadmill praying my rosary in the middle of the winter there, I uh it came to my heart that we need a conference in Iowa. And I, you know, I I'll be honest, I wasn't quite sure, like, okay, Lord, we need a conference, all right, a Catholic conference. Um, but what for, you know, that came later. But I got off my treadmill. I called my best friend Marilyn. She definitely is the creative brains of the bunch, and she said yes, and she told me she had also had a moment that week that she hadn't told me about, that she felt prompt to host a conference herself.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Wow, I I that is truly the Holy Spirit working in mysterious ways. I don't even have words. So, okay, so yeah, I get it. This would be great. Let's have a conference. But yeah boy, listeners know anytime you're planning something like this, the devil's in the details. So how do you determine time, date, place, who's speaking, what are we going to charge? You've got to share with the listeners a little bit about the dynamics of how this all came into being.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

You bet. Well, first of all, Ellen and I determined to go to um a wonderful, wonderful priest, late Father Joe McDonald, and told him about our idea, and he was definitely on board. And he said, Okay, ladies, the first thing we need to do is take it to our bishop. And that was Bishop Pates at the time. And so uh Father Joe and Ellen and myself went down there, and he was very enthused also. So after that, we got together some people whom we trusted uh to talk with us about their ideas and who they might suggest as potential speakers. And I'll just tell you one of them, Ellen might add a few things, because um uh I had I had asked uh Father Chris Rising, another younger priest, um, who he might suggest. And he said, Oh, he said, um, you ought to get uh Cardinal Francis or Rinse. And I said, I had no idea who he was, and I said, Well, where do I get a hold of him? And he said, Well, the Vatican, of course. And I I had to laugh because I thought, oh, right, we're gonna invite a a a cardinal from the Vatican who is going to come and talk to us uh in Iowa at a conference that has never existed, uh, put on by two women who have never done anything like that. Well, you can tell again the Holy Spirit talked uh loudly because a couple months later we got a response. Yes, he was coming. Cardinal Lorenzi came all the way from Rome.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

I don't even have words. I mean, that truly is a God wink moment. Absolutely. So he was then your um keynote speaker, but uh again, you know, the devil's always in the details. Was it uh you know, now it's a two-day conference. Was it going to be a one-day conference or um just a morning conference, or how did you determine how that was gonna play out?

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Oh boy, it I always say it was a wing and a prayer, right? We just prayed and moved. Um, well, once we decided to have the conference, I took it to prayer. Like, Lord, how big of a place do we need, right? Talk about details. And uh the multiplying of the loaves of fish and bread came to my heart. And I am saddened to say I didn't know the scripture to that. And I went to my priest and I said, Father Ray, how many were at the multiplying of the loaves of fish and bread? And he said, Well, and there were five thousand. That was without women and children. And I said, Well, they're invited, so we gotta get a place for 10,000. And uh that is definitely how Marilyn and I came to, you know, discerning, okay, what place do we want to rent out? And so we found ourselves going to High V Hall. High it was back then, it was called the Vet's Vets Auditori. And so we went there and we talked to the main people and we signed the contract and we were super excited, although we had no idea how we were gonna pay for this. Like our fundraiser person who was everybody's volunteer. So he had talked to us, he thought maybe he could help us, and then he canceled out on us, right? So we've signed the contract, we have the place rented, and then about six weeks later, Marilyn sees on the news that they are tearing out the seats at the vet center, and we're like, wait a minute, that's where we're having our conference, right? So we called each other, we got a hold of the vet center. They said, It's fine, it's fine. We're gonna take you guys to Hive Hall. And I said, But it's not stadium seating, you know. We wanted an arena event for our Lord, you know, this is flat seating, and they were saying, It's fine, we'll give you lots of screens, it'll be great. So we moved on, we said, Well, this is the Lord's conference, you know, we're just trying to do our best to uh make it happen. So we started working on Christ Our Life. So many people when we would try to, you know, like go to the churches and see if we could somehow get this advertised in the church, would be like, What is this? What is it called? Um, and Marilyn was a big part of all of the what you see on our flyers and stuff, such as Christ Our Life or Our Searching Souls. She can tell you a little more about that. But that's kind of the very first beginning of how Christ Our Life began.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

