Pastor’s Letter: May 14, 2023

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Congratulations to Mary Our Queen’s Team 985S who qualified all the way to the semi finals at the Robotics World Championship in Dallas last week. They finished 8th in their Division. I was fortunate to have spent a day with our Teams that qualified for the Championship last week. Congratulations are in order to all or Mary Or Queen Teams who qualified and for Tara Petersen leads our Robotics Club. We are truly proud of your achievements.

With the resignation of the Business Manager at St John Vianney, Fr Richard Reiser requested for Mary Our Queen to help manage St John Vianney’s accounts. As Mary Our Queen and St John Vianney are forming a Family of Parishes on July 1st, we agreed to facilitate their request. Once again, when our Parishes become a family of Parishes, each Parish is still responsible for its own finances. What we will be doing is combining our resources to support each other. We will through the months of May and June be working out the final details on how our offices will function as well as to lay out best practices that would help in our transition. Please keep our Parishes in your prayers.

Special Thanks to Angie and Dave Mills and Kolleen Hoffman for helping plant some new plants and transplant some plants in our campus last Sunday. Our campus grounds do look beautiful. We will be mulching our campus grounds in the near future and will need all the help we can get. I have done my best together with some wonderful volunteers to help shape our landscape in our campus. I am hoping someone will be willing to help take over our Parish landscape committee/volunteers. Please contact me at the Parish Office if you can help.

This year our Parish celebrates its 60th anniversary. We are planning to do a Parish wide celebration on August 26 which will coincide with our Patroness Feast Day – the Queenship of Mary. We are forming a committee to plan our celebrations. Please stay tuned for more details.

I will be leading a 12 Day Marian Shrines Pilgrimage in October and would like to take this opportunity to invite you to join me in experiencing the miracles of Lourdes, Fatima and Santiago de Compostela. The highlights of the tour includes Lourdes, Basilica of St Pius X, Santander, Fatima, Barcelona, Santiago and Montserrat. We will be visiting the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Montserrat outside of Barcelona, the Grotto of Massabielle, where Our Lady appeared to Bernadette in 1858, partake in a Rosary and Candlelight Procession in Fatima where our Blessed Mother appeared to three shepherd children – Lucia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco. We will also visit Santiago de Compostela where the Tomb of St James was discovered, Loyola – the hometown of St Ignatius. The brochure for the tour can be found in the Narthex or in the Parish Office. Call the Parish Office if you need any more details.

A stewardship appeal was made at our weekend Masses a few weeks ago. One of the biggest positives is that we continue to grow our school each year and we will have our largest number of students enrolled for our upcoming school year in more than 15 years. Unfortunately, while our collection has more or less been the same for the last five years, the cost of running Mary Our Queen has increased significantly. While we continue to do our best improve efficiency while addressing the needs of our Parish, our stewardship appeal is to help us continue the mission of our Church. We hope you will prayerfully consider these 3 things:

Increase or make a consistent offering
Sign up for our online giving program
Determine where you want to be involved or need involvement within our Parish.

We will be launching a Stewardship campaign in the near future. Thank you for your continued love for Mary Our Queen and your generosity.

The Raise the Paddle project for the MARQUEE is for a new H/Vac system for the Gym. This will address one of the needs of our Parish as well as to provide air conditioning for the gym. The cost for the new H/Vac system is $200,000. At the time of writing this letter we are at $128,500. We are inviting you to help us meet our goal for this new H/VAC system. You can donate to the Raise the Paddle project online at https://ppay.co/e1Abf13sypc or you can drop off your donation at the Parish Office. We thank you for your support.

God’s Blessings,

Fr Marc