By Katharine Grubb

At Christmastime in years past, I’ve received the World Vision catalog in the mail. And unlike the other catalogs, like American Girl, there’s a part of me that would be moved. World Vision’s catalog is filled with gifts to give that could save lives, that could combat world hunger, that could lift a family out of poverty, like a goat. In years past, I would sigh, put the catalog in the recycling bin and pray that someday my family would be able to do something bigger for the world.  Christmas, I would reason to myself, was stressful enough. I’ll get to it one day.

Today is that one day. We just as many expectations on us as there were last year, but this year, we want to not just pick up the World Vision catalog, but do something with it. This year, my family and I want to buy goats.

This year, my family and I want to buy 100 goats.

This idea came to us in a whirlwind. We were given a little money to do good with and we thought, yes! Goats from World Vision! But that seemed too easy, and certainly it did help ease our burden for the world a little, but surely there was a way to multiply our  money, or multiply our efforts, so that it wasn’t just one goat bought. Could we get our friends to buy goats too?

So we’re launching a campaign. It’s called 100 Goats.

Our goal is to have 100 Goats bought through World Vision by December 25, 2011. A goat costs $75. As a family, we’re going to have bake sales and do yard work to raise money. But by ourselves,  the best we could hope for is two or three goats. We’d like to invite you, our readers, to consider how you could help us. We know that lots of organizations are asking for help at this time of year and we don’t want to take away from them. But we believe that there are friends of ours who will get excited about this with us. We believe that God will bless those excited people. We believe that nothing is too audacious for God.

Are you excited yet? What you can do:

3) EASY: Tell your friends about 100 Goats. Link back to this blog. Link to the facebook page. Tweet about this. You never know, weirder things than this have gone viral.

4) ALSO EASY: Allow us to guest blog on your website. I’d love to be interviewed. Or better still, interview my kids. Corbin’s making business cards to pass out at church. Miranda’s making bread to sell and raise money. Ariel’s blogging about this. I’ll put the younger two in a video. I’m not above using their cuteness to change the world.

Regardless of how you help, please pray that my kids get a heart for the world, that their compassion for others grows, that they don’t get so wrapped up in the latest video game that they forget what Christmas is really about.

And pray for me, that I don’t get stressed.

–

Katharine Grubb is a successful homeschooling mother of five, bread baker, reluctant dish washer and part-time novelist. She’s also amazing and constantly making me laugh with her posts on Twitter.

I’ve come to know the owners, Larry and Phyllis, over the years, thanks to my employment at our parish and my own interest in stocking up my home with things Catholic.

There’s something about being able to go and touch and browse. Even I, the poster child for shopping on Amazon and avoiding retail outlets (I really do hate to shop), see the value and necessity of the service Catholic bookstores provide.

It’s a risky business. Earlier this year, the other Catholic bookstore in our metro area went out of business. It’s frustrating, if you’re a small business owner, to see how the Big Guys seem to come in and slash prices. I think it’s even more disappointing, though, when you start to see parishes ordering supplies from Amazon because of a perceived convenience or lower price.

I’ve started telling people (loudly, at times) that there are many books on Amazon — Welcome Baby Jesus, for example — that cost NO LESS than they would from your Catholic bookstore. There are behind-the-scenes reasons for this, and I don’t even know them all.

I have been, for years, trying to keep as much of my business as local as I can. It’s not easy: the local grocery doesn’t have exactly what I want sometimes, or they’re out, or the other store has a wait that just infuriates me.

Back when I worked at the local John Deere dealership, one of my bosses always said, “People buy from people.” As I’ve gotten older, and especially now that I have kids and a stricter budget, I see just how right he was.

Without customers, our local Catholic bookstores can’t stay in business. They just can’t. And that hurts all of us. The online retailers provide a service, I agree.

What if that Catholic bookstore wasn’t there? I challenge you, as you plan your Christmas shopping, to purchase at least one thing from your local Catholic retailer. Maybe you’ll spend a bit more, and maybe you’ll go out of your way. We could argue economics, but let’s not (neither of us will win).

