Sunday, August 18th 2019

Dear Parishioners,

Last weekend was blessed with many celebrations within our regional parishes, such as new Archbishop Paul Etienne who came to St. John of the Woods Church for Sunday the 8 AM Mass as he helped us out when we need a Priest for this Mass. We also had a baptism, wedding, anniversary, and other funeral services within our regional parishes throughout the weekend. We thank you for attending different celebrations and praying for those families who shared with us their celebrations with our parishes. These are some of the joyful celebrations that we had for this summer. We also thank you for attending the Vigil Mass at Sacred Heart�s Church, August 8th to pray for the Immigration. We also thank you for responding to the call of the Archbishop Peter to pray for victims of the shooting violence in El Paso, Texas and other places in our country. It is hard for us and it is hard to believe that this is happening in the United States!

It was a joy to witness our students from the summer program who are showing us how they pray and the songs that they had learned from this wonderful summer time with their friends. They invited me to their class to celebrate the Feast Day of Saint Dominic and they shared with me and their parents, stories that they learned from the Scripture, the five wonderful songs, the talent show with a few students together with their teachers showing us their skill in music by playing the piano. God created the world with all different creatures and animals with different sounds, which was presented by a beautiful melody that they played for us to listen to. We thank the students who were in the program for this summer. We thank their parents who enrolled them in the program. We thank the youth members who were assisting the program and we thank the Sisters of the Lovers of the Holy Cross of Go-Vap, for organizing this program in our parish to serve these children during the summer time. Our students had so much fun and they also learned a lot during the five weeks together. May they have a blessed few weeks off before they enroll into the new school year and new religious class for the coming year.

We welcome you back from your summer vacation. You are cordially invited to enroll your child/children in the religious education program such as CCD and other Faith Formation programs. You are also invited to join us in different ministries within our parishes for the new school year. We are very blessed to have a good facility to support different programs within our parishes. We thank the parish volunteers for sharing a lot of their time during this summer to assist us to upgrade our facility, to make it user friendly for the needs of our parishes� ministry. They have done a wonderful job and worked hard to keep our facility maintained and updated to support our parishes� ministry, because we always need a facility and space to gather for social and fellowship in support our parish activities and ministries.

We cordially invite the catechists who are helping us with the Faith Formation program for the coming year, to come for a day of reflection this coming Saturday August 24th. We will start this day of reflection with a Eucharistic celebration and Father Jim will be our key speaker for this day. I hope to see you on this day, if you are unable to come, you can remember us in your prayers. We are very blessed to have Father Jim who is with us on this day. Please do not miss this opportunity to join us for our Faith Formation day.

You are reminded to join us for St. John of the Woods Parish Annual Picnic on August 25th, after the 11AM Mass. As you know, we are celebrating our parish feast day, which is St. John of the Woods Parish. You are cordially invited to celebrate our Patron Saint of our parish and through his intercession to bless upon us! We thank the committee leadership team who organized it. You do not want to miss this event for this year.

We are able to send to the Chancery, the Archbishop�s Office, our annual parish report on August 15th, which was the Feast Day of Assumption. Our parish staffs are working on our parish annual report before they send to you, so you have the information on what we have done for last year�s budget and what we are planning to complete for the coming year. We are sharing with you different programs that we have. We hope that you are supporting us with the program such as you liked to have. Before we implemented it, we have to make sure there is sufficient support from students, parents, and parishes leadership teams, so I need to meet with them for many different sessions of consultations. We always support the program that we need to have, in supporting our parishes and our family!

Our Seminarians, Chad, Brody, Brother Justin and Jorge thank you for your prayers and support. Many of you have shared some food with them and they deeply appreciate you for your love and care. They are leaving us at the end of this month, to return to the Monastery and Seminary for the new school year. We thank you for supporting vocations not only for married life, but also for religious life and priestly life. It was a wonderful letter from Pope Francis to the Priest on the Feast Day of St. John Vianney, the Patron Saint for the parish priest. He gave them a wonderful blessing and encouraged them in their ministry and vocation. Please pray for our priests and support their ministry so they can serve us more effectively!

We thank you for praying for the construction of the parish center/meeting rooms at Sacred Heart Parish. You are able to see the building slowly coming together, which is wonderful to witness each day. I have shared with you that I am learning a lot from this project. I deeply appreciate the Building Committee members, the parish leadership team, the Archdiocese�s representative and all the professionals in different areas for their time working on this project. We thank you for praying for the safety of all the workers during this construction period.

Again, thank you for your continue support of our parishes� mission and ministry. May the Lord continue to bless upon you!

Sincerely, Yours in Christ,

Fr. Tuan Nguyen, D. Min

Regional Pastor