{"id":2336,"date":"2019-11-25T13:14:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T18:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/?p=2336"},"modified":"2021-01-26T13:36:29","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T18:36:29","slug":"into-the-archives-the-impossible-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/into-the-archives-the-impossible-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Archives: The Impossible Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Father Joe Bragotti, mccj<\/em><\/p>\n

Remember the days when gas was only 20 cents a gallon and they even gave you a free glass if you \u201cfilled her up?\u201d With an oil change you could get a free glazed water pitcher. Those were my traveling days and, after a couple of years we didn\u2019t know to whom to give them anymore \u2013 we had so many.<\/p>\n

Then there were the green stamps. You brought them home from A&P, licked to fit in the stamp booklet, then you could start dreaming of what you could get. There was a catalog to help you dream. You could get a baseball mitt, a toaster, some other gadget you always wanted to have. These were rather simple dreams, easy to satisfy, if you bought enough groceries every week.<\/p>\n

But there were also a few people in our United States of America who had bigger dreams \u2013 much, much bigger dreams. One of them was a transplanted Canadian by the name of Jerry Charbonneau, a Comboni Brother, stationed at the Native American mission of San Antonio de Pala, Diocese of San Diego, California.<\/p>\n

The Comboni Missionaries had inherited a shapeless pile of mud that used to be an outstation of San Luis Rey Mission and had restored it to its original splendor. Then they had opened a school and had given it to the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to run. Things looked good and tourists were again coming to visit the renovated old mission.<\/p>\n

There was just one little problem. Some of the school kids had to walk a long way to get to school and others, yet lived too far to even think of going. They needed a school bus.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Bro. Jerry came up with the preposterous idea that he would buy a school bus with green stamps. He advertised, he begged, he wrote, he made phone calls and he also put up with a lot of ribbing. It was a tough go.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, though, the idea struck a lot of people as being very original. It made the news. Bro. Jerry was a celebrity. And people from all over the country started sending him their green stamps booklets. By Christmas, San Antonio de Pala Mission School had a brand new yellow school bus with all the bells and whistles such conveyances need to have.<\/p>\n

Moral of the story? Aim high and never look down. Thanks Bro. Jerry!<\/p>\n

Joseph Bragotti, mccj<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Father Joe Bragotti, mccj Remember the days when gas was only 20 cents a gallon and they even gave you a free glass if you \u201cfilled her up?\u201d With […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1],"tags":[316,31,49],"class_list":["post-2336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-uncategorized","tag-archives","tag-comboni","tag-mission"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Bus.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combonimissionaries.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}