Ann Arbor, MI
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The following report comes to us from team leader Joe with our University of Michigan team in Ann Arbor, MI:
The Ann Arbor Art Fair is one of the largest annual events in the state of Michigan, drawing an estimated half million souls over three days in July. For the past several years, our team has staffed a “Marian Booth” in the nonprofit section of the fair that offers free rosaries, miraculous medals, and Catholic literature to the crowds passing by. This initiative was started in the late 1990s (“before street evangelization was cool,” as we like to joke) by the late Dr. Wally Niemann, a retired dentist who organized the booth for decades before turning it over to our team at the age of 91.
We began the Art Fair with 1,250 rosaries and 500 miraculous medals. By the end of the fair, our rosary racks were completely bare and not a single miraculous medal remained. Praise God! We also collected six pages of names for our prayer list and handed out over 300 copies of SPSE’s newest tract “Am I Saved?” (a short catechetical pamphlet on the Catholic doctrine of grace and how to get to Heaven).
Among the countless conversations we had throughout the event, a few stood out. One college student, Daniel, identified himself as Anglican, but it soon became clear that he was extremely well-versed in Catholicism, avidly reading the Church Fathers, studying the ecumenical councils, and even attending the Latin Mass. Let us pray that, with the help of God’s grace and continued study, this young man discovers what St. John Henry Newman did nearly two hundred years ago: “To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant”…or anything other than Catholic!
Praised be Jesus Christ!