Building the Kingdom

He has Risen as He Said, ALLELUIA!!!

I pray that you are blessed and that you had a blessed Holy Week and a wonderful Easter celebration. As opposed to Christmas, when we are moving into the cold, dark of winter, Easter is a sign of life everywhere we look. I love Spring and all of its color. You can smell life in the air. We get to start peeling off the layers and enjoy the warming temperatures. And just getting out and spending more time in the outdoors, soaking up the sun, is joyful and invigorating.

We also see more life in the parish as we plan for activities like The Mission trip to Baldwin. I am also hopeful to see more ministries become active and we get back to building the kingdom and spreading the Gospel. It was wonderful to see I mean hear so many singing in the choir throughout Holy Week. I pray it isn’t just a holy day occurrence and we can continue to grow our choirs, as they are so important to good liturgy. And good liturgy is essential for growing the Church. We are fortunate to have a steady flow of visitors, and their experience of a good liturgy is key to having them become members.

I do want to once again thank everyone who had a part to play in the success of our Grand Raffle and Fish Fry. To be honest, we attributed most of the growth of the Raffle last year to the fact that we did not have a Fish Fry, And so it was a bit of a surprise that we once again made almost $20,000 from the Raffle. It is a huge help to our budget, and so, I want to thank everyone who sold & bought tickets, and congratulations to all of our winners. And we all know how much work the Fish Fry is and I have to thank everyone who played a part in its success. And finally I want to thank Cindy for her years of dedication and hard work. And I can’t forget the man behind the woman, Steve, for all his support and hard work as well. Thanks also to all of you who bought dinners and helped spread the word. And a special thanks to our youth who kept those dinners coming from those working so hard in the kitchen to those enduring the weather. By the final weeks we were moving cars through the line faster than McDonalds. May God bless all of you.

Now that we have fed our community physically, it is time to get back to serving them spiritually. Keep an eye out in the bulletin and on our web page for exciting things happening in our parish. If you have an idea or know of a need, we invite you to send that information to our Parish Council, via the office or their email account which can be found on the bulletin. They will discuss it and decide if and how it fits into our parish mission plan.

In the Redeemer, Fr. Rick