And then the last part of that was that we got a call. Oh, I mean, that's yeah, I'd say six weeks before the conference, and they said um a particular party of a political party needed High V Hall because they wanted to have a fundraising dinner and they needed flat seating. So for the same price that we originally got vets for, they moved us to Well Fargo Arena, which is now Center, of course. And so it was like God worked this incredible plan where for the price of vets, we went all the way to Well Fargo Arena.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

And we've been there ever since. It's so neat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Oh, that is a wonderful story. And how did you come up with Christ Our Life as the kind of the theme or the name of the conference? Because you could have come up with so many different words and and names and titles, and I love Christ Our Life. But how did you come up with the first one? Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Well, a wonderful and talented woman on our committee, Jenny Stregel, who professionally is a CPA, um, she suggested the name Christ Our Life. And I think pretty much we were all in, weren't we, Ellen, from the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Yeah. She said we proclaim it at Easter, and I believe this is what we should name it. And then right away Marilyn knew the image that she wanted.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, and I I Googled and found out that uh Caravaggio's art, the image of the doubting Thomas, had been public domain for some time, which meant, of course, we did not have to go through hoops and get permission uh or even pay anything to use it. It was uh it's free for anybody who'd like to uh adopt it. So that became our perfect image. And um early on it was uh from doubt to faith, yeah. And then we we decided we kind of morphed into for our searching souls because so many people who attend the conference, they aren't doubting really, but we all I think are searching for a deeper faith.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So and I'm curious again, because uh you kind of joked a little bit earlier about um you know, we want the arena because we figure there's gonna be 10,000 souls, because there were 5,000, you know, they got the loaves and the fishes, so we're aiming for 10,000. But that's a lot of people. You know, so what was the first one like? Um, and how many folks did you have attend?

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Well, it's a little bit of a story because um at first our ticket prices were higher. You know, the committee kind of came up with a price, and let's say it was $49, $50, $50, I think. And uh so we went out and every time I tried to sell Christ Our Life to other churches, as far as, you know, come in, you know, come to the conference. We you know, this is gonna be beautiful. People would say, How much is it? I I don't want to pay that, you know. And um, so I we were about again, we were at that mark of a couple months out, and we hadn't sold maybe a thousand. We had not sold a thousand tickets. And I uh called a friend who had had many conferences in smaller, you know, arenas, and I said, You know, have you ever had this problem? What have you done? And she first of all she kind of chuckled and said, I don't know what you were thinking renting such a big place. But besides that, you know, um, we have in the past given away a free ticket for everybody who bought a ticket. And that had been the year that the Pope had proclaimed that it was the year to evangelize. And we said, Oh my goodness, that's what we're gonna do. So we got together with Father Joe and with our committee, and we decided we would mail out a ticket, an extra ticket for those who bought a ticket. And that um doubled our crowd. You know, I don't think we had quite 3,000 for sure at that first gathering, but it was a it was our start, you know. It um allowed us to evangelize to everybody, to pay for the arena, you know, that we came out debt-free and that we could start, you know, in 2012 with our second conference, you know, ready to go.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

And and I I'm just dumbfounded because uh I did not anticipate that you were going to say we had three thousand because that's a lot of people. And there's so many places that would just die for an event in which you would have like, you know, uh 200 and you guys garnered that many. So was it a one-day event that first year?

