Sister Parish Committee meetings are held the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 7 pm. in the school. Newcomers are always welcome. If you have questions, please contact any of the members of the committee.
What follows are the minutes of the Wednesday, May 16, 2001 meetings.
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
Present: Susan, Louise, Joel, Jeff, Julie, Lisa C., Mindy, Trina, Carol F.
To amend the last meeting's minutes, the poster Mindy purchased of the Los Madres quilt was donated to the silent auction honoring Vickie Schmidt and Dick Fenske in Moorhead. Mindy said the event was a huge success with many people and hopefully a large contribution to SP Inc.
Julie reported that Fr. George will soon write a letter to Padre Arturo, personally inviting him to visit our community and parish. His visit could be as a part of a delegation or by himself. Arturo is fluent in English and quite articulate. Many tonite felt Arturo's visit could have a very positive impact on St. Joans as well as the Twin City community.
Fr. George also was curious as to why we would want to do another candle sale this fall with a bankroll of over $8000. It was pointed out that we have only a little over $2000 unspoken for. The rest was scheduled for providing for the next South to North delegation and our wish to expand our program of providing scholarships to St. Joan parishioners to join a delegation who cannot afford the entire cost. We did debate over how much of a "reserve" or endowment we should have for emergencies. Julie agreed to talk to Fr. George about our financial situation.
Julie will take any names of interested parishioners who call to start a list for Spanish classes for this fall. It is not certain whether we will or will not offer classes, but the interest appears to be enough to consider it.
Anna will start using the Spanish "Our Father" this summer in hopes that the parish will be able to be comfortable with it by the time a future delegation comes to visit.
Julie reported that SJA was the only predominately white parish that signed the petition to change the driver's license law for immigrants. That surprised many in the committee.
Tim and Louise will work together to compose a letter to TNII regarding where they are at. Communication from TNII has been very poor again in the last months.
In the biggest news of the nite, Mindy reported that Walter and Jackie will resign from Sister Parish Inc. to move to Scotland in October. They have been thinking about a change for some time now. While it will be a huge loss to Sister Parish, everyone in our committee understood and wishes them well. It is expected that Ruth will stay on in some capacity and that Sister Parish will find two other staff persons. A woman named Victoria (?) is interning this summer with some delegations and may be considered. Walter and Jackie may also have some other leads. As a committee we felt this change was important enough for us to support in some fashion. We are very concerned about getting quality people for these positions. We discussed and decided to authorize spending $1000 of our unallocated $2000 to send to SP Inc. specifically for the purpose of helping in the search and training of the new people. We would leave the discretion of the use of the money up to SP Inc. but it may include airfare, hotel, expenses, and/or training of new staff.
Regarding new delegations, Ruth was going to visit TNII to meet with their Pastoral Council regarding this. Due to miscommunication, that meeting did not occur but Ruth may have met with others in TNII and with TNI and they are considering a Sister Parish linkage. Via email, we did express our thoughts of 2 separate(1 youth, 1 adult) North to South delegations in the summer of 2002 to Jackie and TNII(we thought). It appears that TNII may not have gotten the email. Lisa C. will send it again to them. Jackie did respond and expressed some concern about staffing 2 delegations in the summer but did not rule it out.
Next Meeting: Wednesday, June 6th at 7 pm in the Sunflower Room
Jeff