Christine and I set up a table at the last Food Truck Mondays event of the summer. While the Food Trucks draw much fewer people than the Concerts, the conversations have always been richer because people are more willing to linger, since they aren't focused on finding a seat at the concert. This week was no exception.

God routinely sends us one or more people who convey to me: "This is why you were here tonight. This is who I sent you here for." The first was a young 20 something man of Hispanic origins named Arizona. He was baptized Catholic, but his family left the Church when he was young, so he had never been confirmed. He hadn't gone to any kind of church consistently since. We shared the Gospel with him through the rosary. Telling him that the Church still regarded him as a Catholic by virtue of His baptism and that this sacrament left an indelible mark on his soul resonated with him. I added, though, a serious warning: that by walking away from the Church and not seeking to return to receive sacramental graces to have his sins forgiven, he was putting his soul at risk of damnation. In saying something that may be perceived as "harsh" in our culture, I had to trust the Spirit for the grace to enable me to "speak the truth in love." He left saying that he was very happy that we had this encounter and that the conversation was meaningful to him. In our strategy of "listening and befriending," this is the response we hope for, even though we may speak hard truths.

Another visit that encouraged me was from a person I recognized at a former student of mine in the IB program at Douglas Co. High School, named Sydney (graduated 8 years ago). After catching me up on her life, she shared that while baptized as a child, she was atheist/agnostic in high school. Since graduating though, she had refound God, was rebaptized, and joined a local evangelical church. I was delighted to hear about her restoration to the faith! It sounded, though, that the kind of discontent that often leads evangelicals to consider Catholicism had been brewing in her soul. She asked me "What's the deal with the hierarchy and the pope? Why do we need all of that?"

I started with the tenet the New Testament makes clear that the Church is God's main provision for the transmission of the content of the Faith throughout the generations and that Peter is the leader of the leaders of the Church. She agreed with this. Then I explained how as a practical matter, there has to be a continuous authority structure to preserve this knowledge in an institution, and that for an institution to be truly global, it needed a visible head. I was able to use concepts I taught her in the IB Theory of Knolwedge course to make this understandable. And it resonance with an experience she just had with joining some kind of house church movement and then leaving it when it became chaotic due to a weak leadership structure. She thanked me that "no one had ever explained that to her so clearly before" and asked about Mass times!

In highlighting these conversations, it is not that the other encounters with people who receive a rosary are not significant. We are confident that the seeds planted in even a brief exchange with someone who receives this gift, but who doesn't want to talk more, may bear fruit later. And there are always many of those!
And there is value by being a consistent presence in the community in promoting a positive image of our local parish church. We got a glimpse of this when one older woman declined a rosary politely because she had already gotten one on the way to a concert a few weeks before!

Please pray for these seeds to grow and specifically for Arizona and Sydney.

There are no pictures in this post, because I often forget to take them because I am too preoccupied.  So when you out with me, please try to remember to take some pictures yourself that we can use to promote our ministry.