This story appears in the Notes from the Field feature series. View the full series.

by Kerry DiNardo

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Notes from the Field - I've been playing sports ever since I can remember. I spent every waking minute that I wasn't in school on the softball or soccer fields and volleyball or basketball courts. These are the places I learned so many lessons and life skills that I still carry with me today: self-confidence, teamwork, commitment, and more.

A Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, Karge is a graduate of Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. She has practiced immigration law in Chicago for more than 30 years. She volunteers in immigration clinics in Chicago and with the CARA Pro Bono Project at the South Texas Residential Family Center in Dilley, Texas, the private prison for noncriminal asylum-seeking women and children. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

This story appears in the Mining feature series. View the full series.

by Melanie Lidman

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A church plan to build a nursing college in a rural village is upended when they discover the site has been turned into an illegal gold mine. The price of gold, lax regulation and an impoverished population of subsistence farmers practically guarantee against change in the West African nation.

Playwright Brian Mullin's love of theater began when he was a child growing up in a Catholic family outside of Boston. He says he used to corral the other neighborhood kids and write musical revues for them to perform. Today, Mullin is one of five writers-in-residence at Theatre503 in London, where his debut drama, "We Wait in Joyful Hope," premieres this week, starting May 17.