Dear Diary,
The reading club met in the church basement today because the weather was cold and wet. Rain tapped at the windows while Father LeRoy hurried about with mugs of hot cocoa and plates of buttered toast. Since he had called the meeting before we could put together a list of books, he had chosen our new story himself: Our Lady of Fatima.
I thought the sudden meeting might spare me from giving a chapter summary. No such luck. Father was so eager to begin that he brought me a copy of the book last night. I read the first chapter before bed, though I would have liked one more evening to prepare.
I told the club about Fatima, the Portuguese village of stony hills where children helped their families by tending sheep. According to the story, the village was named for an Arab maiden who became a Christian and was buried in a chapel there more than seven hundred years ago. The monastery around the chapel disappeared, but the chapel remained, and houses gathered beside it.
The chapter then described the troubled years after Portugal’s revolutions, when people faced opposition to the practice of their faith. Even in Fatima, it said, some families had begun to neglect the evening rosary. But the chapter ended with a promise: Our Lady would come to that little village and choose three children to help bring her message of peace to a world troubled by war.
Father leaned forward as I reached that part, as though I might go on to the next chapter. I was relieved when he finally let me close the book. On the walk home, with the rain still falling, I found myself thinking about those three children. They must have believed they were simply going about another ordinary day with the sheep. I wonder what they thought when their lives began to change.
Good night, dear Diary.
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