Talent is one of the key areas of stewardship. We are blessed with many parishioners who are good stewards of their time, talent, and treasure. Therefore, I thank those who have recently helped with various upgrades to our parish campus. I thank Ed Basconi and Martin Walters for assisting with the upgrading of our sound system. As time progresses we will continue to replace some speakers which no longer work and will attempt to address other issues. I also thank various volunteers from our Spanish speaking community who dry walled and painted the walls inside of the gathering area, chapel, and bathrooms. Our gathering area is the first glimpse that you get of our parish and should be found in good shape and the women’s bathroom was not very welcoming with it’s cracked walls and pealing paint.
I found our Parish Open Forum to be very successful. We had at the highest point 29 users who were logged in. A majority of our conversation was spent on what to do with our remaining HOME Campaign money and how to begin work on our basement area. Many echoed a reoccurring theme that our facilities are not sufficient for our needs. It would therefore be imprudent to put everything that we desire in the downstairs area. People agreed that a bathroom would be a good start because it would keep people from needing to go upstairs for the bathroom. Many commented that we need a long term plan not only for what we want to do with the basement, but for the campus as a whole. There is a need for us to have sufficient room for meetings and parish gatherings. At the same time it was questioned if the parish would support such endeavors.
Other areas of conversation was a rumor that the parish was removing the mural of the Ascended Lord found in the church. This nor other serious changes will be done unless first discussed in Parish Pastoral Council and discussed at our Parish Open Forums. There are not currently any of these conversations which are taking place on our campus. It was also mentioned that we should take care of our outside grounds and possibly have more then 2 parish cleanup days. Finally, the possibility of a comment box was mentioned. I personally wish that parishioners would call to discuss any suggestions/concerns or come to our Parish Open Forums to discuss these suggestions with the parish community.
The discussion from the open forum will be discussed at the next Parish Pastoral Council meeting and a future date for the next forum will be set. Please consider joining us in these discussions. It is my hope that we can join together at these to build the puzzle which is our parish by working together.
In Christ,
Fr. Dustin Collins
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