SPEAKER_01 17:09

No, we've had um the two-day format. Actually, it's technically one and a half because we start with mass on Saturday morning. Um we do a rosary ahead, but mass in the morning, and then we go all day with speakers and we wind up with the most beautiful event of um adoration in the evening. Um, and I won't elaborate on that yet. But then the next morning we come back and we actually close the conference at about 1.30. We have our our final mass. And so it begins with a mass and ends with a mass, but in between we have incredible, incredible speakers, and we also have a high school and college breakout, which is bigger than ever this year, and Ellen loves to talk about that because she pretty much uh has developed that.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

So well, and that seems to be very particular to right now, in which uh the reports and the data is showing that young people are gravitating toward uh r church, be it you know the Catholic church or any kind of church, whereas prior to this they were I think f you know, just treading water. And so this is wonderful. And I imagine you are seeing this kind of uptick in participation.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

I I say praise God, because everywhere we go we hear about this uptick, and it is throughout our country, and it's really exciting. Yeah, wait till all the speakers are incredible. I mean, all the speakers for the general arena are dynamite, but there are some that are going to really appeal to the kids, aren't they, Yellow?

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah, and the beauty about Christ or Life is it's for all ages, right? I love the fact of us all coming together, no matter how old we are or how young we are, right? Because we're all searching, we're all growing in our faith, you know. We're not done until the last breath, right? And and I just I'm I'm excited and anxious or how would I say that? I mean, I what I love is that when I go, I have 14 grandkids who follow me, along with their parents, along with my husband, you know, along with other family members, brothers, sisters, you know, all ages, and together we go in and we learn and we grow and we celebrate um what we love about our Catholic faith, and then we leave refreshed and renewed and ready to take that out into the world and into our faith community.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

And that's what we hope is, you know, we are evangelizers. So, listeners, if you're just tuning in right now, I want to remind you you are listening to Faith in Action. I'm your host, Joanne Fox. And uh I am talking on the phone with Ellen Miller and Marilyn Lane, and they are really uh kind of the impetus for the Christ Our Life conference. And hopefully by this time you've gotten a pen and a piece of paper to write down it's September 26th and 27th uh in Des Moines, Iowa. It's uh at the Casey Center. And I'll have a lot more about that um toward the end of the program, but I just want to make sure listeners that you have at least the dates um down and you are looking at your calendar to see uh if you can uh attend. So just now the first one was 2008, Ellen, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 20:30

No, that would be 2010. We inspired in 2008. Okay. By the time we planned it, it was 2010.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

Well, yeah, an event of this magnitude you too need a couple of years. So the first conference is uh in your belts and and you're ready to move on. What did you learn from that first conference that you said to yourselves now the next one is going to be even better because of this?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Well, first of all, we learned that we were going to have a second conference. Okay, as I mentioned, we were like we were both one and done. We thought one conference was it. And um, I was taking Ellen and I both had some uh nudges. I was taking um one of our speakers, Marino Restrepo, to the airport. He had stayed at my home. We were kind of low budget back then. And um anyway, I got this in this impulse that he could read souls. And I asked him, Marino, I said, Is it true? I I'm thinking you can read souls, and he said, Yes. And I said, Well, what advice could you give me to become more pleasing to God? And right away he said, You and Ellen must continue this conference. This is very, very important. And Alan, you had something happen to you too, I was thinking.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Well, I know in the beginning I said I had that prompting and I gave my yes, you know, to contact Marilyn and go forward with the conference. But what I learned after the first one was that um I I believe we need to be reminded of how big our church is. When you are at the end of the conference and you're celebrating the Holy Mass and you look around the arena and it is full, and your hearts are full, you know, and you just there on the altar is the source and summit of our faith. You feel so emboldened, you know, so ready to go out and live the messages that you have heard and learned during the weekend. And um, it's just beyond words.

