August 1, 2021

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Our Archbishop will be here on Sunday, August 22nd to bless our new Early Childhood Education and Youth Center.  He will celebrate the 11am Mass and will then proceed to our new Center to bless the building.  August 22nd is also the Feast of the Queenship of Mary – our Parish Feast Day.  Our Parish Council will be hosting   a  Parish Picnic in celebration of the Blessing of our new Early Childhood Education and Youth Center and our Parish Feast Day.  Please join us on this wonderful occasion.

Thanks to all who volunteered to make our MOQ Human Needs Garage Sale a success.  The proceeds go to MOQ Families in need, Heartland Hope, Siena Francis, St Joseph’s Church Door Ministry, Prairie Lane Lifehouse Food Pantry, Heart Ministry and Precious Memories Day Care. A special thanks to Mary Parizek for all she does in support for our Parish Human Needs.

Our Parish facilitated another training session this week for teachers of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.  It is a Montessori based Religious Education program to help children grow closer in their relationship with Jesus Christ and share their experience to all.  We started offering the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd to our preschool last school year and am hoping to offer it to all children in our Parish.

As you enter our Church since last weekend, you would have noticed that we have begun the work to replace the concrete of the front entrance plaza.  Included in the front entrance plaza will be some new green space, 2 pergolas, a water feature and new lighting.  Once that is done, we will replace a section of our driveway with concrete.  We have the rubber mats and the rubber mulch delivered for the new playground in our Early Childhood Education and Youth Center this week.  The hope is to get started with the placement of the rubber flooring mats as soon as we can.  Also, we are more or less concluded with the replacement of the heating water piping in the lower-level east wing section of our school with a new variable volume terminal unit and a heating water coil in each classroom which connects to the existing ductwork.  We will continue to update you on the progress of the mentioned projects and future projects.

We continue to pray for all those affected by the new strain of COVID-19.  We also continue to do our best to keep everyone safe.  So far things have been going well.  We have opened our  parish for meetings and for groups to gather.  While the mask mandate of our city has been lifted, we have made available the left side of our Church for those still wanting to social distance.  We continue to request that masks be used when coming forward to receive Communion.  Thank you for kindly working with us.  We will reevaluate these protocols on a week to week basis.  As a reminder, please monitor COVID-19 symptoms. As always, if you or a family member has a fever, chills, body aches, headache, sore throat, cough, and loss of taste and smell, they should stay home from school or church until symptom free.

Please check out our Weekly Updates via email.  If you have not received an email, kindly call our Parish Office and we will add you in our email mailing list.  Thank you again for supporting us during this time. We continue to keep all those affected by this virus in our
prayers.

God’s Blessings,

Fr Marc