An appeal for urgent church repairs
Dear Parishioners,
As you know, we have endured the most difficult social catastrophe of our lifetimes with the pandemic. Our entire society, throughout the world, has been subjected to enormous stress, loss of freedom, health crisis and economic disaster. Each person has been affected in one way or another. Indeed, our parish has been deeply affected. We have experienced the loss of public services and have all been deprived of the unequaled joy of being together as a family for nearly all of Great Lent, the Paschal season and only now, at Pentecost, are we going to be able to approach and greet one another. It will be many weeks until we can resume a normal life. Some have said we will have a “new normal”. I refuse to accept that and I look forward, in the near future, when we can have our usual family life together.
In all this turmoil, our parish has continued to serve the services, pray for one another and keep as normal a schedule as possible. And of course, during that time we have still had our normal responsibilities as well. Through our generous parishioners we have been able to keep paying our bills and meeting our financial obligations, but it has been a little tight financially. We have to pay modest salaries, pay our utility bills, and keep up with maintenance and repairs.
We now have new obstacles; Damaging storms over the winter revealed a need to replace the roof over the church. We must ensure the safety of our beautiful iconography as even a minor leak could cause extensive ruin. We hope to begin replacing the roof within a month. A new roof is very expensive and due to a lack of expendable finances, we must begin asking for generous donations. In addition to the roof, we must make modifications to fire protection in the kitchen and eventually the roof for our Community Center needs replacement as well. There are a number of other expensive maintenance matters that need to be addressed as well.
The total cost for all our roof repairs and other maintenance issues could well come close to $40,000.00. For our small community this is an enormous amount of money but we have made gigantic strides in the past to build a beautiful church and have some of the most beautiful iconography in America and this will be no different. We need each family to think of all the countless blessings God has given us and in deep gratitude search our hearts and give to His work the maximum amount we can afford. Each of us contribute to the life of our community. Each of us receive equally the benefits of a wonderful parish. And each of us likewise has the obligation before God to generously support the parish.
Please join me in your support for our community dedicated to the Most Holy Mother of God. Let us join our hands, never being stingy, but joyfully bestowing the abundance of our financial gifts to the Lord and His Holy Church!
May God bless every donor. May He open our parish soon and may we all participate in the festal joy of Pentecost together.
Fr. Alexis