Sunday, April 21st 2024
Dear Parishioners,
We had a joyful celebration on the Third Week of the Easter Season. We had many different meetings after spending time celebrating Easter with much joy and peace. Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead, according to the prophecy that He had to suffer, and the pain of this suffering is gone when He rose from the dead. He is with us, by His presence in the sacraments that we celebrate. We are entering the Fourth Week of this joyful Easter week with Candidates from the Faith Formation celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation as they prepare to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation and First Holy Communion. We went through some experiences of the Suffering and the Death of Christ during the Triduum Days, and the Resurrection of Christ. All the liturgies throughout the Triduum celebrations assisted and gave us the sense of the true real presence of Christ, and we believe that the sacraments are the source of all the joyful moments that comforts us throughout this Easter Season and our journey of Faith.
You have received the information from Archbishops letter that he has made the decision to reassign me to be your Pastor, after asking me to submit my letter of resignation from the position as Pastor and to receive my new assignment in accordance with the planning of the Partner in the Gospel program. I am very happy to know that I can be with you for the next six years. So, we need to gather with our Parish Leadership Team and Parish Staff to have a short term and long-range plan for our parish. I need your help and support, so we can have a clear vision and priority of what we will do for the next six years. I thank you for your continued support. Last week, I had the opportunity to be with all the new Pastors for their retreat at the former seminary. The Archdiocese of Seattle used to have this seminary and it was closed because we do not have enough seminarians to come to support it. It is a beautiful veterinary hospital and hotel now and a nice location for our retreat. Archbishop and his staff spent time sharing with us their vision and priorities and they have the expectation on what we need to do. It was a wonderful time to be with other Pastors and Parochial Vicars who joined us for the last day of the retreat. I learned a lot from this retreat.
There are some projects that you may need to know from each of the parishs location. We spent the last few months working with the Archdiocese on our facility of Saint John of the Woods Mission to repair the left side wall of the Church (when you come into the main door of the Church). The damage to this wall was caused by a car incident a few months ago. We resigned the lease with the baseball teams who are using our baseball field to practice, and the lease with the Christian Pre-School, so they are with us to use our religious education building from Monday to Friday. They love our facility and location. We also had spent time to complete all the projects that we shared with you at Saint Rita Church. We thank you for your support, so we were able to seal all the Churchs windows and repaint all the frames and other things. The heating system in Holy Rosary Church had some problems during the wintertime, so we spent time and money fixing it, and we must keep the heat on even when we are not using the building. We are working to fix the ramp at South Tacoma Chapel/Visitation Churchs Hall. This parish hall does not have a disabled entrance or exit into the low hall. We have been trying to work on this project, but we could not be able to find help to do it. We thank the leadership team at South Tacoma Chapel for assisting us with this project now.
We are working on sealing and leveling the parking at Pope Saint John XXIII Parish. We also are working with the project at Pope Saint John XXIII STEM Academy for the playground. I am asking the Parish Staff and leadership team to share with you detailed information from each project, so you can support us to complete it. We need to keep up with our old buildings that we have from different locations. When you are involved and engaging with our parishs life and activities you will have a deep sense of appreciation for what we are doing and what we have. I am asking you to be a good stewardship of your time, talent, treasure to build up our parish. You are encouraged to register into our parish so you can receive the information about our parish that we can send to your home. Our parish needs your help and support!
We have a few parishioners concerned about cleaning the Church, especially the Churchs restroom (some concern about the homeless using it). I have shared this information with our Parish Leadership Team and other leadership from our parish. I am seeking their feedback and insight to assist us with this issue. I would like to ask you to assist us by picking up pieces of rubbish (trash) and to clean up after your group has finished using the parish facilities. It will assist us in keeping our facilities clean for everyone to use.
You have already received the Archbishops letter on the Annual Catholic Appeal. We have the goal for our parish and mission that we have shared with you. I encourage you to participate in this campaign to support the Archbishops campaign that supports various ministries that the parish is not able to support. The amount over the goal will be given to the parish as a rebate for various projects that our parish needs to do.
There is a lot of other information from our parishs ministries and activities that I am not able to share with you in my bulletin letter. I would like to invite you to visit our parish website and other sources of communication that we have. We thank you for supporting our School Auction and other sources of fundraising activities for our school. You are cordially invited to stop by our school (classroom) to experience the joy of what students are learning about.
May you continue to find joy and peace during this Easter Season!
Sincerely, Yours in Christ,
Fr. Tuan Nguyen, D. Min
Pastor