It’s been quite a year for our parish! This year we decided to dedicate as a "Year of Prayer". The Bible teaches us the importance of prayer as a follower of Jesus Christ. God provided us with an ambitious plan for this year. Up to this point, we’ve already implemented some initiatives of our year long plan. We hosted two Morning or Recollection for men and women respectively. We instituted prayer in our existing groups and committees, with groups starting each meeting with 15 minutes of prayer. As a staff, we pray before our monthly staff meetings and we attend Mass together every Wednesday morning. But our best is yet to come.

The main goal of our staff is to deepen our own relationships with Jesus and assist parishioners in anyway to achieve the same goal. For Lent 2019, we will be providing many opportunities for parishioners to deepen their relationship with Jesus through three specific initiatives. Our theme for Lent 2019 is "Meet Jesus" and we believe these three initiatives will help all parishioners to encounter Jesus in some way during the Lenten Season.

The first initiative is the 1% Challenge. The 1% Challenge is an individual challenge to pray. The 1% Challenge does not involve any type of parish gathering or meeting on a regular basis. This is strictly a challenge to do in your own personal daily life. The 1% Challenge is committing to 30 days of 15 minutes of prayer each day. 1% represents 15 minutes in any given day. Can you give at least 1% of your day to God? We hope that each parishioner will take up this challenge to help deepen his or her relationship with Jesus Christ.

Our second initiative is our 4-week Lenten Series. The Lenten Series will take place on Tuesdays from 6-8 PM. The format includes: dinner in the church basement, a talk in church, and ending with time to pray. New this year is childcare and a youth track for teenagers. We hope these additions will provide an easier opportunity for participation from parents and families. Each week will have its own focus on prayer. Please consider making March 12, 19, 26 and April 2 evenings spent at the parish to deepen your relationship with Jesus.

The last of our initiatives is the Family Morning of Recollection on Saturday, March 16. The morning is designed for families. Parents and children will be able to spend time together as a family exploring praying together as a family. We hope to answer questions such as: How do we pray together as a family? How often should we pray together as a family? How do we pray with babies, toddlers, and young children? How do we pray together at Mass? The morning will end with lunch and optional board game time in the afternoon for those who would like to engage in fund and fellowship.

Lent is always an opportunity to better focus ourselves on God and our relationship with Him. As a parish, we want to help that process in any way we can. More blog posts will follow discussing each of these initiatives in more detail and how they will help you Meet Jesus. We believe these three initiatives will help you encounter Jesus during our upcoming Lenten Season. Please consider participating in any of these events and Meet Jesus!