From Father Steven - April 30, 2023

 
Dear Brothers & Sisters,
 
It feels more and more like spring these days! As we begin this beautiful time of the year, there is one more exciting news that I would like to share with you. As we did a year ago, we will be having our Annual Car Raffle coming up! And this year we will be having 3 cars!!!
 
Last year, some parishes got together to be able to run a fundraiser that greatly benefited each parish. The idea is that parishioners would get a stack of tickets to sell them to their family and friends.  In our parish, among all our communities we sold 3,000 tickets, generating an income of $35,814 for IC. This year, with your help, we hope we can sell at least $4,000 tickets. Surely it is a great financial help for us. However, there is one greater benefit of running this raffle. It is the opportunity that we have to speak about our faith. Generally speaking, we don’t get to speak much about religion to others, much less in a public environment such as at work or in schools. It was very interesting how last year on our altar server day, many kids realized that they had people in their school that were also Catholics, went to the same Church, and were also altar servers. That happens because they serve at different masses, but never spoke in school about it. These tickets would give us a gentle opportunity to speak about our faith and our parish. We ourselves may also realize that the people that we know may also be fellow Catholics, attend the same Parish, and maybe at the same mass as we are, just sitting at the opposite side of the back of the church.
 
The process of the tickets is fairly simple. Those parishioners and friends who would like to help us would request an envelope from Lee Ann or from some volunteers at mass. Each envelope contains 20 tickets, a small flyer for the raffle, and a sheet to keep track who purchased each ticket. The drawing for the raffle will be on September 17th, 2023 at 7:30pm at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Lawrence. It is a must that the stub contains the name and the phone number of the person who purchased the ticket. Whether all the tickets are sold or not, everything must be returned to the parish by Thursday, August 31st, with the unsold tickets, the stubs of the sold tickets with the money. If someone sells the tickets from one envelope, and would like more tickets, please contact the parish office. This year here, we will have a special prize for the person who sells the most tickets!!!
 
The three cars that we are raffling are two 2023 Honda CR-V Ex and one 2023 Honda Civic Sedan Sport. You will see the poster at the church door and from time to time you will see one of the cars at the entrance as well. We would like to thank Jayson Navarro, our parishioner, and Lundren Honda Dealership for helping us with the cars.
 
We invite each person or family to please take an envelope of tickets (each envelope has 20 tickets) to sell it to their family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and thus help our parish!
 
God Bless,
Fr. Steven


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