Your Catholic retailer provides a service as real as the local pharmacy does. Here in central Ohio, Larry and Phyllis do what they do because they love their faith. They’re not out to fleece anyone, and I have seen them go out of their way to provide service that’s above and beyond. At the Catholic Marketing Network this summer, I met quite a few other Catholic store owners who do it, not for the fortune they’re not making, but because of a passion for their faith and their fellow Catholics.

Let’s show them some support. Let’s speak with our dollars this shopping season and tell them “thank you” for the long hours they work, the many products they carry, and the witness they provide in the marketplace.

UPDATE: As it turns out, we DO have a second Catholic retailer here in central Ohio, Catholica. I haven’t had a chance to visit them (they’re in Westerville), but I plan to at some point. If you’ve been there, I’d love to hear what you think!

If you’re a Catholic writer (or aspiring to be one), be sure to consider this great opportunity:

St. Francis Retreat Center, in collaboration with FAITH Catholic Publishing and Communications and The Catholic Writers Guild, will sponsor Your Word is My Delight, a Catholic writers’ retreat, October 5-9, 2011. Come and delight in God’s word and sacrament, and pray in a beautiful and serene retreat setting.

The retreat’s key presenter is Pat Gohn, Catholic columnist, podcaster and catechist. Other presenters are Father Charles E. Irvin, David Krajewski, Father David Rosenberg, and Father Larry Delaney.

Writers will enjoy three spiritually-enriching days of daily Mass, adoration, the sacrament of reconciliation and many hours of writing time. Talks will explore how God speaks to and encourages writers through Scripture, papal writings and other topics in order to promote faith-filled writing.

Opportunities for networking also will be offered through an informal “book bash and social hour” Wednesday evening and Faith Catholic’s one-on-one “pitch sessions” that give writers the chance to sell their current writing projects.

Cost for the four-day retreat is $450, which includes meals and accommodations. Deadline for registration is September 28. A nonrefundable deposit of $45 is required at registration.

Here’s the schedule of events (link opens a PDF) and here’s the registration. I know I can’t attend this particular writing retreat, but I hope it’s the first of many!

At the Catholic Writers Conference and Catholic Marketing Network trade show last week, the baby made his rounds. I’ll post more pictures later this week at the Catholic Writers Guild blog.

 He was quite a fan of Karina Fabian (and I don’t blame him):

Jerry Webster was a source of ongoing amusement for him, which is attributable in part to the Grandpa Magic that Jerry has:

Ellen Gable Hrkach had a chance to see his “squishy face” in action:

Lisa Mladinich and her daughter (who I have blog-named “Rose”) were favorites through the week, and we were so blessed to room with them:

Lisa Hendey is a big fan of babies, and, as it turns out, so is Jen Minson (right), who made a special trip to have coffee with us (and she brought her two girls, who were utterly delightful):

John Michael Talbot refused to disturb the sleeping baby. His wife, pictured right, loves babies, so I didn’t have to twist hard to have them pose for a picture. (Yes, it was shameless of me. But…isn’t this a great picture? They were really that reflective about it.)

It’s been quite a week: 1,015 miles to the Catholic Marketing Network show and the Catholic Writers Conference Live and hundreds of hugs, pictures, and memories.

I have pictures to share, but I also have the “from the floor” experiences chronicled, a bit, at the Catholic Writers Guild blog this week. I plan to write more about it next week (because there just wasn’t time to live blog all that I wanted to capture and share).

I met so many great people, got so many wonderful ideas, and, best of all, had a road trip with a niece who is every bit as awesome as everyone thought she was. I think, in fact, that she’s my new road trip companion (not that I expect a whole lot of these road trips in my life, what with home life being what it is and should be).

At CatholicMom.com, we kicked off a contest that YOU WILL WANT TO ENTER. There are 59 items and it’s only lasting through August 15. (Bet you know why I chose that date, too, don’t you?)

Now, I have to go clean up the mess known as “the stuff I should have been doing but didn’t” (like an interview with the incredible Brandon Vogt! whose new book is WORTH YOUR TIME! which I failed to schedule and thus failed to share!) and enjoy the interactions with my girls, who, Daddy says, earned some BIG PRIZES for their excellent behavior while I was gone this week.

It starts on Friday evening, July 22, and continues through Sunday, July 24, at Ohio Dominican University. The line-up of speakers is enough to make anyone jump up and down…it’s like a who’s who listing!

