Meeting Minutes 1/28/99

Sister Parish Committee meetings are held the second and fourth Thursdays of each month at 7 pm. in the Parish Center. Newcomers are always welcome. If you have questions, please contact any of the members of the committee.

What follows are the minutes of the Thursday, January 28th, 1999 meeting.

Chris and Louise reported on the delegation informational meeting last week. Right now, we appear to be at 4 to 5 delegates with about a week or so left to recruit. Mindy and perhaps Vickie from the committee as well as 2 or 3 parishioners have expressed serious intentions. Orientation dates of 4 Monday evenings were also set(2/22, 3/1,3/8,3/15). The plan is still to leave on or about the 25th. The SP Inc. portion of the cost will be $876 added to whatever airfare we can arrange. If you are interested in joining the delegation, call Chris at 823-6643 or Louise at 651/645-6821.

Jeff reported that with Mindy's(and perhaps Walter and Jackie's) help he will try to chronicle the delegation as it happens on the web page. The amount and timeliness of the information will be limited by the Mindy's ability to find a phone line, but we ought to be able to update every other day??

The winter retreat is set for Mar. 5-7. Most of those at tonites meeting will be attending. If you are still interested in joining, call Tim and Mary Beth at 651/696-0009. Saturday mornings topic will be cross-cultural communication issues. Louise will lead a post-skiing session on the role of finances in our hermanamiento(How much and what types of financial help is too much?). Jeff will lead a Sunday session on revisiting our "shared ministry" form for our committee. What have we done since "reorganization"?

Marge Bonnert has asked to meet with us at our Feb. 11th meeting regarding youth involvement in our hermanamiento. She will be first on the agenda, so try to arrive on time.

Tim and Mary Beth have sent several messages to TNII including business and personal greetings. We are not getting messages back. Despite the email improvement we are beginning to have communication problems again. We are not sure at this time if it is due to technical problems, lack of interest, lack of time, or cross-cultural communication differences. Stay tuned.

Louise reported on the year end budget. Our balance was $4,655.34 plus $1500 set aside as an endowment fund. We will be receiving another $1500 before July 1 and will be billed shortly for our $500 SP Inc. membership. Louise suggested that we may wish to explore whether we should revisit the idea of donating to the Walter and Jackie's Sister Parish Center.

Bible study continues with a very small group. We of course have not heard yet whether TNII is even having sessions and if they are what their thoughts are. Carol is continuing to send our reflections down via email.

We discussed Vickie Schmidt's concern about using money to help with the building of the church. Our consensus was that we were doing the right thing by sending the $2000, but the second half of her email about trying to reach out beyond our immediate hermanamiento to the TNII community at large made an impression on us. We talked about how we might do that and about perhaps asking TNII's committee for suggestions. Of course the more layers of a community we extend into, the greater the complexity of understanding and misunderstanding.

Jeff mentioned the SJA Volunteer dinner/dance on Fri., Feb. 12. He and Alex(kids willing) are going to try to go as well as Louise +???

Several new happenings are mentioned in the UpComing Events page of our website. You might wish to check it out by clicking on Upcoming Events below.

Vickie brought the latest version of the Intro. to Sister Parish packet for interested parishioners to tonite's meeting. But because she left halfway through to join choir rehearsal, we tabled this item until the next meeting.