A few weeks ago Jo came home with a binder from school. Inside we found "Motor Teresa" (pictured above with Jo), information about the parish's Salt & Light program, along with pictures and reflections from other 5k families.
Salt and Light is part of the school parish's faith formation which encourages families to embark on community service projects. The projects promote Catholic Stewardship, or living out a commitment to be Christ-centered rather than self-centered.
One of the service projects suggested in the binder was: attend mass at a parish with a different ethnic background than our own. Motor Teresa would come with us as we learned how children in another community praise and worship.
Since Uncle Adam has special ties to St. Patrick's and Our Lady of Guadalupe parishes in the Walker's Point neighborhood of Milwaukee (he was their youth minister a few years back), we emailed him. Uncle Adam suggested we attend one of the Spanish language masses with a children's mandolin choir. We planned to attend the Sunday evening mass at St. Patrick's on New Year's Day.
Sunday evening we picked up Uncle Adam on our way downtown. The five of us slipped into a pew near the back of church, among several other families with young children. Fr. Jose Moreno presided over the mass in Spanish and an enthusiastic children's choir led the congregation in song.
Jo could hear the children playing maracas, tambourine, guitar and keyboard. CoCo said she wanted to sing with "the little ones up front." Matt joined in reciting some of the prayers in Spanish, remembering them from his days in the Dominican Republic.
After mass we talked about the decorations inside the church. Jo noticed the designs painted on the ceiling. We explained that a long time ago immigrants from Ireland lived in this neighborhood. They named the church St. Patrick and decorated it with Irish designs. Now, immigrants from Mexico and Puerto Rico live in the neighborhood. These people speak Spanish, which is why the Sunday evening mass is in Spanish.
Since we were in the neighborhood, we made a stop at El Rey supermarket. Because January 1st is the Feast of Mary, the bakery didn't make any churros. Still, we had fun picking out fresh apples, strawberries, jicama, tortillas, pineapple juice and cream of coconut. Uncle Adam explained to the girls about veladoras, the special prayer candles with pictures of Jesus, Mary and saints.
Monday morning we sat at the kitchen table to write up a report about our experience to add to the Motor Teresa binder. Jo recounted going to mass with Uncle Adam, hearing people speak in Spanish, talking to Fr. Jose after mass and seeing the Irish designs painted inside the church. Both girls said they want to go back to St. Patrick's. Only this time, they want to sit up front near the children's choir.
