Jul 18, 2024

Greetings,

Our Three-Day Parish Festival is coming down the track quickly. The first two nights are ticketed events, and one is already sold out. Get your tickets soon for the wine and
art night! Wine, art, hors d’oeuvres, friends and auction. It promises to be a great night! The final day, Saturday, August 3 begins with Mass at 4:30pm followed by a procession
with the St. Sebastian statue down to the festival grounds. This will be followed by food, games, music and good company. I look forward to seeing you there!

IN OTHER NEWS:

VISITING PRIEST: Some of you were fortunate enough to meet Fr. Klemens Langeder who visited our parish on Friday and Saturday of this past week. He is visiting the United States from Linz, Austria. A young priest ordained not quite three years; he is visiting the states to see how things are done here at parishes that seem to be succeeding in their mission hoping he can take ideas back to his homeland. He enjoyed his time here and asked if he could return with a couple of other priests some time to talk about the mission of the Church. A little more about Fr. Langeder was written in this week’s Angelus Letter.

VISIT OF THE FATIMA STATUE: Thank you to everybody, especially Our Mother’s Hands Ministry and Ro Reed for your hard work and long hours in putting together this event for our parish. Beginning at our cathedral church of St. John the Evangelist, the statue was presented at fourteen parishes throughout the diocese. The logistics and preparations entailed a lot of careful thought and care, and our parish not only did well in that work, but also the turnout was well appreciated.

SEMINARIANS: I will admit that it has been fun for me to have the seminarians around this summer. Simon, Christopher, John and Conner have not only been a great help with all the projects going on around the parish, but they are also faith-filled gentlemen. Their last day with us will be August 8. It would definitely not be inappropriate to make a monetary gift of thanks to them for their dedication to the parish to help advance their studies. Also, please keep them and all those considering a Church vocation from our parish in your prayers.

KEEPING US LOOKING GOOD: Did you realize that there are only 2 full time and 1 part time maintenance persons and 3 full time and 1 part time cleaning persons on staff here at St. Sebastian? They are responsible for our clean, well-tended and functioning buildings. The rest is all done by volunteers with the exception of mowing. Ten buildings and several acres! Well done and thank you for this herculean task!

LAMPPOSTS: So, instead of the lampposts springing up from the ground as I naively and optimistically reported a few weeks back, our devil strips were being dug up again. Neighbors were able to tell me that there was a problem with the wiring and so they needed to dig again in order to correct the faulty wiring. On the plus side, it keeps giving us something to look forward to!

God bless,
Fr. Valencheck