Partners: CatholicSingles.com
I've partnered with CatholicSingles.com
Here's an article I wrote about one of the cruises:
On Board the Boat with CatholicSingles.com
Our cruise aboard the Carnival Victory began with a reception. It was a cozy and comfy affair of just saying hello and starting to get to know people from all over the
Afterwards, we went to the top deck for disembarkation. The toppermost of the poppermost deck of the ship is about eleven stories up and the view was tremendous. Although there were about 3,000 guests on the boat, the fifty or so of us from CatholicSingles.com had the top deck pretty much to ourselves. We continued conversing and getting to know each other as the ship pulled out of the harbor.
After that it was swimsuit and lollygag on lounge chairs by the pool time. The ship had about half a dozen pools and as many hot tubs, with a stage set up in the center of the main deck and a reggae band kicking out the jams. I must say that the CatholicSingles.com brigade pretty much led the way when it came to livening up the festivities. The CS dance team turned the deck in front of the stage area into a dance floor, with many others joining in.
Each evening we had a series of tables along one side of the glass-walled main dining room. The view of the ocean and sunset as we dined was just too good to describe. The meals were great, and conversation over dinner each evening was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.
The group consisted of people from many backgrounds. Conversation ranged across all sorts of topics from jobs to sports to online dating and jokes about what was to be expected from the dating seminar I would be giving beginning the next afternoon.
The first full day aboard ship was Sunday, with a special Mass for our group celebrated in the morning. There were a couple of musicians on board who prepared beforehand and did a lovely job. Father Bill and I had talked in advance as well, and so he gave a homily which was a perfect introduction for my seminar on relationships.
There's plenty of information about my seminar available at www.GodofDesire.com, so I won't go too much into that. I will say that folks were interested in it, and they came. And, best of all, they came back for the following two sessions in spite of having LOTS of other competing activities offered on the boat.
One theme of my seminars is to teach singles how to form family relationships and live family life in the church. Then, all of our romantic relationships grow naturally from the family life which we are living. A great sense of camaraderie did develop among our group, with folks treating one another truly as brothers and sisters in Christ.
I know that some folks think of cruises as rather decadent affairs, replete with lots of partying and carousing. And some folks have some trepidation about coming on a CatholicSingles.com cruise, wondering how they'll fit in and what the group dynamics will be like. I was very impressed with this group and how everything about the trip was handled.
We did a number of things together as a group, including some mixers. One fellow in the group met a couple of Jewish women on board and invited them to one of our mixers and after that they became a fixture at all of our events. They came to a session of my seminar, and joined us for dinner and just for hanging out. They were made to feel quite welcome and were convinced that we were simply the most interesting and fun folks on the boat. They were very interesting ladies themselves, an animal rights activist and a photographer, and added a lot to the dynamics of our group.
With CatholicSingles.com there were people who had come alone, and people who had come in pairs or small groups. It was a natural and easy thing for people to get together to participate in the activities which appealed to them, and there was plenty of time for people to do the things they wanted to do alone.
One of the niftiest things about the trip was just playing things by ear, not planning a lot, and winding up with a group of people doing something rewarding together. I found myself in conversations in all different settings on the boat with different groups of people doing different sorts of thing, without a need to concern ourselves with . . . anything--and isn't that what vacationing out to be?
A group might go walking together on the walking/jogging deck, or sit in the sun, or dance to reggae outside or disco inside, or sit and talk intensely about our faith, or shop, or listen to a classical music concert, or attend a comedy show--I don't normally care for stand-up comedy, but the comedian on the boat was hysterical. All of the entertainment I saw and heard on the boat was top notch.
We gathered informally for prayer on several occasions, in small groups and large. At one point about twenty of us were in one corner of a large lobby reciting night prayer antiphonally, back and forth from the guys to the gals. That was the highlight of the trip for me (that and the waiter who insisted on bringing me two lobsters for dinner instead of one).
All in all I have to say that going on a cruise with CatholicSingles.com is a darn good thing. Whatever concerns that a person might wonder about turn out to be unfounded. The Carnival cruise line crew, recruited from all over the planet, does an amazing job all the way down the line.
The CatholicSingles.com gang is just the group of folks to share a trip with, and, from what they tell me, the dating and courtship seminar is pretty darn swell as well. I'm delighted to have been invited on the next cruise, and I hope to see you there.