1. Finance
Report: See attached reports. The CD’s at
Center Bank came due on
2. Gaming Report: At
the December 11th meeting, Bev Mathwig reported that there have continued to be negative
games and cash shortages at Bonfire and Swan’s Café. There was discussion about the problems at
the sites and the measures that needed to be implemented to help the sites
correct their problems. Both Swan’s Café
and Bonfire were over the limit of cash shortages. The amended November expenses were accepted
and the following distribution of funds was approved: $1,500.00 to the
3. Maintenance
Committee: Dave Eischens hurt his back in December and is
working with restrictions. Sharon Polingo has been helping by doing things such as mopping
which Dave has not been released to do yet.
Tom Schloeder helped with the snow removal on
the church sidewalks. The amount of snow
so far this winter means a higher cost of snow removal. I am anticipating that this will be higher
than budgeted.
4. Cemetery
Committee: The Cemetery Committee met on January 20th
to discuss a couple of circumstances that had arisen. We reached consensus as how to resolve the
issues.
5. Worship Report: Our parish worship music committee met this
month to plan music schedule for Lent and Easter.
We are continuing to seek a coordinator to schedule greeters and ushers. The Miller’s have resigned as coordinators in November. Fr. Joe will continue to schedule until a volunteer can be found. Patti Aaker will continue to schedule lectors and Brenda Oster will continue to schedule Servers and Eucharistic Ministers. We have been working to obtain as many email addresses that we can from our Liturgical Ministers so we can email the schedules and notices as needed. Those Ministers who do not have email will be asked to pick up their schedules at church. We are also publishing the ministry schedules on our parish website.
Our Christmas Liturgies went well and had great volunteers assist with decorating for Christmas as well as taking down for Christmas. We received a 9 foot artificial tree from the Schneider Family as well as a 10 foot tree with ornaments from Wal-Mart!
The worship committee will be meeting in February to prepare for Lent and Easter
6. Peace and
Social Justice Report: Meeting
tonight
7. Faith Formation Report
Grades 3-Adult-Jodi Schons
Religious Formation Update
v In December we celebrated the sacrament of Reconciliation with the whole parish, delivered cookies to the shut-ins of our parish and had a student activity night.
v We did not have classes over Christmas and New Year’s (December 24th and December 31st)
v
We started the 3rd semester on
Youth Ministry Report:
Youth and Parents listed their “top five” youth group memory-making
activities of 2008 at our January 11 monthly gathering. Here are the results in
no particular order (repetitions are not mentioned):
Spaghetti Dinner
Wheelchair Rides at Emmanuel
VFW Breakfast
Thunder Bay Mission Trip
Helping to clean Della Finch’s basement
Canadian Five Pin Bowling
Summer Beach Party
Spam game at Power Hour
Valleyfair trip
Power Hour
Merry “Eggmess” (Christmas) at VFW breakfast
Underwear race and marshmallow blowing contest at power hour
Digging for gummy worms in a pie plate of pudding
Horse Show food stand
Getting to know these great kids and parents
Seeing the Jutz horses at the horse shows
Watching Tifani do a masterful job with the program (I promise I didn’t
write that one or pay anyone to write it!- ha, ha!)
Bake Sales
I received a call last week from a woman in Bloomington whose family is
moving to Litchfield this summer. She called asking about our Guatemala mission
trip and other activities. She saw our youth group information on our parish
website and wants to be involved with her 7th grade son when they
move. She’s hoping that our youth group activities will allow her son to meet
some friends before entering school in the fall. She also offered her future
home on Lake Minnebelle as the site for our summer beach party in June 2009!
