Festivities and More
Labor Day weekend signals the unofficial end of summer, but that isn’t doom and gloom in our parishes. It means that the Fryburg Homecoming is this Sunday beginning at 4:00pm at St. John Church in beautiful Fryburg, Ohio! This year will have the same great fun and new leadership. After years of leading the Homecoming Committee, Cindy Koenig stepped down at the end of the last Homecoming. We are so grateful for her years of tireless efforts and generous leadership. She has been succeeded by two wonderful women: Anita Foor and Linda LaMarr. They are jumping into decades of history in leading the Fryburg Homecoming. I’m not sure which is a more important role: pastor of St. John Church or organizer of the Fryburg Homecoming?
The Fryburg Homecoming has been happening for decades, yet there is something new happening this upcoming Friday. Every year on September 8 the Church celebrates the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Residents of Botkins also know this as the birthday of Andy Finkenbine, happy birthday Cordell! To celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, members of the Schoenstatt movement and parishioners of St. Lawrence are teaming up to have a birthday party for Mary. There is information about it on page 5 in the bulletin. It will be a great opportunity for members of Schoenstatt and parishioners of all our parishes to get to know one another. We’ll begin with Mass at 6pm and then Mike Ruppert from St. John is preparing a pulled pork feast. You won’t want to miss this birthday bash!
Next weekend, we’ll be distributing our annual financial report to parishioners. Our fiscal year runs from July 1 until June 30, so the report will summarize the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023. Thank you so much to the members of our finance committees for keeping an eye on our financial situation and recommending how to best present the information to our parishioners.
As you know, we are anticipating a merger of our four parishes into a single parish on July 1, 2024. With this in mind, we decided to present the financial reports in a slightly different manner this year. The report will be distributed as a packet and each packet will contain all four financial reports. In the past the reports and line items were presented in different ways, which made it difficult to compare the reports. This year the lines have been standardized. All four reports will have the same categories for income and expenses.
Since the reports have been standardized, we can add up all four parish reports to make one summarized hypothetical report for our single family of parishes. I say that this report is “hypothetical” because we are currently still four individual parishes: each parish currently has its own checking account, savings accounts, and assets. The combined report will show you what it would look like when we are all combined into a single parish.
I realize that this may be a little confusing, so we’ll have a few meetings to explain things. It seemed advantageous to have meetings about the anticipated merger so that you know why we’re doing this, what it will look like, what your role will be, and offer an opportunity to answer any questions. To make it as convenient as possible, these meetings will be after weekend Masses. You won’t have to make another trip to Church. Here is the meeting schedule:
Saturday, September 23 – after the 4:30pm Mass at St. Joseph Church
Sunday, September 24 – after the 8:00am Mass at St. John Church
Sunday, September 24 – after the 10:00am Mass at St. Joseph Church
Saturday, September 30 – after the 4:00pm Mass at Immaculate Conception Church
Sunday, October 1 – after the 8:30am Mass at St. Lawrence Church
Sunday, October 1 – after the 10:30am Mass at Immaculate Conception Church
These weekends correspond to the weekends that I have Mass at each church. Like I said, next weekend, we’ll distribute the financial report. If you have questions about the report, please bring them to these meetings. Have a blessed week. See you at the Fryburg Homecoming. You can find Fr. Willig and me at the hamburger stand.
Sincerely in Christ,
Fr. Sean Wilson
