July 29, 2024 – Pastor’s Note

A few things are occupying my mind and time this week:

Rectory Musical Chairs
This week, Fr. Thumbi officially moved into the rectory in Lynden, while I moved into the rectory in Ferndale. Well, I moved my clothing and toiletries to Ferndale. I need to be living there when Fr. Stephan arrives, so that he has appropriate support as he transitions to life and ministry in the U.S.

We are still figuring out the furniture situation in all of our locations, but if you have a truck and are willing to shuttle furniture between locations, please let me know, and I’ll be in touch when I have a plan.

Fr. Stephan Arriving
Fr. Stephan is scheduled to arrive at the Ferndale rectory on Thursday, Aug. 01. It will be so nice finally having all four of our permanent priests here in the county. We have been very blessed to have Fr. Shanchez and Fr. Kinyanjui filling in while we awaited Fr. Stephan, but I have felt that we have had an incomplete beginning without the full team assembled, and now there is no major piece I am waiting to fall into place.

Of course, now we need to do the work of getting Fr. Stephan established. We are locally responsible for helping him get a license, buy a car, establish a bank account, and I am sure a slew of other items that will only occur to us when we realize “Oh wait, you don’t have that?” If you have skills that can help us get Fr. Stephan established, please let me know.

Now that Fr. Stephan is in town, we can finally have a proper reception, which will happen at St. Jospeh’s in Ferndale this Friday, August 02. Confessions at 4:30 pm, Mass at 6:00, reception after Mass.

Administrative Staff Re-Org
I have finally figured out how I would like to reorganize our administrative staff to operate in a properly regional manner (yes, we did find a position for all of our current staff members). At this point, I am just trying to find time to create an appropriate presentation so that our staff and parishioners can understand the new structure, and who to go to for what. Stay tuned.

Baptism/Wedding/Quinceañera System
I did manage to create a system for scheduling baptisms, weddings, and quinceañeras. You can find that here: https://www.whatcomcatholic.org/updates/weddings-quinceaeras-and-baptisms. Now we just need to put dates to the system.

Olympics
Usually when something controversial happens, people want their pastor to comment on it. I generally try not to, as we live in a world where plenty of people already provide excellent commentary (e.g. Bishop Barron here, here, and here). We should not be surprised to have our faith mocked, especially in such an historically Catholic country. No matter how hard a society tries to abandon Christianity, they cannot, because the Gospel message is too potent and infectious; once you hear it, you cannot unhear it. So those who wish to abandon the faith instead are forced to turn to mockery and derision.