+JMJ
Dear Parishioners,
Time has been flying by! I can't believe we are already closing in on the end of September! I pray that the school year has started well for all of our school families. The pace has picked up for me, because – along with a small team – we have started home visits for Living Christ, the capital campaign of the Diocese. I am grateful for the visits we have already made, and the generosity of the parishioners. As of the writing of this letter, we have collected or pledged $175,000 towards our $1,060,000 goal. There is a thermometer in the gathering space that will give you the latest percentage raised.
I'm grateful for a bunch of input I got this week regarding the mini-fest and the storage/maintenance building we are designing. Suffice it to say that the Lord let me hear just the right things to make it clear to me that we should plan a smaller storage/maintenance building, and now – with two summer mini-fests behind us – we have to be realistic about any future festival expansion. I'm grateful for those who have made the mini-fest work; and we should definitely keep it going as long as we have the workers needed.
This week also included a day-long pastoral conference at Sauder Village, near Archbold. Parish pastoral teams from almost every parish around the diocese participated. The day featured Acts XXIX, a group encouraging renewed preaching of the gospel and parish programming led by prayer.
Again, the pace has been pretty fast. But, the Lord is in the lead. Have a blessed week!
In cordibus Iesu, Mariae et Iosephus,
Father Poggemeyer