September 2012 Coffee News

-How Guillermo met Cathy
-2012 Coffee Shipment has Arrived
-School Fundraisers

We will be doing our September coffee deliveries on September 14, which just happens to be our Wedding Anniversary!! 21 years ago, we said our vows to each other in English and Spanish in the United Methodist Church in Brookings SD where Cathy's parents were then serving as pastors. It was a relatively small gathering, since no one from Guillermo's family was able to get to the US and many of our friends lived far away. But it was a joyous event that served as a strong beginning for our life together. Below we reflect on what marriage means to us and share the story of how we met. We also celebrate the safe arrival of our 2012 coffee shipment and the beginning of school and with it coffee fundraisers. 

How Guillermo met Cathy
The story goes like this: On Super Bowl Sunday, January 1990, Cathy was out mowing the lawn at her small house in Lake Worth, Florida where she was working as a volunteer with the US-2 program of the United Methodist Church after graduating from college. Her second hand mower stopped working. And Guillermo, who had recently arrived from Honduras to live with his aunt next door, gallantly jumped over the fence to help get it started. Later that day, Guillermo got up the courage to ask Cathy out and she was silly enough to say yes. And, as Cathy's dad likes to say, Guillermo has been mowing her lawn ever since!

In some ways our marriage is rather unconventional. We didn't speak each other's languages at first, passing a dictionary back and forth at our first dates. Our families live far apart in very different geographic areas (see our June newsletter where we compare the prairies of South Dakota to the Rain Forests of Honduras). Guillermo grew up Catholic, Cathy is Protestant. Not too many decades ago our religious and ethnic backgrounds alone would have been enough to make our marriage culturally prohibited. Up until the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage, a marriage like ours would even have been illegal in some states.

We are grateful for the expanded understanding of marriage that has made our family possible. As such, we are voting no on the MN Marriage amendment this November because we don't believe the Minnesota Constitution should be amended to limit the freedom to marry for committed same-sex couples. Someday, we hope our gay and lesbian friends will have the same opportunity to make a formal commitment to each other that we had. In the meantime, we are proud to stand with our church, Prospect Park United Methodist Church and the MN Conference of the UMC in opposing this amendment. Still, we know that not everyone will agree with our position and if that is you, we welcome you to engage us in thoughtful dialogue about our decision. We would also direct you to the Minnesotans United for All Families website for more information and more stories from other Minnesota families about what marriage means to them -- including a video from VFC coffee customers Kate and Marianne.

2012 Coffee Shipment has Arrived 
We also celebrated this past week, the safe arrival of our 2012 coffee harvest -- 20,250 pounds in 135 burlap sacks -- our largest shipment yet. See photos on our Facebook page of the shipping container as the sacks were unloaded at a warehouse last week. While you are there, if you haven't done so yet, make sure to "like" us to get future posts and share Velasquez Family Coffee with your friends.

School Fundraisers
The house is wonderfully quiet this week as our three kids have returned to school. We've also been hearing from many of our regular coffee fundraisers that they are getting geared up to sell coffee again. If your school or organization is interested in selling Velasquez Family Coffee to raise funds for your projects, check out our Fundraiser page on our website or contact us at coffee@vfamilycoffee.com. We'd be happy to work with you to develop a fundraiser that works for your group.