From Our Pastor: A Great Year

What a great end of the fiscal year! Fr. David and I arrived on July 1 of last year, and as we celebrate our first anniversary here at St. Francis, which seems impossible it's been a year already, I want to share some of the last year and looking ahead. In this last fiscal year, we have had 54 baptisms, 75 funerals, 17 weddings, countless anointings, 44 first communions, and 114 confirmations. And this doesn't include the ones that also took place at QU chapel! Speaking of sacraments, the exciting thing is we have had ordinations connected to our parish this last year. We all know that last June (just outside the fiscal year) Fr. Michael Berndt from our parish was ordained a priest. This last year our beloved Franciscans ordained Fr. Marc Sheckells, OFM. This last year Fr. Corey Bruns, with roots here in St. Francis, was ordained a priest of Owensboro. This year we ordained one of our very own a deacon, Deacon Dennis Holbrook! And he began July 1!!! How exciting! Looking into the next year let's continue all this excitement and energy in our midst!

Fiscally, we are looking like things will end up doing quite well, especially since we had such a decrease during COVID. Thank you to the PPP loan, and the work of Sue Holbrook in making sure we followed all the government regulations (always complicated), to make sure our PPP loan was forgiven, which it was! Without that PPP loan we would be hurting in a bad way this year. This last year of ACSA as we move into a tithing mentality to the diocese, instead of a tax, we were able to pay off our giant goal for this last year of the old model. We met our goal of $150,000, mainly thanks to one parishioner who gave a huge chunk of that goal, $76,000, to allow us to meet that goal. The amazing news is the other parishioners all did their part helping to raise the other 50% of this goal! Looking to the future, we need to make sure we continue to tithe to the parish, but also need to look to shift a lot of our giving to the school fund, as this is much of the cost of the parish, but not something we need to tithe on to the diocese. We are looking to some big costly projects this coming year, like closing the street, the west parking lot for our teachers and Sunday parking, and much more! We truly have a lot of excitement this coming year.

We survived a year of COVID in our school, and quite successfully! Yes, we are hoping for some more normalcy, but we will see the guidance we are forced to follow, and the guidance that is possible to adjust to. It is an exciting time to be in our school! We are looking to a strong youth group, and an exciting first time of Totus Tuus for the coming year. For Totus Tuus, we need people to house two boys and two girls; we need people to have the team over to your house's for dinner; we need someone to provide a lunch for the team (dropped off the night before or delivered by you or any business that morning or right at lunch) at the church; we need someone to bring a snack for the kids in the program during the day (again, dropped off anytime); and maybe one adult for each kid and teen session to help with sign up/sign in. Honestly, most of the parish's responsibility is to feed and house the team, and to get our 1st through 12th graders signed up and to come! Once again, it is ok to make your kid (especially your teen) come to the program, as I promise they will love it! I am so excited to have this program at our parish.

We have so much excitement going on here! I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store this year!

Rev. Steven Arisman