Dear Friends,
My deepest thanks for the many thoughtful gifts and cards and “goodies” you sent to me for Christmas. Now, I must start the dieting in anticipation of Lent! I will be taking a short winter vacation in mid-January with Fr. Boes. We have done an annual trip for many years to warmer climates where we can catch up on our reading, enjoy a bit of sunshine, and solve world problems while watching the waves roll in.
Before I head south, I hope to give you a financial report for fiscal year 2014-15. It is late, but took many volunteer hours from Jan Bode to walk through the transactions of last year and make sure they were properly coded. At the same time we will give you a six month report for this fiscal year. Many of you have asked where we are at with the Christ Child building. In late November we made an offer on the building to the Catholic Charities Finance Committee which they took to the full Board meeting. They were not able to come to a final decision at that meeting and plan on making a counter offer to us, but they will not make a decision on the counter offer until their next meeting in February. Until then we just have to wait and see.
You have probably noticed the cracks above the door on the south side of the church. We did repair the stucco on the outside of the church to prevent moisture getting in and doing further damage, but we will not repair the inside until the extent of the building movement has been determined. We also had many new cracks appear in the rectory the past few months. I had an engineer look at the buildings and the conclusion was that because of the heavy moisture this past year, the buildings probably moved again. Water tends to follow its normal patterns underground and the rain most likely went to those old routes and caused further erosion of the earth below our church, rectory and school. The engineers concluded that unless we want to spend an enormous amount of money to drill down to bedrock and install pillars down to the bedrock, then we should expect ongoing settling of the building as long as they exist. During weather periods of extreme wetness and extreme dryness we should expect to see new cracks. Some interior repair work on the rectory will most likely happen this spring to level floors and ceilings.
The parish is moving to a new data base as of 2016. During the next few months we will be updating all of our information on parishioners. I ask for your patience and help as we update the data base. We will be distributing new forms to be completed for each parish member. You will have the option to complete the forms online. More information on this will be given in the next few weeks.
We have been working on creating a website for the parish. The goal is to have the website up and running by the end of January. The link for the parish data base will be on the website as well as calendar information. If you have not visited the parish Facebook page, I encourage you to do so. This is one easy way for us to keep you updated about things happening in the parish. If you “like” the page, then your Facebook page will keep you notified of any parish postings.
You should receive a letter from us with the information about your contributions for 2015 (for tax purposes) by the end of January. If the information is not correct, please contact the parish office and we will correct our files and reissue a new contribution report to you.
Sorry for all the mundane information this week, but we needed to let you know about all these things. Have a Blessed Epiphany!
Peace,
Fr. Damian