The Feast of St. Dominic is just around the corner (August 8) but we start celebrating early here in Perú. They used to celebrate for a week, but now have cut it down to a Triduum (the three days before the feast). Each night there is a presentation on some topic of interest to Dominicans followed by Mass and general merriment.
The first night was on "communication" so I was asked to do a presentation on the internet, "What is it, what can it do, why should we care?" To do this successfully, we needed get online and let everyone experience the internet. Lacking fifty computers and high speed access, we decided to try something almost as impossible - to run a telephone wire to the room and rent a projector for the computer screen. The telephone came from a brothers room about 50 yards away, across the roof and down through a skylight. The projector was loaned to us by the rural roads commission who are using the room on Saturday for their own meeting.
The real miracle is that this all worked - the phone the internet and the projector, all at once. My mother and Bob Knickerbocker even got on line for a short Chat during the presentation. Tomás Kraft and Juan Anguerry, two other dominicans, helped me with the presentation. In the photo to the left you can see Tomás speaking while I run the computer. Behind Tomás is a statue of St. Martin de Porres and to his right you can see some of the Chapter Room furnishings. The room has hand carved wood below and huge paintings of the life of St. Thomas Aquinas above. The big colorful blob behind me is the screen for the projector.
Most Rev. Guido Breña OP, Bishop of Ica, presided at mass that evening. (Bishop Guido is a dominican.)
Brother Luis Galindo OP played the guitar (quite well I might add)
and we all sang.