I clearly remember a day...

I clearly remember a day back in March of 2019 in which I was having coffee and a doughnut at St. Edward Parish in Afton, when my cell phone rang and the caller ID was the Chancery or offices of the Diocese. When I answered it, I heard the very distinctive voices of Bishop Pates and Fr. Michael. We talked for a while and then they asked me to come to St. Luke’s. Over the next few weeks we had a number of meetings in which Bishop Pates asked me to make sure that the building project happened.

This weekend we are finally able to show the building off, even though there are a few things that we need to finish, like moving in furniture. At this point we expect to receive our temporary occupancy certificate early this week and we are planning on beginning the moving process Wednesday the 4th at 9:00. We would like some help with that, so if you would like to join us to help, it would be great! We have some heavy tables to move in, desks, and other furniture that needs to go into the classrooms. I know that this has been a long process, with multiple pauses, cost increases, and other challenges, but it has finally happened, and Misty, the entire staff, and I are so thankful for all of the support that we have had in this process.

There are a couple of wonderful features of this new addition:

First, there are six very large new classrooms for kindergarten, first, and second grades for the school day, and we are hoping to get Catechesis of the Good Shepherd started up in two of the rooms soon, if we can get the volunteers together. The classrooms will also be utilized by the Religious Education group so it does not benefit the school only.

Second, we have four new storage rooms in which we store all of the things that we have here and stored in other places, including the rectory basement.

Third, we have a new flexible meeting space. This space has a movable wall in which we can have two small meetings or a medium size single meeting going on. It can also be used to have some funeral lunches if we need to have them. This meeting space is isolated from the school so that we can use it during the school day and still keep the security that we want for the school children and faculty.

While this has been a bit of a struggle, I would also like to thank Fr. Larry for getting the process started, Fr. Adam for continuing to work with it as well, getting it to a point to hand it off to me, all of the people on the building committee, and especially those who donated time and treasure to get us to this point. Yes, I have already been asked when we will begin the next, phase of building, but we will worry about that later!

Thank you again for all of the support everyone provided!

Fr. Ken