I thought it would be interesting for the Council members to see an agenda
for our monthly gatherings. It is pasted below:
January
Monthly Youth Group Gathering
Sunday, January
11, 2009 9-10am
I. Welcome and Prayer - You Rock and Yeah God!
Dear God,
Thank you
for the opportunity to be here. Help us use our gifts and talents to help
others as you would. Please keep us safe as we follow your footsteps. Amen
II. Top Five of 2008
III. Guatemala Gifts to Share
IV. Spaghetti Dinner Saturday, Feb. 21 5-8pm
A. Worker Sign Up
B. Committee Sign Up
C. Ticket Distribution
D. Placemat Contest Collection
E. Decorating Night Friday, Feb 20 2-7pm
F. Radio Date and Volunteers? Monday, Feb. 16 Liz, Kate and Rachael
G. Other
V. Fundraising Tracker
A. Future New Fundraisers
1. Gertens Flowers (www.gertens.com)
2. Talk to Knights of Columbus- help with their breakfasts?
3. Breakfast at St. Philip’s in the future?
VI. NCYC 2009
A. Schedule Handout
B. Costs (estimated $640 plus 2 traveling days of food, souvenirs, 3 lunches and
1 supper spending money)
C. $100 non-refundable deposit by Jan. 26 (can take from fundraiser tracker)
and commitment form signed by youth and parents
VII. VFW Breakfasts Dena Carlson, chair
A. Sunday, January 18 **sign up for 6-10am or 10am-2pm shifts
VIII. Second Harvest Food Donation Service Project
A. Help Unload Truck at Zion Lutheran Church Friday, Jan 16 from 2-5:30pm
B. Assist food distribution at Zion from 8-12 on Sat. Jan 17
IX. Power Hours will resume Wednesday, January 14, 2009!… Every Wedn. Until
Feb. 18
A. 6-7pm for youth grades 7-12 in the social hall
B. Prayer and Food and Friends
X. Guatemala Mission Trip Team
A. Next gathering on Sunday, January 25 from 6:30-7:30pm at Geri Buresh’s home
B. Collect toiletries, school supplies
XI. Bake Sale April 4-5
A. Also Youth Weekend & Butter Braid/Pastry Puffin Sales
XII. Youth Advisory Council
A. Adult and Youth Representatives with Youth Minister
1. Adult: Dena Carlson, Monica Schreiber
2. Youth: Machaela Schreiber, Jon Carlson
3. More adult and youth reps needed, talk to Tifani
B. Meet every other month…at the most
C. Representative from this Council will be on the Parish Word Committee
XIII. Powder Ridge Church Nights
A. Saturday for groups of 15 or more (start at 4, 4:30 or 5pm)
B. Interest?
C. $15 for tickets and $15 for ski equipment and $20 for snowboard equipment
and $5 lessons
XIV. Other
A. No February monthly gathering (space not available on February 8).
B. Check website for updates!!! www.thechurchofstphilip.org
C. Monday Monthly Community Dinners
D. Volunteers please update your account at www.virtus.org
E. Try San Lucas Toliman coffee!!!
XIV. Thanks and Prayer
8. School
Report:
December and January are two of the
busiest months for us here at
We observed Advent in our school by gathering each morning for Jesse tree prayer. As we added a new symbol to our tree each day, I read/told the stories of our salvation history.
Rather than exchange any gifts among ourselves, the students and faculty donated toward class projects. Kindergarten collected for Toys for Tots and then went shopping together and delivered the toys to Center Bank. Grades 1 and 4 purchased items for the parish giving tree. Grades 2, 3, and 5 purchased Econofoods gift certificates to be added to the parish food baskets for those in need. We also had a collection for the food shelf throughout December.
We gave our Christmas concert, entitled “Jesus, Prince of Peace,” at Augustana chapel for the tenants as their entertainment after their Christmas celebration dinner on December 16. We presented our concert for families and the community on December 18. We are very grateful that at our school we can have a religious concert that focuses on the real meaning of Christmas.
Our Christmas vacation was two weeks long this year, from Dec. 22 until Jan. 5.
The weather played havoc with our second week of school in January. Because of the snow and cold, we had one early dismissal, two late starts and one closed day. Since our 5th grade graduation is set for Tuesday, June 2, and many parents have already arranged to have that day off, we will not be extending our student days if the public school decides to add a day in June to make up for the missed day. We would use that day as an additional teacher workshop day.
