RSVP and Registry

After a week of clipping, folding, copying and pasting we are finally done! Invitations are in the mail and on their way to your door.

RSVP
You will notice that there aren't reply cards. We wanted to cut down on the postage and the paperwaste by asking everyone to RSVP electronically. You can do that by clicking the link to the right under RSVP. This will take you to our webpage on the knot which can also be found here. Please RSVP by December 1.

Also, just a reminder from our save-the-dates that the 14th is a Sunday. Monday is MLK Jr's birthday weekend and we wanted to give people more time to travel without taking off work.

Registry
We registered at a few places but one is a little unusual. There were a lot of stores where we wanted to register that didn't have a system to do so. So we found something called myregistry.com which let's us register for anything. We take a picture or find a gift on-line and we can add a page onto our registry. Click on the box marked "buy gift" and it will take you to the website or information where the gift can be purchased. The gifts are arranged by price.

Some gifts, like our Calphalon pans or homebrew kit can be found anywhere so we're happy to get them from the cheapest place they can be found. Other things we're happy to get in any form -- like a wooden salad bowl. Please consider a local artist or store. And be sure to mark that you bought the gift so we don't get two!

That's the story. Pretty soon we'll be updating this page with hotel information and directions to the church so keep checking back!

Quick References
Nearest airport: Dulles (IAD)
Second closest: Regan-National
Probably too far away airport: Baltimore-Washington
City of the wedding: Fairfax, VA
Bixler's city: Manassas, VA
Our registrys: myregistry.com, Ten Thousand Villages, Sur La Table, Gaiam

Rural Plunge

This past week I was in Yakima Valley, WA with ten students on the Rural Plunge. It's fall break at UP. Every year Volunteer Services sponsors an alternative break trip to learn about farmworker communities. It was an eye-opening experience into the world of those who grow, pick and pack our food. We met families who had crossed the border from Mexico, making their way up the coast and going from season to season picking crops. We volunteered at Head Start, taught an ESL class, went to WA Apples packing plant, picked for a day at Inaba Farms and went to a farmworkers rights radio station.

We also met a lot of folks who were farmworker rights activists. One was Tomas Villanueva who is running for state senator. We went to a forum he spoke at called "Our Neighbors on the Edge" sponsored by the churches of Toppenish. We learned about the crises in health care and education for undocumented workers in the Valley and we heard from all the candidates for state legislature from that district.

All the challengers were brown (either American Indian or Hispanic) and all the incumbents were white farm owners. It was a strange thing to see and we were especially disturbed by how clueless the farm owners were about the issues impacting workers' lives. A few days after this we met with Tomas to hear his story: living in the labor camps in the 60s, earning his GED by night, dropping out of college to work with Cesar Chavez. It was a moving story. At the end Tomas told us that many of the whites in the Valley didn't want to support him because they assumed he was only representing the workers. He smiled a little and looked at each of us. "I am not a racist," he said, "but I do hate injustice."

For one of our nightly reflections I read the sections from the last chapter of Lamentations. This trip may have been the first time these words have a face.

We must pay for the water we drink;
the wood we get must be bought.
With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven;
we are weary, we are given no rest.


Our skin is black as an oven
from the scorching heat of famine.
Young men are compelled to grind,
and boys stagger under loads of wood.
The old men have left the city gate,
the young men their music.
The joy of our hearts has ceased;
our dancing has been turned to mourning.

But you, O Lord, reign for ever;
your throne endures to all generations.

I was amazed by how many people wanted to go back to Mexico but couldn't, how many people missed their families and felt isolated from their communities by language and culture.

But we also had a lot of fun being there. We had an interesting group: three international students (No. Ireland, Mexico and China), all majors and years. My student leader, Michelle, was awesome and we were able to laught together and be changed by what we saw.

They were a good group and I continue to pray that a few of them feel the call of God on their lives to be agents of change for people in the Valley.



Michelle wondering why our apples from the farm look so different than the waxy cardboard apples from Washington Apples.



My little pumpkin heads at Inaba Farms.



Val and Joe setting up for the Epic Head Start "Healthy Me" fair that we staffed.



Katie with our celebration pinata.



Jacob with bunnies. Sweet.

New Columbia

This week Jacob and I were able to do a real couple thing -- we went on a date with some friends! Stacey and Josh Noems work in Campus Ministry at UP. They are Notre Dame folks who moved out here after their time with Jesuit Volunteer Corps. We had dinner togther in the school caf with their two kids, baby Simon and five year old Oscar. It was the "Eat Local Challenge" at UP where everything served comes from within 150 miles of the schools. It was quite a feast and a real testimony to the abundance we can glean so close to home.

We also got to visit their home, something I've been wanting to do for a while. The Noems live in a place called New Columbia. It used to be Columbia Villa, one of the worst ghettos in the city. Ambulances and pizza drivers refused to go into the neigborhood. It was dotted with meth houses and the violence was never ending.

A few years ago the Housing Authority emptied the whole place out and ripped out every apartment. Within a year the area was transformed into a mixed income housing experiment. There are houses, apartments and townhouses, lots of green space, a community education center, a school for learning trades and a brand new elementary school called Rosa Parks.

The housing comes in three levels -- straight rent/mortgage, affordable housing and section 8. All the sudden there are young professionals living beside single mothers who live beside multi-generation immigrant families. It is a truly remarkable scene. It's really transforming North Portland by getting people to live next to each other, the anti-gentrification.

Jacob and I were so impressed by the neighborhood and to hear about how so many people are being transformed simply by living beside one another. It's certainly a place we could see ourselves living in a few years.