December 2003

Dear Brother Knights,

I would like to share a story with you. In late November I was lucky enough to attend a major degree in Edmonton to witness both Don Marchand and Ed Mailhot become fully third degree Knights in our council. It was very special and I was proud to have been there.

As many of you know, when you attend something like that, one of the joys is meeting up with old friends and making new ones. I was having a conversation with one of these old friends there and he was relating to me the story of the new parish priest they have, who comes straight from India. My friend was quite up upset about his perception of the treatment of this new fellow by the local bishop. Apparently The Indian priest landed in Edmonton, was driven to the bishop’s office, and then sent straight on to his new home. The problem, according to my friend was that this new priest had no money or clothes to speak of. All he owned was what he wore. Now the bishop sent him on his way without so much as a dollar to help him out. So of course it falls upon the local parishioners to come to the aid of the new shepherd. As he told me the story I could see that he was just absolutely insulted that there was no aid or provisions set out for the priest by the diocese.

This story struck me in such a way though, that I felt that I needed to say something. I think that we all know that when God sends you a task to do, and you have that queasy feeling that He wants you to say something, or do something that you are normally sure will cause you some kind of grief, that you just have to put your pride down in order to just get it done. I am at the shallow end of the courage pool when it comes to these things, and so for me it is difficult to try to tell someone that they may be wrong about something. I know that it just warms my heart when someone tells me that I may be wrong. But it has been my personal experience that if you try to hide from His voice, you end up hurting yourself or someone else in one form or another. He had a whale swallow Jonah for Pete’s sake. Can you imagine what he has in store for me if I try to skip out on something? All I know is that I laughed when I heard about the whale, but I don’t see many of those around here. I don’t even want to think about it anymore.

And so I faithfully passed on what in hindsight I am sure is the message that He wanted to get out. I proceeded to suggest that maybe there is reason for this crazy set of circumstances. I asked my friend to consider that when Jesus sent out the apostles, He pretty much told them to take nothing with them, save the clothes that they wore. They weren’t to be accepting money or gifts of that sort either. They were to search out a place where they would be welcome to stay for their visit, and when they left to move on to the next place, again it was with nothing. That is honestly putting your faith in the Lord that he will look after your needs.

I think this maybe a little harder to do for people from our glorious Western world than it would be for someone who is used to having much less than we have even on our bad days. I mentioned that this faithful new priest had embarked on a mission, answering the call of God and trusting Him completely. It is funny to say this and see that your friend is realizing something that maybe had never occurred to him. It is also funny to note that the little priest from India has not had to go ‘without’ since he arrived. I think that God has provided for him in the form of my friend and his fellow parishioners. They just don’t realize it yet. I suspect that the grumbling and rumbling have been slightly too loud for them to notice yet that God is saying thank you to them, probably with some kind of wonderful little Indian priest.

Now having thought about that, and dwelling on just how darn good I am, I realize that there is far more to the process here than just me, my friend and a priest from India. I am not sharing this story with you to blow my own horn again, although I have to admit it makes me look pretty darn good. The reason that I share this with you is because I want us all to stop and look around right now. Has the Lord ever made you go without? Has He not always provided us with what we need? What is there that we can ask for? What is our need that He has not given us? Darn it is easy for me to talk like this. I have never ever gone without. But boy have I spent more than my share of time questioning the administration and making note that I never voted for this guy we call God. How selfish we can be when we are inconvenienced in the slightest. I wanted to share this story with you, because He wanted me to. I think that maybe it is a message to someone that will read it someday and it will strike him or her just so. In their time of selfishness and emotion, hopefully they will see the words that make sense to them. Hopefully they will get a new start on a bad day, they will let God find them the way to love that day. Hopefully…

I never wrote to you last month. I apologize for that. I really hate to miss these little chats. They certainly do me a lot of good to write. I hope that they find some place out there with someone else as well. But last month was hard for some, or even most of us, as we lost a good friend to many. I can’t tell you what it all means to me yet. I still don’t know. What is the spin? You got me. All I know is that Someone who had a huge impact on us all in one way or another, will continue to impact us all for some time. I am like others who just expect to look up and see him standing in front of us, quietly laughing at some little joke that is so funny that he won’t let you in on it so that it can be even funnier. I was honored to be a pal bearer for his funeral, and being the shortest guy, I was placed in the middle on my side. I know that Rene had a good laugh as the sleeve buttons on my Knights of Columbus jacket got caught in the handle of the casket as we loaded it into the hearse and I was slowly pulled in with it. All I can say is “Funny. Real funny.”