I hear registration is still open (the website says space is limited, but I have it on good authority that there’s room left). If you’re in the area, check it out!

I so wish I could attend! If you’ll be there, let me know…I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

A pro-life group that monitors the use of cells from babies victimized by abortions is today highlighting a biotech company, Senomyx, which it says produces artificial flavor enhancers using aborted fetal cell lines to test their products.

[snip]

“The company’s key flavor programs focus on the discovery and development of savory, sweet and salt flavor ingredients that are intended to allow for the reduction of MSG, sugar and salt in food and beverage products,” the Senomyx web site says. “Using isolated human taste receptors, we created proprietary taste receptor-based assay systems that provide a biochemical or electronic readout when a flavor ingredient interacts with the receptor.”

Vinnedge says a boycott is important because the collaborating companies provide Senomyx with research and development funding plus royalties on sales of products using their flavor ingredients.

“What they don’t tell the public is that they are using HEK 293 – human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors,” she said. “They could have easily chosen animal, insect, or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors.”

I found out about this thanks to Julie at Happy Catholic, who also compiled a brands cheat sheet. And then Christine conveniently linked to the updates and contact information for each of the companies still involved (PepsiCo and Kraft) in using human embryonic kidney cells for food testing.

I’m not happy about this on many levels. For one thing, this really changes my purchasing habits. For another…SERIOUSLY? USING HUMAN EMBRYONIC CELLS? Supporting abortion’s “byproducts” in this way can NEVER be okay. Never ever ever. Even if it means we can’t eat the foods we’re used to and I have to buck up and do some baking.

I have contacted PepsiCo and Kraft and I hope you will, too. As my husband pointed out in response to my (ongoing, rather loud) ranting about this, boycotting without communicating to the companies doesn’t do any good.

You can listen live here. I’ll link up once the archive is up, but the archive listing is here.

(This week has been even crazier than I expected on Monday, so I have my fingers crossed…maybe I will sound coherent. Or maybe…not.)

I remember hearing, on an interview on the Catholics Next Door podcast edition, that it would be important to remember Haiti after the hubbub died down. The bishop they were talking to, in fact, mentioned the one year mark. “Remember Haiti next year,” he said. “They’ll still need help.”

I put a little flag in my mind to include something in the parish bulletin, but I forgot. Thanks to the bulletin announcements from the Diocesan Office of Social Concerns, we did have something in our bulletin, though.

It’s so easy to forget after the drama’s over. We all have busy lives, other concerns, new emergencies that grab our attention.

Heidi Jury, who works for Chalice, contacted me a while back about the continuing needs in Haiti. She asked me to post on Facebook about it, but I thought it warranted more attention than that.

Over at Spirit Singing Soul, Heidi writes:

“It’s the women I remember mostly. After ten years, I still vividly see the eyes of two women at a medical clinic in Haiti holding their babies who were so sick from malnutrition. Your sponsorship helps the children you sponsor but sometimes it is their mothers that feel it the most.” – Fr Patrick Cosgrove

Fifteen years ago, Fr Patrick Cosgrove, the president of Chalice, was watching a sponsorship program on television. As he went to phone them to sponsor a child, he stopped and prayed, “Lord, what I want to do is sponsor a child in the Catholic church.” Two weeks later the phone rang with an opportunity to work with a Catholic sponsorship program named CFCA. Fr Pat worked on the board until he started working on his own in 1996 in the basement of a church rectory. The first year, Chalice (then called Christian Childcare International) sponsored less than 500 children. This year, Chalice helped over 42,000 children and aging and was ranked #1 in the International Aid Category in Moneysense Magazine.

This January, Chalice is remembering the Earthquake that affected Haiti on January 12, 2010.  We continue to remember the people of Haiti and pray for God’s continued blessings and protection over them.

There’s an embedded video and more information there. I’ll be joining them in prayer, and I hope you will too.

And, because I’m all for sharing what’s on my mind this week, here’s a bonus (which has nothing to do with the presentation I’m going to give…or does it?):

(Well, I can promise not to sing. And this has more to do with the writing I’m doing this week than my CNMC presentation. I promise.)

So…you comin’ to Boston? Huh? Are ya?