My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I hope that you had a great 4th of July. Once again, we are grateful for all the freedoms that were made possible because of the sacrifices of so many. We continue to remember all who serve in the military and their families in our prayers.
We will be having our Totus Tuus summer camp this week from July 7th to the 11th from 9am to 2:30pm for Grades 1-6 and July 6th – 10th from 6:30pm-8:45pm for Grades 7-12 for our Family of Parishes. Totus Tuus (Totally Yours) is a fun and energetic parish-based summer catechetical program, for both grade school age children and junior and senior high school youth. To register please go to our website https://moqchurch.org/totus-tuus/.
Mary Our Queen hosted a training session for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd for new catechists involved in the program a week ago. We are grateful for several catechists from both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen for making time and the commitment to serve in this important ministry. We are proud to make this program available here at St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen for our preschoolers, our first graders and for our second graders who are preparing to receive their First Confession and their First Communion.
We are waiting for the arrival of the statue of Mary that will be placed in our Marian patio at St John Vianney. When the statues arrives, the finishing touches of the Marian patio will be completed (slab stone and spots lights) together with the installation of the statue of Mary. The Marian patio is located by the side entrance of our Church. The Marian patio was made possible from a memorial gift from Deacon Frank Telich. While we were building the Marian patio, we also had a fire pit installed by the patio outside the social hall at St John Vianney. This will provide a gathering area for our youth and young adults or any group from our Family of Parishes.
We will begin the replacement of the parking lot at Mary Our Queen beginning Monday. As you know our parking lot is in bad shape and the cost to fix, mill and overlay our current asphalt parking lot is roughly about $150,000. I have been trying to set aside some funds over the next few years to make that happen, however, I am told some parts of the parking lot need to be done sooner than later. Thanks to your generosity we have raised over $96,000. I would also like to thank our Men’s Club for giving us the proceeds from their Parish Picnic for the parking lot that was held last Friday. It is still not too late to help us defray the cost. If you are able to, kindly send your donation to the Parish Office.
Once work for the parking lot is done at Mary Our Queen, work will be done to patch up the cracked concrete at St John Vianney. We will also be getting more work done to improve the drainage of the parking lot.
As this column was written earlier, I hope that the sod work is done on the MOQ playground by the soccer field. As we had to open up the playground for the school last fall, we were not able to properly put sod on the ground. The area where the work will be done will be fenced off to give the new grass an opportunity to grow. We ask that you kindly stay away from that area. Thank you for your cooperation.
The narthex and the bathrooms as well as the basement at St John Vianney were vandalized last week. A police report had been made. To prevent this from happening in the future, there will be changes to when the doors to our facility are open, which may cause some inconveniences. We ask that should you need to use our facilities at St John Vianney, kindly contact our Parish office and we will make arrangements for you.
Have a blessed weekend,
Fr Marc