SPEAKER_03 22:31

Yeah, I would imagine so. And you kind of nailed it right there when you look out and you see all these other individuals who are like-minded and want to grow in their faith and and want to rejoice in our our Catholic uh faith. That that is powerful. So you got the first one done, and um, you know, everybody was real pleased with it, and so you you feel like you're gonna do another one, but you don't do one the next year. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

That is correct, yeah. We have always said that if we did this thing annually, we might lose most of our steering current. It's uh it's a really big task. Bigger I'm sure anybody that puts on any kind of large, large event understands. Yeah, there there are lots of moving parts. So, yes, we planned for 2012, and we started um uh inviting uh brainstorming about speakers and inviting them pretty much right away.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Yeah, and I that was actually a perfect segue, speakers. Uh there's so many. And a lot of us have gone to conferences, and then you know, we tell our friends, oh, I really love this speaker, and I hope somebody can bring them back. And I imagine the input and uh suggestions and recommendations are probably uh I think my eyes would cross. There are so many wonderful men and women and uh clergy and women religious and that could be speakers and so and what a what a wonderful gift for the first one that you got the cardinal from Rome. I mean that almost positioned you so people would go, oh my gosh, they got the cardinal from Rome, and he was good. So they're excited. Who are they going to get next? So how do you go about doing that? Do you j uh send emails or registered letters or pick up the phone or how do you parse through all these people that could be great?

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Well, Marilyn and I work so well together. I mean, what we do is of course we take inspiration from anybody who wants to reach out to us and say, hey, uh this is this person is a wonderful speaker. I want you to listen to them and see what you think, you know. So we kind of go back and forth on that and we vet them in that way. If we both like the speaker, then we move forward with that, you know, take it to our board, take it to our steering committee, you know, have that discussion. Um, if one of us doesn't like the speaker, we go, ah, we don't think that's a good fit for the conference, then we move on to the next one, you know, because as you can imagine, we get quite a few, and our time is limited in between all the family fun stuff we have going on in our daily life. So that's kind of how we go about it, and then we reach out to the speakers to see once we decided, you know, if they're available, we pray about it, we move, and by the grace of God, we have had mostly I would say 95-99% yeses.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

99%, yeah. We like to go after the big fish, by the way. We we uh we do, we have to admit that's the truth, and we have Ellen's exactly correct. We have only, to my knowledge, from all of those I've invited, and Ellen, of course, invites you know, similar amounts, I've only had one no. Oh my. That's pretty amazing. One actually didn't show up. Um, well, she canceled Susan.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

We've had some pretty scrappy moments, I like to say, moments where you're like, oh, the bishop couldn't make it? Oh no, it's Friday night. Who are we gonna get to take their place? But uh we're pretty um temperament-wise, Marilyn and I are pretty uh compatible. So we just we go with it. We know the Holy Spirit is leading this ministry, and uh we know our good Lord, this conference is for him, and we're just doing our best.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Have you had individuals contact you and say, you know, I've heard about the Christ Our Life conference, and I have actually spoken, you know, at these places, and would you consider me? Have you had people reach out to you like that?

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Yes, we have had a few, and and then we again go through the the process. We, you know, try to find their talk and see how engaging they are as speakers, um, and then we kind of go from there on whether we, you know, invite them or not.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

And we have two criteria that are always of utmost importance. One is that the person has an important story to tell that will be pertinent to the audience. The second criteria is that they can deliver. If they have a good story but they are not a public speaker, unfortunately that doesn't work when you have an arena, uh, you know, 7,500 people. You really need somebody that's going to uh get that point across strongly or those points. So those are our two major criteria. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Yeah, Mary's. And we all learn differently, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

Yeah. Yeah. And absolutely, you know, you're right. You know, think about, you know, the people we interact with, and a lot of them have great stories, but to get up in front of, you know, 3,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 people, that's a whole different ball game. So that brings me to another question, and that is how in the world do you find the the funds to because these people have stipends and um air travel and probably you gotta put 'em up somewhere. Not everybody's gonna stay at the steering committee's houses, I imagine.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

