od and are thankful
crowd levels,” Mercado said. The range and pasture conditions are looking good for ranchers, Mercado said. While there is a shortage of hay, and livestock numbers are down, the prices are good. The drought may be breaking, but it could come back anytime, said Lawrence Pawlik who farms nearly 6,000 acres between Alice and Orange Grove with one of his sons. Two other sons also farm in the area on their own farms. This year he planted milo, corn and cotton. In years past he has also grown sunflowers. Pawlik, 81, has been farming for 60 years and has seen worse times. The early 1950s were rough, he said. In 1955, he donated more to the church than what he made. “Of course it wasn’t much,” he said with a chuckle. Pawlik appreciated Bishop Mulvey coming www.SouthTexasCatholic.com
to Alice to celebrate the Mass for farmers and ranchers. “It was a very nice thing to do. I enjoyed it more than I have any other Mass in a long time. It showed that other people do think of us,” Pawlik said. Bishop Mulvey shared with those in attendance the wisdom a pastor had shared with him once, when he was assigned to do his diaconate in Liverpool, England. The people who work the land, the pastor told him, “are the most real of all people, because they depend on someone else, they depend on the Almighty God and they know that, day after day.” “We cannot turn on the rain, we have to ask for it. We cannot…create the crops. We have to plant them, care for them, till them. For that we depend on God,” Bishop Mulvey said. JUNE 2012 | SOUTH TEX AS CATHOLIC
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