Author: Daniel

One of the things I truly appreciate about the Catholic school education my children have received is the expectation of service. At Andrean, where my oldest son and daughter attended, and Marquette, where my son is now a junior, the students must perform a few dozen hours each school of volunteer work. As far as I know, those obligations are standard practice in the parochial school system.

It was that system that brought Cormac and I to Duneland Community Church on Saturday morning. Cormac was there to move closer to his service-hour requirement. I wanted to learn about the program he was volunteering for, Free the Girls.

Free the Girls is a Chesterton-based organization designed to help young women who had been victims of human trafficking as they rebuild their lives. It’s active in three developing countries: Mozambique, El Salvador and Costa Rica. The organization was founded in 2010 by Dave Terpstra and his wife, who were simply looking for a way for ordinary people to help fight the global scourge that is human trafficking.

The organization is not engaged in extricating the women from captivity, or the immediate rehabilitation process. Instead, they are focused on the next step in the process. “That’s our niche: reintegration,” says Terpstra.

Free the Girls accomplishes it’s goal through a rather simple model. It collects gently used bras from all over the country, then ships them to the organization and partner organizations in the three countries. There, the freed women sell them into the active used clothing markets in those countries.

The women are charged, after sale, half-price for the first batch of bras, which goes up to full price after several cycles. After a year of selling only bras, the women must add a second product line that they can obtain from wholesalers to then sell in addition to the undergarment.

After the two years, they’re no longer eligible to sell the bras, but they have that additional product that they can continue to sell. “They know how to sell in the local market,” he explains. The idea is to leave them prepared to build a life after exiting the program.

The bras are collected in a variety of ways. The group has drop-off sites around the country. American Eagle’s Aerie brand also runs a drop-off site, with any donors receiving 15 percent off the purchase of a new bra. And some bras simply get sent in via the mail.

They all come to Chesterton, chosen as the site because its pastor is on the board of directors at Free the Girls and the church is housed in a former warehouse. It was the perfect location from which to operate such an enormous endeavor.

Once a month or so, volunteers such as the Marquette kids and the others there Saturday are brought in to spend a few hours sorting and packing the donations that came in for shipment to the three countries.

“We’re just asking for a couple of hours of time. Yes, we’d love money, but right now we’re just interested in people’s time,” says Pam Gumns, warehouse manager.

“My favorite part of Free the Girls is just seeing what the average person can do just by showing up. If these people didn’t show and pack boxes, then these women couldn’t improve their lives and get out of trafficking. There’s a very tangible collection,” says Terpstra, who spends most of his time in Mozambique.

If you’d like more information about Free the Girls or how to help, visit http://www.freethegirls.org. Gently used bras can be sent to Free The Girls, 1552 Pioneer Trail, Chesterton, IN 46304.

Note: This piece is roughly 15 years old. I wrote it for one of the first issues of Organic Farming Magazine, a publication which no longer exists. I see it as the kind of story I’ll be telling at each of the parishes I visit.

First-time visitors to the small Southeastern Indiana town of Oldenburg must wonder if somewhere along the way, a historically wrong turn has been made. The first thing that catches the eye, before beginning the descent into the tiny village, is the trio of Old World spires that peek over the treetops. Down below beckon the brick streets and sidewalks, their glorious red patterns mocking the dull gray pavement left behind. And a glance at the street signs noting the intersection of Maulbeerfeiger Strasse and Wasserstrasse will render the conclusion a traveler has not just been transported back in time, but across the ocean as well.

In this setting, the farm at the other end of town, the one operated by four Franciscan nuns, seems perfectly natural.

Which, in fact, it is. For more than 150 years, the Sisters of St. Francis have owned and farmed this Franklin County land. Yet it’s been only over the last 15 years that the sisters have found the ideal way to employ the land in a way that embodies the spirit of their patron saint, St. Francis of Assisi.

In the 1990s, Michaela Farm was converted to an organic operation, producing only naturally grown crops and grass-fed livestock. To the sisters, the choice to grow organic foods fits perfectly with their mission to nurture sustainable relationships among land, plants, animals and humans.

“It has to do with care for the earth and a kinship with all of creation,” Sister Ann Marie Quinn said.

