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Have Mobile Pregnancy Center - Will Travel

MARK HALL FIGHTS PRO-ABORTS ON THEIR OWN TURF

Mark Hall’s pro-life ministry is not your average pro-life ministry.

The 40-year-old Floridian believes in confronting the enemy on his own turf.

“Our mission is directly in front of the abortion clinics,” Hall told about 25 pro-life activists from Maryland, Northern Virginia and D.C. at a meeting in Laurel May 2.

“We have mobile units with ultrasound, and/or property right in front of the abortion clinic,” he explained.

Mark also believes that “We can’t just tell women, ‘Don’t have an abortion’; we have to put our money where our mouth is.”

Standing in front of the abortion clinic with a $100 bill in his hand, Hall tells the women going in for abortions, “I’ll give you $100 to have an ultrasound before you go in that door.

“We’ve had 280 take us up on it.  Only four out of 280 have gone in to have an abortion.”

Mark began the Pregnancy Outreach Ministry 10 years ago, with a $15,000 start-up grant from the bishop of the Diocese of Orlando.  From then on, he had to do his own fundraising.

“We just literally walk by faith,” he said.  “Sometimes we only have $200 in the bank.  

“But Jesus didn’t say, ‘Everything will be given to you, then seek the Kingdom of God.’  He said, ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then everything will be given you.’”

Mark didn’t always “seek the Kingdom of God”; as a youth, he said, he wasn’t very religious.

But as a young man, his entire perspective changed radically when, after four years of marriage, his wife, who had been his high school sweetheart, walked out on him.

A friend, who saw how devastated he was, said to him, “Mark, if you knew that Jesus was going to be at Our Lady of Lourdes Church tomorrow and you could literally reach out and touch Him, would you be there?”

“I said, ‘You bet I would!’  He said, ‘Who is it that you reach out and touch when you receive Holy Communion?  Who are you coming in union with?’

“I’ll never forget the revelation that just shot through my body, and I went, ‘Wow, we’re touching Jesus, man!’

“He said, ‘Good, I’ll see you at Mass tomorrow.’”

From then on, Mark went to daily Mass.

Pregnancy Outreach Ministries first began using their mobile unit in front of an abortion mill in Melbourne, Fla.

Mark wanted to buy an adjacent property as well, to use as a pregnancy center, but his board of directors voted against him, 7 to 1.

“They said there was no need to buy a property – let’s just stay with the mobile unit,” he recalled.

Seeking guidance, Mark prayed before the Blessed Sacrament on Divine Mercy Sunday, accompanied by his two young twin godchildren.

A man saw him and heard about what he and the ministry were doing.  On the Feast of Corpus Christi he wrote them a check for $40,000 to buy the property.

 “I can’t stress enough how important prayer before the Blessed Sacrament is!” said Mark.

In the small house they had purchased they set up a chapel, where pro-lifers prayed a perpetual Rosary.  The mobile unit continued to operate on the parking lot outside.

Two years after they moved in, the state of Florida widened U.S. 1, taking land on which the abortion clinic sat.

The abortion mill’s building was razed; all that was left of the property was the parking lot.

Mark was struck with an ambitious idea:  why not buy the land and, where the abortion mill had stood, build a national Catholic memorial, commemorating the 40,000 unborn babies who had been killed there during the mill’s 15 years of operation?

The pregnancy center at Melbourne had given shelter to a girl in a crisis pregnancy until she had had her baby, a boy she named Christopher.

Shortly afterwards, the girl’s parents won $30 million in the lottery.

In 2001 the parents gave the ministry a check for $200,000 because of the help it had given their daughter.  With that windfall they were able to buy the former abortion mill property.

“It all goes back to Adoration, kneeling before Jesus,” said Hall.

Mark envisions, as part of the national memorial to the unborn, a wall like the Vietnam Memorial, with the names of unborn babies killed by abortion.

People would give $30 to have the name of an unborn child on the wall.  The money raised would be used for ultrasound equipment, mobile units, and to buy properties for pregnancy centers adjacent to abortion mills.

Hall wants the memorial to include a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat area, with life-sized Stations of the Cross for post-abortive women.

“People will be given a headset to go through the Stations of the Cross from the viewpoint of a woman who has had an abortion,” he said.        The retreat area would include professional counselors to help the women.

In addition to the operation in Melbourne, Outreach Ministries bought property in Orlando, again relying on faith and prayer to supply the money for it.

With their mobile unit, they also go to pregnancy centers that don’t have ultrasounds.

Florida does not require certification to do ultrasounds, and Mark does about 80 percent of them.

“I tell college kids, you can call me on my cell phone day or night, just like an ambulance, and I’ll come anywhere with the mobile unit to do an ultrasound.”

Mark is working with a woman in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, who has a Catholic bookstore next to an abortion clinic.

“Our plan is to put a mobile unit out in the street, and offer free pregnancy tests and free ultrasounds.”

Hall urged the pro-lifers at the Laurel meeting to scout out the abortion mills in their area to see if there are adjacent properties that could be rented, or areas where a mobile unit could be set up; if so, he would come and help them get started.

For the past three years a lay mission team called Messengers of Hope, whose members live together as a community, has acted as a support group for Pregnancy Outreach Ministry.

The teaching of chastity is an important part of the ministry.

“So many of our Christian youth think that if it’s the right person, sex is okay,” said Hall.  “They don’t understand how far is too far:  90 percent of our Christian youth think anything short of intercourse is okay.”

Mark tries to teach teenagers chastity through skits using props such as basketballs, squirt guns and chess games.

“Instead of just preaching to them, we do it through a sort of parable, like Jesus did,” he said.  “Then, every time they pick up a basketball, they will think of our message.”

Messengers of Hope’s website is www.messengersofhopeministries.org