Two Important Kickoffs Here!

Two initiatives launch this week that are very important to our mission of outreach and fostering the faith of our people. First is the Registration for Faith Formation of our children and youth. Normally taking place in June, this year we moved it to August to accommodate all the changing circumstances in this time of pandemic. We now have enough plans in place to provide parents with a good idea of what their children’s Faith Formation program will look like so they can make decisions about registration. Our plan with the program for our children up through grade 6 is to offer a hybrid of small classes every other week and at-home learning the week in between. The program for our middle and high school youth will be mostly conducted online with occasional gatherings in church. With any grade, parents can choose to exempt their child from any in-person classes if they believe that is best, and we will of course change our plans based on any significant changes in the circumstances and directives from the archdiocese and state.

Second, we will be launching the St. Martha and St. Mary Parish Census Renewal Project at the end of the week. Especially with many of our parishioners not being comfortable yet returning to public Mass, it is crucial that we have accurate information about each family or household so we can be reaching out to all of you with the strength, consolation, and hope of the faith we share! Our efforts to connect with you through the internet have been very helpful to many, but we know there are many we cannot reach this way. In the spring we had a major phone campaign where volunteers tried to call any registered parishioner that we did not have an email for, but their generous efforts were frustrated by many of the phone numbers being disconnected. Besides, it is good practice to update each parish’s census data periodically just like the government census does, and it has been too long. To conserve your donations, we will try to conduct the census by email for those we can reach that way, and we will be sending it by postal mail to any other registered pa-rishioner.

So please watch your email for messages from us over the next two weeks. If you have not registered as a parishioner or if you don’t see an email or mailing from us, please go to www.pwc.church and click the Registration & Census link in the top right corner, or call the office to provide your phone and address. Faith Formation Registration will be added to our website sometime this week as well. Thank you for helping us keep in touch and keep fulfilling our mission to share Jesus Christ’s love with all the people in our communi-ties!