No, that kind of stopped that ceased after 2010 or 12. Well, you know what? My husband was the uh volunteer. By the way, everybody on this committee, with the exception of our bookkeeper who needs to be paid, um, every single person is a volunteer. And my husband was a businessman all his life, and he uh had fundraised for many years for Christ our life, and he did a really good job. And sadly, as I'd mentioned, he he passed away um last spring, a year ago spring. And so uh the Holy Spirit has been helping us a lot, but we are engaged right now with um trying to trying to fill figure out how to bring in monies because yes, it is uh it is quite an expensive undertaking. Union labor um is intense. We'll put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're gonna work on that. We're counting on counting on Jesus to and Blessed Mother and all saints and angels, and maybe and my husband up there. We're hoping they all help help us.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Otherwise, you might see me and Marilyn hosting a lemonade stand somewhere on the floor.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

I was gonna say it's still pretty nice outside. You could do a car wash, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yeah. Or we might, if it goes along, if we don't quite cut it, we might be selling Christmas ornaments for late in the fall. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03 29:34

Well, now now this is a real dangerous question, but I'm gonna ask anyway because, well, it's my show. Who was your favorite speaker or the one that really resonated with you? So when you go and you're talking to folks and they're kind of on the fence about, oh, I don't know if I, you know, it sounds interesting. Which speaker Oh, we both we both have one. Oh, Alan. Okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Okay, I'll try to keep this short because um definitely my favorite speaker was Magnus McFarlane Barrow, the founder of Mary's Meals, um, for a very special reason. We invited him after meeting him in Mejigoria, and we knew he had this beautiful nonprofit that feeds kids at their place of education in developing countries. So we invite him to the conference. My son Mike is a senior in college at the time. So he was Magnus's ambassador. And once Magnus presented in such a kind and thoughtful way, I mean, his talk was so beautiful. People were moved and inspired to want to make a difference, to share their little acts of love. My son included, he um was like, Mom, what are we gonna do about this? And I'm like, I'm going back to cutting hair and being a cosmetologist, I mean, and a youth leader, you know, I need a break. And he said, Mom, it's so easy to do something. So Mike and I found ourselves um fundraising to um fetus school in Malawi, Africa, and followed by Mike traveling to Haiti with Magnus to meet some of the children of Mary's Meals. And shortly after my son graduated from college, within a year, he was moving to Africa, where he lived for eleven years working for Mary's Meals as finance and logistics officer, followed by another three years when he moved back home with his growing family of five kiddos. And so really Magnus has changed our life. Mary's Meals has changed our life. Um, and again, that's one of the reasons I like to have all kinds of ages in this arena because if my son would have come home from the conference and said, Hey mom, I want to work for Mary's Meals and move to Africa, I would have been like, What? Are you kidding? Um, but we shared that journey together, and it's been so personal and so special.

SPEAKER_03 31:44

Wow. Um Ellen, that's powerful. So, Marilyn, what about you?

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Well, I have to say, first of all, there have only been out of all of these conferences, probably I can think of one person who would, of course, been nameless, that I might not invite back. However, I back at that very first conference, Marino Restrepo, the one that I took to the airport, and um uh somebody had uh well I was getting my hair cut once, somebody recommended this guy, and I I had never heard of him. He is he lives in South America now, I believe. Anyway, he had the most dynamic testimony. I I just nobody could make up what he had been through. And I was so incredibly moved, and I know to this day that he is still some other people's favorite speaker, although that's that's saying a lot because boy, we've had some incredible speakers, and some have gone on to incredible thing. I mean, we had Father John Ricardo, um, you know, before a lot of people really knew all about him, and Father Mike Schmidt, we we had him back in 2016, and now the whole world knows about Father Mike Schmidt.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Matthew Shelley, Is Delay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Oh wow. What's the one that got away that you would really like to have?

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Oh my gosh. I don't know. Don't yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

You know what, Joanne? Let us ask you, is there someone you would like us to invite sometime that you haven't you've thought, why haven't they had this person yet?

