The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-11-18

lIldCCeSSlDle are SpUlIuhAly otdIN NSO.
 The "follow-up' work has been aided in very splendid manner by the "Our Sunday Visitor" press which has given us 50 free copies each week of this fine Catholic weekly. These are taken very quick ly by the farm people who are al- ways on the alert for good reading material. We have been able through the cooperation of "Our Sunday Visitor" to give out up to the present about hundred free subscriptions to the paper.
 What type of services do we hold? While we are working outside, and this means real work setting up benches, getting our loudspeakers oI, top of our trailer-chapel, letting down the speaking platform, setting up equipment for sound movies we have a more difficult time. The sermon and preaching becomes less important than the mechanical equipment which must be in perfect condition. Doing mission work with a trailer chapel has been designated as muscular Christianity" and I'm coming to believe there is much truth in the statement. We won't have to worry about waist line'' for two reasons. the first have al- ready stated and the second fol- lows. We have little time to pre- pare meals because of the large number of visitors. Schol begins here at 8 o'clock in the morning and continues to 3:30 but the children are at the door of the trailer at 6:30 and don't leave until about five in the evening. We consider our selves fortunate when we get one good meal a day. We have been solving the problem by sending one of the missionaries back to head quarters or to a neighboring home, there are no restaurants out here, for one meal and the other for an- other meal so that both get one good meal day, live on that, and enjoy it.
 Often we are invited out to din- ner with real fried chicken and all the southern "fixins." Just a few nights ago both of us were having dinner and I was having a grand time with the biscuits which were very good. At the conclusion of the meal the host remarked that they had procured white bread for that darn Yankee and he had eaten up all of the biscuits.
 Each night our services start as soon as 1t gets dark, farm work is over then, with twenty minutes of music from our public address system or from portable phono- graph. Hymns and southern melo- dies make up the musical program. Then we have the Question Box program, during which time we an- swer questions concerning the doc trines and teachings of the church, then follows the sermon. Before the sermon and after the Sound Mo- ton Picture "The King of Kings which follows the sermon the whole congregation recites the Our Fath- CT, the Hail Mary, and some of the Psalms which we have printed on what they term our prayer sheet"
 During the past week we had fine crowds attending ia the school house at Capitol Hill. The last night saw a few more than six hun- dred in the congregation. One night, explaining the Rosary at the request of a queSticner, the mis- sionary offered to give the interest ed party a Rosary. On this night and the one following we gave out over hundred rosaries. The pco- pie likened the Is mysteries to Il Motion Picture of the Bible" and a story of "The Life of Jesus" We had to explain more fully each night how to say 1t. One of the preachers present said it was the most beautiful devotion of which he had ever heard and wanted to know all about 1t so that he could ex- plain 1t to his congregation in an . other part of the county. On Sat- urday one of the ministers--a Naza- rene preacher-asked us where we should be the next week. We told him. T am preaching there tolnor- row." he said, "and I'll tell all of my congregation to attend your services"
 The questions which have been asked show a deep and sincere iu- terest in religion. There Is no heckling, no smart" questions, none of the stock objections" to church teaching. The questions deal chief ly with the Bible, the Catholic doc- Urine of Purgatory which they find most consoling, and with the prob lem of sin. Preachers have told them that smoking. chewing, dane. ing, using lip-stick Is sinful and will cast them down into hell. They think that unreasonable and are very much pleased when we make the distinction between sins and in- perfections and then divide sin into Mortal and Venial. One old farm- CT commented That preacher is giving us a sensible religion"
 Tn one place we found names which indicated that prior to the war between the states the Irish Catholics had come in and settled through in the last 75 or 30 years the faith has died out because of neglect. Names like Kennedy, Fitz- gerald. Quinn. Moran. Barry, Moore and Gallagher indicate Catholic an. cestry but today these fine people are without the faith of their fath- CTS. One group, the Kennedy fam fly has been most kind. Each Wednesday night we have a Bible Glass there. with 55 In attendance last time; on Sunday we had Mass iI1 the big room before an open fire place for twenty-one nonCatholics and one Catholic.
 { These people in the hills and from the cotton fields are real Anericans.