That care is being tackled on several fronts at the farm. Besides traditional food production, the sisters also strive to educate the community on environmental issues and practices that can be implemented at home.

Their work also includes fostering spirituality through communing with the natural environment.

Each of the sisters working at Michaela Farm has a specific responsibility toward meeting that mission. Sister Ann Marie develops educational and spiritual programs; Sister Marie Nett tends the gardens; Sister Carolyn Hoff oversees the grounds and buildings; and retired Sister Claire Whelan manages the farm’s Share The Bounty program.

All of these women were employed in Catholic schools throughout Central and Southeastern Indiana and Southwestern Ohio before opting for a life on the farm. To Sister Carolyn, the decision was easy. “I am a city girl, but my heart is here. I’ve always loved working outside,” she said.

The Oldenburg Franciscans were founded in 1851. Three years later the order was given its first 40 acres of farmland. The sister for whom the farm is named, Michaela Lindemann, was the land’s first caretaker.

The farm grew steadily through the years, eventually reaching 500 acres of grounds on the eastern edge of Oldenburg.

Through most of the first 125 years, the land was tended by area farmers. But that practice gradually slowed—the apple orchard was sold, the dairy cow operation phased out—until the mid-1980s, when the entire farm operation was shuttered.

At that point, the sisters contacted Rev. Al Fritsch to perform an audit of the land. It was Father Fritsch who proposed turning the land into an organic farm, one that would become an “educational, environmental and spiritual center,” said Sister Carolyn.

Michaela Farm today encompasses 300 acres, with 100 acres devoted to woodlands, 100 to pastures and gardens, and 100 more to fallow grounds and buildings.

The buildings include the enormous brick barn, the largest all-brick farm building in Indiana, and possibly the country, Sister Carolyn said. The L-shaped building, approaching its 100th birthday, is more than 13,000 square feet. A second barn houses three late-model tractors, one of the only concessions to the 21st century available on the grounds. You will find no half-empty bags of fertilizer here—it’s composting all the way.

Visitors to the farm are most attracted to the Labyrinth, the Old English herb garden filled with aromatic and culinary herbs. Standing sentry at the center of the garden is a statue of St. Fiacre, patron saint of gardeners.

Four vegetable gardens are tended by Sister Marie, who grows a variety of plants. Asparagus, rhubarb and lettuce were ready to be harvested in late May, while strawberry picking season, a favorite for the retired nuns living in the nearby Motherhouse, was just around the corner.

The sisters also raise beefalo, a beast that’s three-eighths bison and five-eighths cow. Beefalo require less food than a traditional beef cow, while producing a leaner, healthier meat, Sister Carolyn said.

Much of the food grown and produced here goes directly to the Motherhouse, the retirement center that houses 125 nuns. Other food is sold to the community or packaged as part of the sisters’ “Share the Bounty” program.

Looking forward, Sister Ann Marie hopes to supply a greater percentage of the food for the Motherhouse (it currently provides about 20 percent of the center’s food supply), plus more to the community at large. To that end, the sisters helped launch a community-wide Supported Agriculture Program, “networking with other local farmers that have a similar vision,” she said.

Objectives include the completion of a local green market, where other organic farmers in the area can peddle their products and make consumers “aware of what practices are used and become more conscious of where food is coming from,” Sister Ann Marie said. Additionally, the sisters are leading the effort to form an organic cooperative, a “local avenue for wholesaling and retailing foods.”

In years past, the sisters employed several lay people to assist with the farm’s operations. But budget constraints demanded the release of most of the hired help, with only two recent high school graduates employed this past summer.

To Batesville’s Brady Hornberger, work at Michaela Farm simply offers a steady paycheck and the opportunity to remain outdoors.

But for Lindsey Jackson of Milan, the farm’s mission dovetails perfectly with hers.

Jackson wants to attend the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism in Boulder, Colo., so a stint at Michaela Farm is the perfect kind of resumé filler.

“I’m interested in natural healing, so I figured this would be an awesome experience,” Jackson said while hacking away at weeds with a foot-long sickle. “I try to eat as organic as possible— a lot of water, definitely no pop and no caffeine except the herbal teas I make.

“What’s better than stuff that comes from the earth?” she asked.

