It has been a busy week at church.

First of all, our hearts go out to long-time parishioner Julie Hoare and her son Manuel. Julie’s husband, José Manuel passed away yesterday. He was battling cancer very bravely. This weekend they will take his remains to his beloved pueblo. We will schedule a funeral mass soon. May he rest in peace and may Jesus strengthen Julie and José Manuel during this time of mourning and loss.

We congratulate Karen on the baptism of her wonderful daughter Amaia!

The other events are from San Dámaso of which I am also pastor. Given that Fr. Sebastian is away on holiday, I am very over extended. God is always there.

This Sunday we start up catechesis. The rains may make a small classroom change necessary as we have have some water damage (yes, when it rains, it pours!) We are working with the insurance company on that.

We have a record sign up for language classes but they don’t start up until September 29th.

Some good news:

A parishioner promised that he would take on the project of installing a projector in the church. This would help with lyrics for hymns and also for bilingual translations. I will keep you posted.

Elke is close to finishing a huge hymnal project so that everyone has the words to our hymns. I will keep you posted.

Lucille is ready to upload the new OLM web site. It is very nice. This will be the first major update in over 10 years!

There is also a sad situation that I must share with you. Two years ago, we had to go to court to get a restraining order on a stalker. Unfortunately, he broke that order and we had to go to court again. He said he was guilty and accepted the court’s punishment last Tuesday September 10. Unbelievably, he came to church  last Sunday and received Holy Communion! I am informing you just in case you see police entering our Mass in the future. We were caught by surprise last Sunday but are now prepared. It was ironic that he would come back on prodigal son Sunday, but in his case, he came back to make the same error (even worse). May God have mercy on his soul. I will make sure OLM is always safe for you.

Wow! That is an awful lot. But God is good, all the time.

Hope to see you on Sunday, say a little prayer for me, OK?

God bless you, Fr. Ron

Pastor Reads Note

Before beginning the service, our pastor read aloud a note he’d been handed moments earlier. “It says here that I should announce that there will be no BS this morning,” he said.

He tucked the piece of paper into a pocket and added, “I’m hoping they mean ‘Bible Study’.”