My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
This Tuesday our eighth graders at Mary Our Queen School will graduate. Congratulations to our eighth grade students! I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate all our eighth grade students in our religious education program as well. We wish all of you the very best as you begin high school.
On May 3rd, we held a luncheon for all our high school graduates at Mary Our Queen and St John Vianney. We would like to congratulate all our high school students and wish them the very best in their future endeavors.
Wednesday marks the last day of school at Mary Our Queen. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our teachers and staff for their hard work in making this school year a success. We would also like to thank all our volunteers in school for all you have done. Your countless hours of service made a tremendous difference. Without you, we would not have achieved what we have accomplished in the last few years. This includes being named a National Blue Ribbon School. We are looking forward to a new school year in the fall. To date, we have 656 students registered for our preschool and school which will be the highest number of students ever enrolled in Mary Our Queen School.
This year, two teachers are retiring from Mary Our Queen School. We would like to thank Mimi Fenton and Angie Olson for their years of dedication to our school and community.
Congratulations to Kolleen Hoffman who received the Omaha Urban Council of Catholic Woman’s Woman of the Year award. This well-deserved honor recognizes Kolleen’s outstanding service, faith, leadership and dedication to Mary Our Queen community.
Sue Johnson, who came in as our Bookkeeper at St John Vianney around the time I became Pastor, officially retired as of the 1st of May. I am grateful for all her hard work in helping to clean up our financials and setting the course for our future. I am also grateful for Sue saying yes to being part of our Finance Council at St John Vianney. Thank you, Sue, for all you have done and continue to do for our Parish. With Sue’s retirement, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Deb Craig who will be taking over Sue’s position as bookkeeper.
Thank you to all who helped at St John Vianney cleaning up, mulching, planting new plants and installing sod at the area where the angel garden was previously. We had to remove all the bushes and clear up the space as we are no longer able to maintain it. The angel statue is now by the main entrance of our Church.
Thank you also to all who helped May 3rd with the spring clean up and mulching at Mary Our Queen. We are also grateful for the Men’s Club who made time on May 6 to complete the mulching of the campus. There will be some new plants that will be planted on our campus in the near future. Because of our parishioner’s time and hard work, both our campus grounds at St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen are beautiful.
We had some lighting fixtures in the parking lot retrofitted with new LEDs this week and will be replacing the lighting for the bell tower and St John Vianney sign. We will also be retrofitting all our bollard lights with LEDs. With more and more of the ballast on those lights burning out, retrofitting it with LEDs not only makes it simpler but also brings about cost savings in our electricity bill.
We continue to make improvements and updates to our Parish facilities. There will be more projects that will be mentioned in my Pastor’s column the next few weeks for our Family of Parishes.
This summer, our Family of Parishes will be offering a vacation bible school and our Totus Tuus Program in the months of June and July. Please see our bulletin for more information.
Blessings, Fr Marc