You will find no affirmative answer to that question from her employers, who are committed to preserving and growing Michaela Farm in its natural state. By doing so, Sister Ann Marie says, they “honor farming as a profession that brings life to the whole community.”

Obviously, the highlights of my year-long trip will be the Sunday Mass attendance in a new church each weekend. And I won’t just be attending Mass, but spending time that entire weekend with the subjects and the church community, to the extent they’ll have me.

But those aren’t the only parishioners I’ll be meeting.

My plan is to embark on four 10- or 12-week trips. I’ll probably start off in the Southwest in winter, visit the Northeast in spring, the Northwest in summer and the Southeast in the fall. Of course, it doesn’t take 7 days to travel from Maine to New Hampshire or even from Montana to Idaho. That still leaves a lot of time to kill.

And I hope to have a way of filling that time. I’ll contact the dioceses I’ll be traveling through to learn what parish events will be taking place during the week. Events such as CYO games, BINGO, pot luck dinners or volunteer work – your typical life in a Catholic parish. And I’ll just drop in to take part. Ultimately, I’ll be fully immersing myself in Catholic life over the course of the year.

So as I winnow the suggestions for parish visits (and I’ve gotten some really intriguing ones already), some of the ones that don’t make the weekend cut may still get a dose of me during the weekend. I’ll leave that to them to decide if that’s a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I not only welcome comments, I cherish them. If you have any ideas, thoughts, suggestions or criticisms of the project, please submit them at the bottom of any post, or send me an email at 52Masses@gmail.com. I want to engage as many readers as possible throughout this process. I can be found on Twitter at @52Masses.

Update: There is now a 52Masses Facebook page.

 

Thanks,
Daniel Markham

The shot on the front page of the site was taken at St. Ann of the Dunes, a small parish in Beverly Shores, Indiana. It’s also the parish that kicked off this project. I hope you’re ready for a very circuitous explanation.

First things first. St. Ann is a wonderful little church tucked into the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore***, itself an outstanding slice of the National Park System that encompasses the south shore of Lake Michigan in Northwest Indiana and some areas inland. If you haven’t been there before, it’s worth a visit. As for the church, it’s a parish built by Lithuanian immigrants to the region, which is where our story gets started.

My oldest son Ian has long been interested in the world beyond the United States, and one of his hobbies has been attending foreign-language services. I’ve gone with him on a few occasions, taking in a Hungarian Mass in East Chicago, Ind., a French Mass in someone’s living room in Washington, D.C., and a Lebanese Catholic Mass, delivered in Arabic, in Leamington, Ontario. And on the third Sunday of each month, St. Ann of the Dunes hosts just such a service, conducting Mass in Lithuanian. Ian and I attended it a few years back, though neither of us spoke a word of Lithuanian at the time (given the amount of time he’s spent in the Baltics since then, I’m sure by now he’d be able to exchange pleasantries when he finds himself in Vilnius).

Fast forward a few years to 2016. I was returning from Michigan City, Indiana, to my hometown in Portage after dropping my youngest son off at soccer practice. Cormac was entering his freshman year at Marquette Catholic. That was a change, as Ian had graduated from Andrean and his sister Kiera was entering her senior year there. Like Marquette, Andrean is a Catholic High School in Merrillville, just in the opposite direction.

Until Cormac started school there, I had few reasons to travel that way. So as I was coming home from practice that day, I was reminded of the service Ian and I had attended at St. Ann. I thought it might make a neat experience to expand on my visit there by attending Mass in each of the parishes in our diocese.

Almost as soon as that thought entered my mind, I hit upon a new one. “No, I should attend Mass in all 50 states. Plus Washington, D.C. And Puerto Rico,” I thought (well, probably said out loud, as I was instantly excited about the prospect). By the end of the week, I had a pretty firm outline of what the book would be.

And if you were wondering why there was such a long delay between when the inspiration struck and when I planned to leave, it again goes back to my youngest son. I had no intention of spending so much time on the road while he was still in high school. So I targeted 2021, the year after he graduates.

***UPDATE***

Since this blog post was written, there’s been a development. With the signing of the bill to fund the government in early February, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore officially became the Indiana Dunes National Park, making it the 61st park in the system and the first in Indiana. I don’t know if there’s another Catholic Church in a National Park, though I suppose that’s something I’ll find out in 2021.