Welcome Back!

A Letter from Father Shane

July 14, 2021

Dear Parishioners,

Welcome back to Mass! Welcome back to our parish life! The joy I felt seeing many of you for the first time the past month has been overwhelming! I am really glad to see our faith family continue to grow each week as more and more return to Mass!

While we enter into the next phase of our Covid-19 world, we must navigate through some new waters of life around us, as well as in our church community. Definitely, our world and church has changed, however I believe that to be a good thing, as God has, and continues to remain, in the midst of all of these changes.

As the parish opens up, I invite all of you to fully participate in our faith family life! Last weekend, we returned to coffee Sundays after the 9:30 a.m. Mass. If you have not been to one, I encourage you to stop by and visit with other parishioners, particularly those you may not know, and the yummy treats are well worth the stop! Help us to get to know you better! We are beginning to start our planning for our Annual Booya and Fall Festival, September 26th. Many hands will be needed to make this a successful event! Helping to prepare or serve during our Booya is a great way to support our parish and meet some friends along the way! Another way to get involved with our parish life, is to come and get your picture taken for our church directory! This will be held November 2-6. Can you believe it has been seven years already since our last photo directory?

We continue to need liturgical ministers at both weekend Masses, so please consider if you are able! Our altar server ministry is slowly returning, however, more students are encouraged to join. A special thank you to Luke Widenstrom for serving as our head alter server! Luke is heading off to college and his brother Gabe will be taking his place! Also, there will be a training session from 6-8 p.m. on August 3rd for our altar servers with a pizza dinner! Please contact me if you would like to become an altar server, we would love to have you!

A new ministry of Greeters will be starting in August with hopes to have it fully running the first weekend of September, which is also our annual celebration of our pastoral feast day of Saint Gregory the Great! We are looking for smiling faces to welcome all who enter our parish! If you are willing to show up a half hour prior to Mass and are willing to welcome each person who enters our parish with a kind word and smile, then you are exactly the right person for the job! Families are welcome to join this important ministry, and if you know anyone who would be a great fit with our Greeter Ministry, please contact the office and let me know.

Faith Formation classes will resume this fall! Do you like to share your faith and enjoy working with our youth? If so, we are looking for teachers! Classes for grades 1-8 will be Wednesday evenings. Confirmation classes will be Sunday evenings for grades 9-10. If you like to have some fun while helping to increase another’s faith…then please consider this important ministry!

We are still in need of an individual or two to help around the parish grounds as well as light maintenance in all of our buildings. This is a paid position. Let me know if you would like to earn a little extra cash and help out the parish.

Our fiscal year ended on June 30, 2021. All things considered, we did pretty well financially last year, due to so many of you being generous in your support! I ask that you continue to financially support the parish, and if you have not, please consider doing so. To make it easy, you can donate on our website. By the way, have you checked out our new website that was launched on July 1st? www.stgregorynb.org We will continue to update the website and there is more to follow, so please keep checking back!

We have several maintenance projects coming up this year, such as taking down the tall pine tree that was struck by lightning, as well as seal coating and restriping of the parking lots. Please utilize the Maintenance and Debt Reduction envelope if you are able to support these needs for our parish.

Oh, how exciting to see parish life return to some normalcy! Yes, our faith family is coming together! It is like a homecoming! As we return, my hope is that our faith family will be stronger and more vibrant than ever before! We will continue to work on bringing life back to our parish! Help us to create a stronger, friendlier, more loving environment filled with fun as we embrace our Catholic faith! Our faith has, and will continue to carry us through the new challenges that may come our way!

Our God is so Good!!!

Your brother, in Christ Our Saviour,

Father Shane Stoppel-Wasinger
Pastor