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Mr. & Mrs. Elgersma would arrive every Saturday morning without fail for our weekly grocery run. They would make a point of going through our refrigerator and cupboards to take inventory of what needed replenishing. Then they would walk me through each food aisle of the small Co-op Store, point to a product, name it and very patiently say, “You like? You have.” And should I nod my head, they would add the item to our grocery cart. Every week without fail we would always stop in front of the meats counter and load up on packaged wieners. This was our primary source of protein for weeks, even months!

Prison missives have power. When the normal liberties of life have been stripped away, all that remains is the humble authority of conviction and the truth of an unbreakable spirit.

It was this speaker that changed how I saw chocolate. I don’t remember much about him except that he had a couple tattoos and that he wore a Boston Bruins jersey one day. I do, however, remember his talk one day on why Christians should be paying the extra bucks for fair trade. He talked a lot about clothing, which is always brought up when talking about fair trade, but then talked about a fair trade issue I hadn’t heard of before: chocolate.

I had two favorite days growing up: Christmas and the day the NHL playoffs started. It used to be so much easier to love hockey and the more Don Cherry rock-em-sock-em the better.