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Well, I of course I'm just gonna throw this out, but Bishop Robert Barron, I think is I find him he resonates with me. I like his own. We had him. We oh see, there you go. There you go. So he didn't get away.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Yeah, we had him too back in 14. We had him. Yeah. Yeah, those are we kind of set you up on that one.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

You did.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

But we didn't know what she was going to say about the character. Well, he was he was great, but he unfortunately he couldn't hang around afterward. That man is so much in demand. He had to fly out almost immediately after he left the stage.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

I never met him.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Oh the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Yeah. The cardinal I did, but the bishop, nope, I never did meet him. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Oh, well, it's all good. So for sure. So let's talk about the dynamics of the event itself. Because I I'm thinking the listeners who are not familiar with uh the Christ Our Life Conference are wondering, well, how does this play out? So and um Marilyn, you kind of alluded it to a little bit to it now and too. You know, how does this play out? You know, uh the the doors open uh Saturday, September 26th, and you got vendors all over the place. Uh and I noticed on the flyer, the first thing you have, which is so wonderful, is a rosary, and followed by the praise band. But then uh what are other things that are going on during that day and then into the next day for the half of the day?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Oh well, we have um some things that a lot of the public wouldn't know about because we do have some gatherings. Um Ellen likes to uh put on a little something for her go-to people, she calls them those people that have worked with us through um the entire state and beyond. But we start out um we um after the holy mass, um there's a welcome add address, and then our speakers get going. And we usually have a couple of speakers before lunch. Um then we have lunch, and that invites the breakout session. And um, Ellen, just say a little bit about the track because it's so incredible this year.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Yeah, the beauty is, you know, thanks to Joe um and his fundraising, uh, in 2024, we were able to give our very first uh free tickets to 23 and under for the conference. We were like, we really want to encourage families to come near our far, you know. If it costs you to stay in a hotel, then we want to make sure it doesn't cost you to bring your young adults to the conference. So 23 and under is free. You just have to register on the website so we know you're coming. You know, we save you a seat. Um, so that's exciting. The other thing is then the adult ticket is $30 for the weekend. So again, it's an irresistible price, we hope. We hope that encourages you to be able to come with your families or come alone and celebrate, you know, the love of Christ. But with that said, the high school breakout, you know, it starts at 1230 on Saturday, and we're gonna serve them pizza. Again, no cost pizza. And then we have our main speakers that are gonna be on stage. Most of them are going to take time to come to the breakout with our youth in a smaller setting, so that's nice. You know, we're praying for, you know, 1,500 youth. And these speakers will come in and and spend about 30 minutes with our youth, sharing testimonials and answering questions and um just trying to meet our young adults where they're at. Um, so that'll be celebrated all afternoon in a separate area of the arena. Uh, we call that our high school college breakout room. And then they'll come back into the main arena um after the dinner hour and Bishop Joseph S. Piat. I always say his last name a little wrong. No, you did, right? He's gonna give a talk to all of us. He's just passionately known amongst many who have ever gone to seek or NCYC or Eucharistic Congress, you know. He is out of, is it the New York the Bronx?

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Yeah, he's from the Bronx. And uh he was about a year and a half ago, he had he was distinguished by being the youngest bishop in the U.S. Now he is the fourth youngest. We just added another one who's really young.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

So, but still he's known as the rapper bishop amongst the youth, and he is going to lead us in Eucharistic adoration, you know, procession adoration. But anyway, so looking forward to that. And um, we want that for our youth. So they feel like they have a place. And also in the main arena, our youth are gonna have a section over by the Steve Angersano band where they can sit if they feel like they want to hang out with other teens. Again, this is high school, college-age um adults that they can hang out in the area by the band.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

And then we're going to, of course, have all of our regular speakers continuing throughout the afternoon. Um, just an exciting lineup. And then Sunday morning, they come back after we do the Holy Rosary and Praise Band. Um, we have two more of three, three of our m fantastic speakers and all their topics, all their topics. I wish we had time to tell you more about the topics.

