Fair trade, first communion, and sheep tacos

On behalf of church's Outreach Council, I had helped organize a mission lunch with a Presbyterian mission worker in Peru whose been a member of our church who's recently come back when the denomination appointed her husband to head the World Mission unit. Stephanie and Vincent helped me set up the lunch. As we ate chicken, Ruth talked about her experiences in Peru using her economics and business training to find out about chains of poverty there and her efforts to help start a fair trade cooperative for Peruvian artisans. Part of her time back in Louisville Ruth has worked with us to sell some of these artisan wares, also available in some local shops. She talked about how markets, if they work right, can help everyone, but a system in which buyers can dictate prices and play producers off against each other and producers cannot find any information about how much their products are being sold for is not fair. Ruth had some good stories to tell, involved a number of the 45 of us who were there (including several kids from Children's Fellowship) in the presentation, had beautiful pieces to sell, and responded to questions.

As Ruth spoke, Stephanie and Vincent were already headed to St. Mary's Roman Catholic church in New Albany, where the Southern Indiana's Hispanic ministry has its weekly mass - in this case, a very special mass that we've only been able to go to once before, in which all the children who have gone through training participate in the first communion (as well as teens marking their quinceanera weekend). Stephanie and Vincent managed to get there early and Stephanie introduced herself to Father Tom, the disabled Anglo priest, probably around 50, who went to Latin America to learn Spanish and has come back and led this ministry. Stephanie introduced herself saying - only partly kidding - that she owes her job to him. He said, not directly, but perhaps indirectly . . . Most of the politicians in the old industrial Southern Indiana Ohio River towns (including school board members) are Catholic and, even if immigrants and Latinos are not popular in Southern Indiana, these politicians are unlikely to say "No" to a priest. Father Tom, who we've seen before, also introduced Stephanie to one of her counterparts in Clarksville, a neighboring town. Stephanie also met a woman who helped start the Hispanic ministry, when they planned an afternoon mass in the beautiful 150-year-old sanctuary that Anglos probably now underutilize, as the Anglos flee to the Southern Indiana suburbs/exurbs. Figuring they'd only have enough people for one mass a month, there were 450 people there on the first day, and now it's weekly. Father Tom also leads a Spanish-language mass over in Louisville, at St. Rita's.

A number of Stephanie's TWELVE 3rd-graders who participated had asked her to be there. We went two years ago, as Vincent flew back from seeing Grandma Martha and the JACON Anime convention in Orlando. Last year Stephanie missed three of her students participating in their first communion, because she went to Central Florida to help Grandma Martha at the Florida American Association of University Women conventoin in West Palm Beach. I got there as the children were participating in communion. But I caught most of the service, with Father Tom preaching (in Spanish throughout). The ornate sanctuary was completely packed, with dozens and dozens of people standing up in the back. The first communion children and the quinceanera kids were all dressed up. Vincent, who wasn't thrilled to be there, said the sanctuary reminded him of European Catholic churches he has studied about in his Western Civilization class. There were a smattering of Anglos, including one of Stephanie's colleagues, the father of one of the kids in Vincent's youth group taking pictures, one of the staff from the district English as a New Language office (Angie), and one of the people who formerly worked with Stephanie as a translator/aide (Annabelle). Afterwards we got to take pictures of the group and of many of Stephanie's students with her.

About 70 percent of Stephanie's students are Latino (a majority of these Mexican American), and almost all of these are involved at this one particular church in one way or the other. Stephane's second biggest group is Japanese students, whose fathers are managers at a nearby Japanese-owned plant, and who bring their children to United States partly so the kids can learn English. Saturdays these kids spend all day at "Japan school," up at Indiana University Southeast (see "Another disappointment" and "Obama at IUS"), where they attempt to keep up with their Japanese counterparts in Japan (in subjects other than English) (They also go to school all summer, back in Japan.) Stephanie has a smattering of students from other countries: Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Pakistan, Liberia, Morocco, Philipines.

(In classes in which all of the students - at least that day - are Latinos whose families are active at St. Mary's Stephanie sometimes gets away with talk a little more religious than she'd get away with elsewhere (not that Southern Indiana public schools are that secular anyway). She's explained to her kids that she is active in a church, an "iglesia Presbiteriana," and that - Yes - this she means she still is a Christian, but we believe the transformation of bread and wine into Jesus' body and blood, in Communion, is symbolic, instead of real, as Catholics believed. Her students seem relieved she is Christian, but have attempted to persuade her about the reality of transubstantiation - in so many words. Her former translator/aide, a New Albany High School graduate, wasn't thrilled when Stephanie was moonlighting for a while teaching English as a second language for the 10,000 Buddhas temple, a Southern Indiana Buddhist temple through its Louisville South End arm. [Stephanie also has some Buddhist students.])

The three of us then buzzed off to Burlington Coat Factory where we bought Vincent some black pants, a belt, and a tie for prom. He's planning to wear black on black (he already has a black shirt), and a hat, although I'm not sure if he's going to find what he wants. He's got a beautiful black suit that we bought two years ago for the trip with Grandma Martha (he also wore it to the Derby eve party two years ago), but it's now way too small.

Then I rushed Vincent off to youth group while Stephanie went off in search of a after-first communion party with the family of one of her students, Perla, that Angie was also going to. The party was up in the Knobs, the hills circling the part of the Ohio River Valley where New Albany, Clarksville, and Jeffersonville sit across the river from Louisville. Eventually we both drove up into the Knobs, and she found the party inside the building of a rural cement plant, where Perla's father works. The boss and his wife and Stephanie and Angie's husband were the only Anglos among the 50 people there. The family had bought two sheep, and cooked them, and so Stephanie had sheep tacos and sheep soup and Tres leches cake. Stephanie tried out her Spanish and met some of Perla's family members. Two years ago we had gone to the party of the family of Maria, one of Stephanie's favorite students (now in 5th grade), but that party was smaller, in town, and at Maria's family's house, and so it wasn't quite as adventurous (and there was no lamb cooked on the premises).

Although I got to make a beautiful drive up in the Knobs, I never found the party and, about to run out of gas, I went back to New Albany and then to Louisville.

In two updates, my sister's dance performances went fine, and the daughter of the writer of the Vietnam war piece was there as planned. A few people - or their kids -couldn't take the 30-minute Vietnam piece, and so they left. My cousin Dustin and friend and Aunt June are back in Ohio, but he may have suffered some long-lasting health problems as a result of the incident last week, and the court may send him to jail, him having violated his parole by drinking. Stephanie's mother is headed to the Cancer Center tomorrow for the insertion of a chemotherapy port, and then back to the center Wednesday for the start of her chemotheraphy treatment, four hours there and then two days at home. Stephanie also got a chance to talk with her father about her mother's health problems earlier this weekend. The newspaper sports columnist this morning blamed injuries like those to yesterday's Derby runner-up Eight Belles on breeding. He pointed as an example of the preference for breeding based on speed, instead of on speed AND durability, the stress last year on the possibility of still trying to breed Barbaro, after Barbaro had shown a proclivity to injury, because of Barbaro's speech (indeed, no doubt this was ONE of the owners' considerations in trying to keep Barbaro alive - his potential value as a stud). (It turns out that Cherokee, the filly injured on Oaks day Friday, is still hanging on, and has not been killed.)

Please keep Nancy and Bob (Stephanie's stepfather) and Dustin and June and Stephanie's young students and their families in your prayers.