As we end this year 2020, I want to send all of you a warm note to thank you for your love for our Parish. It has been inspiring to see your commitment and support during this challenging year. While we lived a year full of difficulties, there were so many positive things taking place in our Parish and I’m grateful to God and to each one of you.
Spiritual Life
Lent Online Retreats: We had the unique experience of a sharing retreat for the Hispanic community on Zoom, led by my brother, Fr. Marco Mikalonis from Argentina. Mr. Ovando supported us from Southern California for our English Retreat.
Daily Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament: We implemented the daily exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at our SAG site. It has been beautiful to see your response. There are visitors every single day of the week. The Blessed Sacrament is there for you every day of the week from 9am until sunset.
Holy Mass: We made a great, flexible, and creative team. We worked together to set up outdoors, livestream, changing schedules as needed. We got great help to use our Church when it was possible. One of the most beautiful testimonies was your desire to receive the Eucharist. Thank you for your love for the Eucharist.
Easter and Christmas: Yes, this year was very different. We had a very nice attendance for our Christmas masses at SAG and OLR. I loved our Masses.
Youth Mass: We had our largest youth Mass in many years — about 160 total in attendance when the max allowed was 200.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast: The Hispanic Community and all the Parish celebrated this lovely feast as usual. In preparation, we had online novenas, rosaries and other activities.
Novena del Nino Jesus: We also had our Christmas Novena on Zoom.
There were many other great activities taking place in the parish this year. Sadly, due to COVID restrictions, some of the usual activities couldn’t take place.
Finances
Our Parish was able to sustain all its basic needs and engage in outreach programs to support the community. Our income has decreased but we are still receiving enough to meet our obligations. The announcement of the retirement of several full time staff lowered our payroll expenses. The priests and many generous volunteers picked up their duties and we are able to keep up with our needs. Once we overcome this pandemic we will rebuild the staff and put new positions and initiatives in place.
We also received extraordinary spontaneous donations from some families which helped us greatly. For instance, one family donated a total of 20k and another made a donation of 28k. Finally, another family made a generous gift of 43k. These extraordinary donations are much appreciated and became very helpful during these times.
Saint Vincent de Paul and the Human Concerns committee engaged in multiple outreach initiatives. The response from the community was amazing. We thank you so much for this.
As our Parish went down from 3 to 2 priests, I as pastor, decided in agreement with the Finance Board, to offer support to one parish in need in our Diocese. Since the beginning of the pandemic our Parish has been contributing one full time salary every month to Our Lady of Refuge Parish in San Jose. It is my hope that we will be able to continue to do so with your generosity and our efforts to reduce some expenses.
We were also able to meet our ADA goal and we have a potential rebate of 9k that will come back to our Parish.
We are working tirelessly to finalize our OLR school lease. We have signed a letter of intent and are working on finalizing the lease effective July 1st, 2021. Mr. Tim Foy is donating his expertise and many hours to our parish to make this happen. This will represent a significant improvement to our parish as we will bring this lease closer to market value. This will be great for us. I also want to thank all the volunteers who have helped with this process in negotiating a renewal with ISTP and now getting a new tenant.
With the support of Tim Foy, Larry Reeves, and the Building and Equipment Maintenance Committee, I brought the initiative to make better use of our facilities and put the Dermody Center up for a shared lease. This is also looking very good and will potentially be leased by July 1st, 2021.
Retirements/Farewells
This year brought lots of staff change. I’m grateful for the many years of service of all those who decided to enjoy a well earned retirement. I also send my best wishes to those who relocated.
Susan Olsen — retirement Nora Lundin — retirement + Chris Lundin — retirement Paul Prochaska — retirement Maria de Jesus Gutierrez — relocation Deacon Jamie Garcia — relocation
New Volunteers
It is inspiring to see many of you who offered their help during this year of change and Pandemic. Some (but not all): Vivienne Fong, Bobby Lozano, Karen Peng, Tina Chen, Tim Foy, Fatima Giffen, the Fong Family … and the list goes on. Faith Formation
We said good-bye to our beloved Susan Olsen and welcomed Ana Arellano. Susan has been incredibly gracious mentoring Ana and continues to support our Parish as a volunteer. Our Faith Formation programs are being successfully managed by Ana. We continue to have the amazing support from Carmel Caligaris leading our Confirmation Classes. On our initiative (hers and mine) we are trying a collaborative program with Saint Athanasius in Mountain View. It is an amazing success and it was beautiful to see about 160 people in our youth Mass when we were able to have 200 people outdoors. Thank you Susan, Ana, Carmel and all volunteers making this possible. Thank you!
The Hispanic Community continues to do an amazing job as well, running all our normal programs online. It is my desire to increase the collaboration between our English and Spanish programs. This is slowly happening and we are seeing beautiful results. Gracias totales!
Maintenance
The main (but not only) maintenance projects that took place this year were:
Thanks to the Mary Baricci fund (bequest) we were able to do deep exterior renovation of our beautiful Saint Thomas of Aquinas Church.
We are making great improvements to the Dermody Center to make it a good place for our future tenants.
We started the renovation our Pastoral Center offices. We want to make it look warm and welcoming.
After 2 years with no heating in the rectory (yes, your priest have been living in a freezer, hahaha) and even more year with a very deficient system, we were able to schedule the installation of an HVAC system for the priests’ rooms for January 2021. Thank you for this. It is much needed.
There were many other smaller projects that took place. There are many others that will happen soon as well.
Other initiatives
Parish Town Hall: In May 2020, we had our first ever Parish Town Hall (yes during a Pandemic!). We had more than 100 participants connected. Many of the items from that meeting are currently being accomplished (renovations of facilities, improvement of Dermody Center, etc.).
Phone Tree: Both the Hispanic and Anglo communities engaged in a phone tree. We were able to reach out to hundreds of parishioners to check in with them and stay in touch.
Parish Newsletter: We started our parish Newsletter improving our communications. Our current newsletter reaches 1000+ parishioners.
Collaboration with the Stanford Catholic Community: Our friends found a home in our STA Church as the Stanford Memorial Church remains closed. We are very happy to be able to offer a space for our friends from Stanford.
There are many things that took place. I could keep going and going. I’m sure I’m missing some very important ones. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of our year. It was not a bad year! And as things get better, I see a promising future for our Parish.
As we end this calendar year, please receive on behalf of the parish Staff my heartfelt THANK YOU! I truly love this Parish and Community. It is a blessing to be with you. Let’s continue working together. Thank you to all the new volunteers who approached me during the year to support the Parish. Thank you to those who have been involved in the parish for so long. Thanks to ALL OF YOU. Let’s not give up. Yes, it is also true that there were many challenges in our Parish. We navigated through them together. Let’s continue to do so.
Happy Feast of Mary Mother of God! Happy New Year!