Greetings in Christ all!
I wanted to start right off and thank God for our prayer ministry here at Holy Family. The feedback from the healing service continues to come in and a lot of people experienced the Lord and His Holy Spirit that night. The people who are praying with folks have been preparing for so long and the fruits are amazing. For my part, I have sought the prayers of our team a few times and been blessed each time by their loving and caring response. Please don’t hesitate to check out this wonderful work of the Lord in our midst!
Chuck Wright, our new business manager, is helping a lot and I’m so excited for his time here. We’ve had two amazing business managers in a row and I can’t believe we now have a third. I thank the Lord for him daily, as I did for Kevin and Brian.
I’ve had lots of questions on the “what’s next?” front concerning our church, so I thought I’d take some time to walk you through a couple reminders.
In December of this year, our two campaigns (Witness to Hope and Restore the Temple) will officially end. Everyone who made pledges will be finished by then. If you made a pledge, but your situation requires that you cannot keep it or need to modify it, please just let us know. We know things change!
If you are able to finish it or if you plan on doing so, please accept my gratitude. I cannot believe what our God has done because of you in such a short amount of time.
Once December finishes, we can begin financial planning for the things that need to be done: moving the organ pipes and machinery back into church is going to be by far the most expensive, but also one of, if not THE most important. We also have the covered drop off area at our front doors that is not yet covered…haha…that’s on the list. We’ve got these and a couple other things that we will get to work on so that everyone knows the cost of the project and how we plan to go about getting it.
In terms of our current projects, our baptismal font is being worked on though we don’t yet have a sense as to when it will be done, but it is paid for through the generosity of donors, praise God. We are also working on new Mary and Joseph statues near the sanctuary in our church and a donor has purchased a Solanus Casey statue that will also be put up.
The final project that we are currently working on is a Reliquary. Hopefully, you remember that we were gifted five First Class Saint Relics and are making a prayer area for those relics. This will be located to the left of the altar as you look at it. I’m really excited about that!
Our future projects…the “some day” type things include a wall mural of Saints in the soffits where the vents are, a communion rail and a couple decorative things in the sanctuary.
That’s where we are and I’m so excited about it. God has been so good to us, it’s overwhelming some days.
I think the biggest question is about debt. What kind of debt can we expect once all the pledges are in and we match that up with what we owe for the church construction?
Remember when we began to build, the estimated debt was for between $200,000 and $800,000? That was what we were expecting to need to borrow from the diocese to complete the church.
Well, if the pledges come in as they have, it is my joyful duty to let you know that we won’t have any debt. None.
This is particularly shocking because we also paid off a significant debt that was owed to the Michigan Catholic Conference for our insurance.
I want you to read that again and rejoice with me. This is nuts…I just can’t believe what God has done and continues to do. This happened because of the strong and prudent guidance of our finance council and your crazy generosity. I am so blessed by you and I thank you with all my heart.
This is a long one, but I hope you find it helpful. Thank you for loving me, letting me love you and for all of us together loving God as best we can!
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