I have been staying at Sacred Heart Church in Red Cloud since July 7th, using the parish as a home base and each weekend driving to smaller towns within 25-50 miles. Now this weekend I actually spoke at the Red Cloud parish. The Saturday evening liturgy is 6:00 PM, and it is the larger of the two masses at the parish each weekend.
The talk on Maryknoll work in Cambodia was well received. I am more fortunate than some of the other Maryknollers giving talks in U.S. parishes because Cambodia is such an interesting case. It is easy to make a strong appeal to people based on the tragic situation there.
The roof of the church is finally finished now. The workmen put the finishing touches on it the beginning of last week.
Naponee
This morning I left Red Cloud at 6:20 AM for the 40 mile drive to Naponee, to the west. On the way I was thinking that I didn't have a key to the church and was hoping a church trustee would be there to open up for me. And Jake Wohleb and his wife showed up around 7:15 AM to let me in. The Wohlebs are one of the mainstays of this small church, immigrants many years ago from Switzerland near the German border.
There were fifteen people present for the mass in the little church which could probably seat 75 if all the pews were filled. I brought water and wine with me but everything else is kept in the little sacristy, including vestments made in Macau (the Portuguese colony where I used to have mass for the deaf people when I was in Hong Kong) and which were bought by the United States Extension Society, a Catholic mission group focusing on areas of the U.S. where there is a small Catholic presence.
I couldn't stay and talk after the 7:30 AM mass because I still had a 9:30 AM mass 40 miles away back in Red Cloud, so Mr. Wohleb waited while I gathered my vestment and Maryknoll materials, and then locked up behind me as I headed back to highway U.S. 136 East.
Red Cloud
After the 9:30 AM mass back at Red Cloud, a group of parishioners had put together coffee and rolls in the parish social hall, and all were invited to the hall to visit and to look at the exhibits I had set up there with things I brought from Cambodia. I had some wood carvings, khramas (cotton pieces like scarfs), books, pictures, and other objects; and I used my laptop and LCD projector to illustrate how to put on the classical dance costumes that I had arrayed on the table. A surprisingly large number of people came to the hall.