From Our Pastor: Happy Father’s Day

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! What an amazing success the parish picnic was! Thank you to Gabe and Kelly Wheeler and the entire picnic committee! It takes a whole team, and they are all truly amazing. Thank you also to all those that took shifts volunteering to make this event possible! This was a huge success because of all of you! For my first parish picnic, I have to say this might have been one of the most fun parish events I have ever been to. This benefits our parish and school so much, but something that most don't think about is the community. Not only is this an awesome event to build community in our parish, as it seems everyone was having a fun time being together volunteering, but it is a great event for our community that may be many people's first and only experience of our parish. What a great moment to draw many here to St. Francis!

We are halfway to our goal of $30,000 to meet our ACSA amount for the year! It's not too late this week to help us raise the other $15,000 to retire this amount and keep it from being a debt. I was told some people don't know what the term "magic match" means. Magic Match goals mean that for every dollar you donate, it is either matched dollar for dollar or even in this case 2.5 dollars for every dollar you donate. If we raise the $30,000, we have a generous parishioner, who wants to remain anonymous, who will donate the $76,000 to pay off the rest of the amount. We want to take advantage of the immense generosity of this family and pay off our assessment for this year. This will allow us to not carry the debt into the coming fiscal year. The fiscal year for our parish and diocese ends June 30. Please help us meet this goal before June 30! You can drop off donations in the office, you can give online, or you can give in the next couple weekend's collections.

This next weekend June 26 at 10:00 a.m., Dennis Holbrook from our parish will be ordained a permanent deacon. Originally, we weren't certain if we would be able to attend in person, but it is a completely open event now! I would love our parish to bring a good showing to support one of our own! If you haven't been to an ordination ever before, I would highly encourage you to attend! They are spectacular experiences! St. Anthony Parish is taking a bus full of people to the ordination. As of this last week they had several seats still open on the bus. If you are interested, please contact St. Anthony parish office beginning Tuesday of this week on a first come first serve basis. If you would like to carpool or would be willing to be a driver for those who would like to carpool, please call the parish office!

Lastly, Happy Father's Day to all our fathers and the fatherly in our lives. Congratulations to Fr. David Beagles on his first Father's Day as a father! Happy Father's Day to his dad and mine! Thank you to all of you fathers for being the first and best of teachers in your families, as the baptism liturgy states. Thank you for your selfless sacrifices and love. And as your spiritual father as pastor of the parish, please know of my love and prayers for you all!

Rev. Steven Arisman