Dear Members and Supporters:

   In recent times, we have been forced to send fewer and fewer rosaries overseas for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, postage fees have been increasing more and more, sometimes several times over the same year.  Second, when the rosaries do arrive, oftentimes the receiving country's customs service will demand a high import fee from the missionaries, who obviously cannot afford this.  This has not happened before as much, but now, entire regions have become off-limits financially.  Third, it is now not uncommon for the postal service of the receiving country to simply return shipment of rosaries, without any explanation.  We cannot justify spending such a large amount of donor money for an increasingly risky and chancy proposition of getting the rosaries where they need to be.

   We must also share with you that fewer and fewer people are taking up making rosaries as a hobby or as part of their devotion.  Times do change.  Some of our rosary makers have been heroically making rosaries for decades, but they are not as able, and younger people and families have less time to do it.  We now receive fewer and fewer rosaries for sadly, an actually increasing demand.

     So what can we do now?

• We will fulfill and honor all outstanding requests for overseas rosaries.
• We will provide rosaries to all missionaries who are able to pick them up from us.  Today, for example, we're having a missionary to Tanzania pick up a few hundred rosaries.  
• We will still gladly accept any rosary donations, especially locally.  However, they need to be intact - our saintly rosary repair folks are now retiring - at 90+ years of age!
• We will also examine ways of perhaps buying rosaries wholesale for missionaries in their own native countries, bypassing the whole postal mess.  This may take some time.
• We will look at setting up domestic rosary shipments, especially to the poor and prisons.  

   We are disheartened, but understand the shifting realities on the ground.  

    In the meantime, please pray for all missionaries, and for new paths for us to be able to support them.