July 5, 2020
My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I hoped you had a Blessed 4th of July. Our Independence Day makes us take a moment of pause and reflect on all the sacrifices that were made so that we can call our country the Land of the Free. We continue to keep in our prayers all who continue to defend our freedom.
I met up with Mary Parizek in regards to the Human Needs Garage Sale. In our conversation, it was decided that the Human Needs Committee will not be having its Garage Sale this year in light of the pandemic. Unfortunately, the proceeds from our Human Needs Garage Sale help provide assistance to the less fortunate in our parish and community. This cancellation will have an impact on how we are able to provide assistance given the availability of funds. We will provide details in the next few weeks on how we can still support our Human Needs.
I mentioned in last week’s column that we are in the midst of discussing the plan for reopening our campus for parish events, meetings and ministry gatherings. Right now, our number one priority is the opening of our School on August 17th as well as the opening of our Religious Education Program on September 2nd. We are doing our best to be proactive in planning ways of effectively opening and operating School and Religious Education Programs under possible restrictions imposed by the Nebraska governor, the Nebraska Commissioner of Education, the Douglas County Health Department, and the Archdiocese of Omaha. We have formed a focus group to provide insight in our various scenarios so that we can finalize protocols that create the best and safest environment for all of our students and staff. We will provide more details in the near future.
We have also sent information to all our Group Leaders for all our Parish organizations, groups and ministries in regards to meeting at Mary Our Queen. One of the requirements we are requesting at this stage is a written plan from all groups that choose to meet detailing their social distancing and cleaning procedures prior to the event taking place. We thank you for your patience and cooperation. Once again, the reason why we are cautious about these procedures is because the opening of our School and Religious Education remains our top priority. We are excited to welcome you back, and continue to pray for an end to this pandemic.
We are excited on the progress of the building of our new Early Childhood Education and Youth Center. We continue to promote and market our new Early Childhood program and continue to register more students over the last few weeks.
The installation of the new windows is currently being done. We will soon be starting the replacement and repair of the shingles of the roofs of the Parish Center, Kenny Center and our Church as the result of the hail damage last year and the replacement of the air conditioning units of our School.
Our classrooms are in the process of being cleaned for the upcoming school year. There are several classrooms that are being painted as well. We continue to do our best to update and maintain our facilities in light of the limitations of the budget cuts that we had to make because of the coronavirus pandemic that impacted our Parish. I would like to continue to express my gratitude to all who continue to support our Parish. Your support continues to help us meet our financial obligations, especially the salaries of our teachers and staff of our parish. Our Parish is dependent on our Sunday Collections that pay for the running of our Parish (Tuition for our school covers about 50% of our school budget). Our Sunday collections make up the difference). We concluded our financial year at the end of June. We were about 17% less in collections this fiscal year or about $315,000 under budget. Thankfully, the PPP loan helped us meet our commitments for the last financial year. We are doing our best as well as praying – that we can work things out in this new financial year. Once again, thank you to all who continue to support our Parish.
Masses are offered on weekdays at 6:20am and 8:15am from Monday to Friday and 8:15am on Saturday. Our online weekday Mass from Monday to Saturday is at 8:15am. Our weekend Masses are as follows – Saturday evening at 5:30pm and Sunday at 7am, 9am and 11am. Our online Mass on Sunday is at 9am. We continue to encourage everyone to follow the guidelines as indicated by our local authorities. For those using masks in Church and continuing to follow the social distancing guidelines, we would like to thank you for doing so. We will continue to fine tune our procedures and provide more details on how everyone is to be seated via email, on our Website and Facebook account.
We continue to send you 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.
Please keep in your prayers all those affected by the coronavirus especially – those in the medical profession, those who have lost their jobs, those whose pay checks have been affected by the public event limits, the businesses impacted by the virus and the love ones we can’t visit because of the social distancing that is requested from us.
God’s Blessings,
Fr Marc