Marian Days

Carthage, Missouri, to the casual eye, looks like a quaint city adorned with beautiful houses from the late 19th Century. One might use words like picturesque in order to describe it.

However, in the midst of this community, is another community, that coexists with Carthage but brings its own values, insight and culture. It is a surprising but pleasing contrast.

It is called the Congregation of the Mother Redemtrix and is in essence a Catholic Vietnamese Monastery. Once a year the Congregation of the Mother Redemptrix hosts a religious holy convocation in which Vietnamese families from across the nation congregate to give thanks for their safe delivery from Vietnam and for care of God. This gathering of Vietnamese for the week of celebration have grown from several thousand to as high as sixty thousand which is quite a group of people for a town with a population slightly in excess of ten thousand.

The hotels in Carthage and Joplin are full. The stores here locally plan for this convocation. Wal-Mart is stocked with cots, folding chairs and ice. It is like having a second Christmas for the local merchants.

The visitors are generally well behaved and use this as an opportunity to thank God and to see their friends and relatives. It is like having a gigantic nation wide family reunion once a year.

HarleyDad took some pictures of the preparations for this once a year visitation and they are posted above.

They call it Marian Days and thanks is given to the Virgin Mary. (And rest assured, HarleyDad is not getting into a theological discussion here.)

The point is with 60,000 visitors it behooves us all to be good neighbors.

HarleyDad