Quarterly Report from the Pastor - Summer 2024

We’ve recently entered into the fall season. Summer is over. Although many ministries and committees took a summer break, it was still a meaningful and quite busy time at St. Martin of Tours. Thus, I would like to offer you a quarterly report of some new ministries, projects and activities going on in our parish. 

First, I am grateful to our volunteers and benefactors who support many ministries and activities in our community, to mention a few; the Ground & Buildings Committee, the Cemetery Committee, Liturgy & Worship, Stewardship and the Formation Ministries. I am grateful to those who prepared for the rummage sale in June, cooking egg rolls, those who took care of the parking lot during the Labor weekend, and those who organized many social and formation events. We are blessed with a good parish staff and councils. Without their hard work many of these events would not be possible including this report.

New Personnel and Ministries

We hired Abby Wass, who became the full-time Religious Education and Youth Ministry Director. We were able to organize Totus-Tuus summer camp for our children with cooperation of St. Alphonsus Parish in July. It was a blessing to have over 30 children who played on our playgrounds, prayed in the church and had fun. We hope to continue with summer program for children and youth next year. 

We hope to begin a new ministry for married couples in fall. This ministry, which is run with the help of St. John Paul II foundation, is a good opportunity for young couples at our parish. Please register and sign up.

Incoming Projects

This year we are celebrating two great anniversaries: 50 years of the presence of SCJs at the parish, and the 20th anniversary of the dedication of the new church. We want to celebrate these occasions during the Fall Harvest Festival on the Day of our Patron Saint, St. Martin. We hope to invite and honor those who had a significant part in our history, the priests, principles, teachers, workers and benefactors on that day. We would like all our parishioners to be actively involved and participate in this important event on November 9th. 

On the occasion of these anniversaries, we hope to decorate our church with stained glass windows. I am grateful to many of you for your feedback and constructive criticism to the proposals shown and displayed in August. We will inform you about any progress of this project. 

Another significant project we started during summer, that we hope to complete this fall, is the parish photo directory. The most recent directory is almost 20 years ago. The directory is a vital tool for the staff, for ministry and it’s a good opportunity to get to know each other in the parish community. At this time, there are only 23% of families who took their pictures and participated in this project. We hope with your help to have the directory complete this fall. I would like to encourage everyone who did not yet have a chance to take a photo to do it soon. The last opportunity will be on November 22nd from 9:30 to 2:30pm.

Helpful Numbers

We are growing spiritually and in number as a parish community. We welcomed 17 new families who joined our parish since June 1, 2024. 4 children were baptized and 2 couples received the Sacrament of Matrimony. 5 of our members died and 4 families moved from our parish.

This year we have 75 students in total in our religious education programs: 43 K-8 students (excluding First Communion Students), 13 First Communicants, for a total of 56 K-8 Students. In our Lifeteen program we have 9 - 9th /10th Graders, and 10 Confirmation Students, for a total of 19 high school students. Additionally, we have 40 students in the Vietnamese religious education program. The numbers look good, but we have to keep in mind that there are 326 Catholic children and youth (5-18 years old) within the parish. This means that less than half of them joined the religious education program. We would like to reach out to them and welcome them into our formation programs. Please help us to contact them.

Besides our religious education program, we host a few other groups who use our church and school facilities weekly. Among them are two Catholic Homeschool groups with a total of 125 children. We are glad that we can welcome and serve children and youth in our parish and larger community thanks to our large facilities.

Capital Developments

We were able to accomplish a few maintenance projects in the last quarter. Besides cleaning the classrooms and repairing school equipment to get ready for the school year, we were able to improve the road and parking lot behind the school and food pantry. We patched concrete at the entrance to the church and parish office, we repaired and painted the entrance door to the parish office, and we fixed some equipment in the kitchen and parish hall. There were two major projects accomplished in July and August: replacement of the six remaining heating and cooling units on the church and gym buildings ($137,180) and the server transfer to the cloud with all our parish data ($25,000).

Lastly, thank you for your prayers and support. I always appreciate your comments, suggestions and encouraging words, but also criticism and complaints. Please do not hesitate to give me your feedback and thoughts not just about this report, but also about our parish life. Our effort as parish staff and administration only makes sense with your willingness to collaborate and your care. I am blessed and proud to be your pastor.

 Fr. Andrzej