Dear Friends,

I hope you are well and warm!

The past few weeks have presented me with more than my fair share of challenges.

Okay, that’s not really true. It might feel like more than my fair share, but our God is a provident Father: He never leaves us without hope, and he gives us what we need when we need it. And I don’t just mean that he gives us what we need to endure difficulties. I also mean that he allows us to face difficulties for our good and the advancement of his perfect plan.

Recently, I’ve been hard at work on a new parish bulletin with Eileen Vandenberg. I’ve been waiting for this project to come to life since we launched the new parish website (www.olmc.church) last year. Our work there has made me reflect again on our parish mission, and has had me in awe about everything we do here to light up the world with God’s love (a quick take on our motto, lumen gentium).

Bringing the matter of challenges back to the surface, I want to write to you briefly about a project many of you have asked me to take on these past few years. That project is a fix to our church audio (microphone and amplification) issues. Having turned off another line of speakers this past week, rendering a full half of our system inoperative, I figured that now is the time to ask for help!

The best quote we’ve found for the improvements, which was also the most exciting and best quality package offered to us, includes a total replacement of the church’s sound system for $38,981.00, and (repurposing some of the good church equipment for the project) great improvements to the school’s All Purpose Room for $8,964.00. That’s phase one and two; if we get really ambitious, we’ll look to fix some of the APR’s acoustic problems for an additional $29,690.00.

We will work through the phases of the project as we raise money for them. Any support you give to the church audio project will be used only for the improvements to our sound systems.

No matter the challenges, it is a blessed time to be at OLMC!

Christ’s Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