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Yeah, I wish we did too, because this is just fascinating. Listeners, if you aren't moved by this, um, I'm not sure what else Marilyn and Ellen and I can say. This is such a wonderful opportunity. And again, we haven't talked about, you know, how do you get a ticket to this? We did say it's $30 and uh 23 and under is free. Um but you can go to the website uh priceourlifeioa.com, or if that's too much for you to type into the computer, just uh go to Google and put in Christ Our Life, you know, Des Moines and everything will come up. And it's it's uh it's pretty easy. Um $30 is uh for all of these speakers and all these opportunities to interact with other people, uh like-minded Catholics and uh what would you say, Marilyn and Alan, to somebody who's thinking, oh, this sounds interesting. I don't know if I want to go. What would you say to them to get them off the fence?

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Unless you want to travel across the whole United States, going from conference to conference, we have gathered one of the most powerful groups of speakers in one place for what I have been told is one of the best prices, if not the best, in the whole United States for this kind of event. And it's right here in our own backyard. That's what I would say. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

And just you know, playing off the fact that um, you know, Marilyn and I gave our yes, not knowing what the Lord had in store for us, and it has been the biggest blessing in our life. So or one of the biggest and uh and so I would just like to encourage people out there who are listening, give your yes. You might not know why, you know, but come to the arena because our Lord is there and he wants to bless you.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

And I will add, we have, and I am not exaggerating when I say thousands of testimonies, people who have answered the survey or sent letters and even on off-ears that say this has changed their lives. And I know that's a trite statement, but we have heard it so many times. People that didn't even want to come, they tagged along with somebody because they were invited, and they said, I never experienced anything like it.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

Well, this has all been so powerful and so wonderful. Listeners, again, I want to remind you this is um the Christ Our Life Catholic Conference. It is September 26th and 27th in Des Moines at the Casey Center. Uh you can go to get a ticket at Christ Our LifeIowa.com. You can get them at the door, can you? Uh Eleanor Maryland, yes, can you get tickets at the door? Or do you absolutely okay? All right, okay, we know things happen. And suddenly you know you're looking at your spouse or a good friend, and you say to yourself, I I think we can go to this today. Something else got cancelled. So we can just go. And that is just another wonderful option. Is that yeah, it's great to have the tickets ahead of time because then they'll make sure they got enough food for everybody and enough drinks and everything. But um the ability to just walk in at $30 and Marilyn and Ellen, both of you just nailed it. Uh I don't know how you could find another conference uh like this with this level of speakers and the the professionalism and the music and and the ability to have mass and the divine tablet um and uh roads, everything. It just uh this is really an opportunity, listener, that uh that you could seriously uh think of taking advantage of. So that kind of wraps up another edition of Faith in Action. I want to talk uh thank from the bottom of my heart my my two guests today, Ellen Miller and Marilyn Lane. They have really been wonderful to talk to, and I am just in awe of everything they've done to create Christ Our Life Catholic conference uh for our our souls, really, for our searching souls. So thank you both so much for coming on the show and and sharing all this information about this wonderful conference. Thank you and all glory to God. Amen. Amen. So, listeners, if you appreciated this show, we have so many other wonderful local programs. We have the Divine Mercy Chaplet recited daily at 3 p.m. We have Modern Day Mass, which is celebrated on Sundays at 9 a.m., Life Plan air Sundays at 8 p.m. Uh Catholic Ministry Professionals with John and Ty at Tuesday at 4 p.m. John Air with Fred and Cara at Wednesdays at 4 p.m. Father Knows Best with Father Mark Stoll Wednesdays at 9 p.m. And so that brings us to the conclusion, another edition of Faith in Action. If you tuned in like or um you would like to re-listen, all you have to do is go to our website, still antholicradio.com. You click on local programs, you click on Faith in Action, and you can listen at your convenience app. But we are also on a number of other podcasting platforms, and that's all due to the generosity of Mary's choice at the Pregnancy Resource Center, which is the exclusive underwriter for this show. So on behalf of myself, I'm your host, Joanne Fox, and my executive producer Ann Reed, I want to remind you that a faithful reaction is good. But faith in action is so much better. Thanks for listening and God bless.