Thank you to all who made our annual parish festival successful once again. A special thanks to Tom Offerdahl and all the festival chairs for the hard work and extra hours spent in preparation for the event. We all appreciate your efforts. Despite the not so good weather forecast for late Saturday afternoon and evening, we had a grand parish celebration. Sunday, August 15th, turned out to be a great day, weather wise and otherwise. Thanks to all who participated in any way to make our 2010 festival a wonderful celebration for our parish community and surrounding community. I heard nothing but positive comments from parishioners and guests about how we have the best parish festival. In humility we may think they must be exaggerating, but in reality, it just may be true.
It's one of those questions asked at the end of August each year: -here has the summer gone?�In the beginning of June we always think summer as three long months. In retrospect, the summer has three short months. The short months of summer this year were marked by lots of heat and humidity. Heat plus humidity equals tropical days. I believe we used less city water in irrigating the campus grounds this year-that's a good thing. On the other hand, the heat and humidity created more storms than usual. I thank you for your generous response to the community of Wadena where so much devastation took place in their city as a result of horrific tornadoes in June. On a personal note, many of my ancestors are buried in St. Ann's Cemetery in Wadena. I was so shocked to see all the huge trees that had fallen and all the grave stones that were tipped over in the wake of the storm. We may often think of large mature trees and grave stones as permanent fixtures in the landscape. We learn that when it comes to the forces of nature, nothing that seems permanent is really all that permanent after all-most things in life are temporary.
As we bid farewell to the summer of 2010, we look forward to the start of a new school year here at St. Francis Xavier. We will welcome 170+ students as St. Francis Xavier School opens its doors on Tuesday of this week. As pastor, I appreciate your continued financial support of our parish school. Last year's standardized test scores in reading and math for our students in grade 3-6 were phenomenally good-much higher than the national average and the average in our local public schools. The students in St. Francis Xavier School not only achieve academic excellence, but also experience a faith community each day of the school year.
For students in our parish not attending our parish school, our coordinators are preparing for another year of religious instruction. As always, at this time of the year, we are looking for volunteer catechists to assist in the instruction of our children. We want our catechists to be good Catholics who, at the very least, attend Mass weekly and believe in and support Roman Catholic teachings.
Patrick Flynn, our Youth Minister, has left the parish staff to teach full time at Cathedral High School. Our Associate Pastor, Fr. Michael, will work with our parish Youth Ministry this year. We are looking for volunteer parents to assist him. Let us know if you are willing to help!
God's Blessings ~ Fr. Lauren