It’s hard to imagine that there was a time, not that long ago, when American consumers didn’t know what the term “Fair Trade” meant. In the early 2000s, Pattye Pece was one of those people. Always more of a contemplative Catholic, Pattye had no idea what Fair Trade was, or how it was about to change her life.

“Missionary work and Fair Trade were the furthest things from my mind in those early days,” said Pattye with a laugh. She laughs often when she speaks. “I was a person on the journey of mysticism and monasticism. My husband and I are like monks. We love prayer, we love the quiet, we love reading. Contemplative prayer was my direction.”

But it seems that God had other plans, as became apparent when Pattye met the late Fr. Patrick Fitzgerald, an English priest with the Missionaries of Africa who spoke at her parish in Long Island about his missionary work. This was around the year 2000, and Pattye, who worked in parishes as a music director or at Catholic schools as a music teacher, was about to move to England for five years while her husband worked on his doctoral degree.