January 19 was a teacher workshop day in the Litchfield district as the first semester ended. At St. Philip’s, a reading specialist from Scott Foresman Company came to give an inservice on the new reading series we adopted this year. Teachers and students have found the new series to be excellent
Stacy Penk has resigned as one of our paraprofessionals to take a job at St. John’s University as Coordinator of the Eugene J McCarthy Center of Public Policy and Civic Engagement. Her final day was Friday, January 9. Stacy was a great asset to our staff. We will miss her generous spirit and positive attitude. We have hired Jane Beach to take the position. Jane seems to be blending in wonderfully, and we are most happy to have her with us.
With the theme “Celebrating Service,” we join with all the Catholic schools of the nation, to celebrate the blessing of our Catholic school during the week of January 25- 30. The students and their families will be participating in various ministry roles at the weekend liturgies as well as many students singing in the choir.
Our week looks like this:
Participation in liturgical ministries
Powder Ridge tubing for grades 2-5
Kindergarten will deliver tray favors they have made to Bethany and Gloria Dei.
The School Committee will treat the teachers and staff to breakfast
Fr. Joe will teach for 20 minutes in each classroom
This is Hat and Shades and Sportswear day.
The teachers and room parents will treat the students to breakfast and a book.
It is pajama and crazy hair day.
Students will have a bingo party during part of the afternoon
All students will visit the
We will all make valentines for
the residents of the nursing homes and for the
Mass at
The students in grades 3, 4 and 5 will visit ProWorks to interact with the clients there.
Grade 2 students will visit the residents of Bethany.Home.
At
Family Pizza Party and Game night
will take place in the social hall from
In between all of these actives, we do manage to have classes and accomplish some education. Catholic Schools Week is one of the great memories of many of our alumni.
We are proud of our Catholic school, our students and our staff. We thank you for you continued support of this important parish mission
9. Area Faith
Community: Will be meeting on
10. Hispanic
Ministry Report: Our committee was busy organizing and preparing for
our parish celebration of Our Lady of Guadelupe on
December 14th with Mass and Pot-Luck Dinner we had a good turn out
of people and some really great food.
They also organized the 9 day Novena to OLG with different families
hosting the prayer each night at their homes.
We also had our Epiphany Mass and Celebration on January 4th
with a Pot-luck Pinata and gifts for the
children. Those receiving the baby Jesus
in the Rosca Bread (three Kings
Bread) will be hosting coffee & rolls following the mass on February
1st as a way of celebrating the Presentation of Jesus. The committee will be meeting in February to
work on plans for the Stations of the Cross, and Lent and Easter.
11. Stewardship Committee Report: No
written report at this time.
12. Pastor’s
Report
The
Over these past two months since our last meeting:
+ We celebrated 3 Weddings, 4 Baptisms, First Reconciliation, 1 Parish Advent Penance Service in addition to the regular weekday and weekend masses.
+ We had good attendance at our Christmas Masses, however attendance during the cold winter snowy days has somewhat diminished attendance.
+ Hosted a Staff Christmas Party in December for parish & school staff and their spouses.
+ I had two chalices replated/refurbished using funds from our memorial account.
+ Hosted a Community Meal for anyone. Our parish Friends in Christ Volunteers helped organize and prepare the meal and we will also host a meal on February 9th & March 9th as well. We received a $250.00 contribution to help with the project.
+ We are collaborating with LAMA to provide funds for temporary housing for those in need. We received a $1000.00 donation to assist with the project and will use some additional gaming funds as needed.
+ We helped over 25 families with our Holiday Giving Tree Project providing food, gifts & gift cards. We can be very proud of the generosity of our parish community.
+ I was on vacation from January 12th through the 23rd.
+
Held our First Disciples of St Philip School
class on Nov, 24th with
+ Staff and I are going through our annual Mid Year Review & Evaluations. Staff have submitted their written responses and I will be meeting individually with staff within the next few weeks.
+ The staff met in January and were given instructions on preparing the 2008-2009 budget. I requested they write out their ministry goals/objectives/plans before they fill out their individual itemized budgets. We will take February & Early March to complete the process.
+
I completed the 1st semester of
+ I need to begin classes for those wanted to join the Catholic Church. I hope to have a series of 10 sessions between now and Easter. There are about 3 individuals who indicated an interest in becoming Catholic.
I continue to enjoy being pastor here at St. Philip’s!