There is a pet project that I have been working on behind the scenes this year. It involves two young boys. Late last Columbian year, a member of our council brought me a request for assistance. His neighbors have a child who has hearing difficulty. It is not severe enough to qualify for government assistance and hearing aids, but it is enough to cause a serious problem with the quality of his schooling. He can’t hear well enough in class to maintain his attention. Now this young boy is fortunate enough to have had access to a relatively new product that augments his hearing in class. It is basically an FM broadcasting sound system that increases the sound of the teachers voice to every child in the class. There was a report done on this system on the news recently. It is something that the teachers have been swearing by, but the school systems won’t fund. The cost is a little prohibitive to think about purchasing and installing in every classroom. Next year it seems that the system that they use now, which is a borrowed system, will not be available for them to use.

This family has a second child that is in kindergarten this year, but will be in need of the same kind of system once he arrives in grade 1. His hearing is also quite bad. So in short, this family is looking to purchase two of these sound systems to follow their children through their school years. It has proven to drastically alter the marks of the older boy, and in my mind, that is a feat in itself.

They are trying to find a large sum of money in order to purchase these systems. Now we are all well aware of the amounts of money that we have spent in the council this year. As a Grand Knight I would suggest that we have taxed our resources already as much as I would feel safe doing. However, I just have not the heart to turn these people away with nothing. They have tried some other alternatives already to no avail.

Now I have found another member who, for whatever reason, has offered to donate the full amount of the sound systems in the name of the Knights of Columbus. The condition is that we keep trying to find alternatives or additional sources to offset the cost until the end of this Columbian year, which is as always in June. The family has thanked this person profusely, but in order to have the systems ordered and ready to install for September, they need to place the order at the beginning of June. So I have really until that time to find other donations or sources of funding.

What I would like to do is ask that anyone else who may be willing to contribute to this get in touch with me. The total number we are working towards is $2800.00. I will be working on this for a while and in May I will be presenting it to the council as a notice of motion for us to discuss in June. This will be the last attempt for me to raise alternative funding for this project. I have pages of paperwork and information on this for anyone that would like to go through it.

For anyone that has any ideas of how to go about funding this project, please make your ideas heard. It will be appreciated.

Now as much as I wanted to avoid this, it seems that the time has come to say something about our bingos. As you are well aware, we are fortunate enough to be one of the few clubs in Leduc, or even the greater Edmonton area for that matter, that can rely on the income produced by frequent bingos. I say fortunate because there really are not too many clubs that have the privilege of two bingo incomes per month. As much as things have declined in the most recent years regarding the bingo revenue, we really are lucky to have the benefits that we do based on the budget money that comes in from this volunteer venture.

It seems however that we are losing sight of just exactly why we put in this time and effort. It seems that working a bingo has become a task of futility for most of us. While we have all gotten used to how and where most of the bingo money is to be spent, we seem to have lost some of the passion behind working for it. It is becoming increasingly difficult to come up with sufficient volunteers for the bingos. The men that have captained our teams have become quite burnt out and frustrated with the constant stream of rejections when trying to line a the 16 volunteers it takes. Other members have stopped participating for various reasons, not the least of which is the reality of how the council spends it’s money, or doesn’t spend it. I can understand that one of these sensitive issues will be by example, coming up at this meeting, the raising of council dues from $30 to $35 per year. An excellent point was brought up regarding this and why we aren’t using bingo money to cover the expenses that we are targeting with the increased dues.

But that is an issue for the meeting. The point is very simply this. We benefit a lot by our bingo revenue. In turn, many other groups, both those within, and those without, also benefit from this work of ours. However the approval rating of bingos within the church is definitely dropping as fast as the profits are. I don’t know what is the real cause of the difficulty in getting workers out, but it is rapidly approaching the point where we will be faced with the question, do we really want to maintain the bingos or not; and if we do, then where is our commitment to the program that has treated us so well for years.

I would very much like to make the suggestion that you find out what bingo team you are on, and then figure out which bingo dates work for you, well in advance of the bingos. We have the schedule for the year and it is available for anyone to check out. The very same goes for the pancake breakfast teams. Do not wait for the phone call. You make the call yourself. I can’t tell you how much this would assist the captains, and take the pressure off of other members who faithfully work all of the events.

If possible, we will be putting in both the schedule and the breakdown of the bingo and pancake breakfast teams in the newsletters. This should help clear any confusion regarding this, as well as give you the opportunity to be proactive. I am going to suggest that since the Leduc council has about 140 members, it should be easy to get 16 bingo workers for two bingos a month.

Please consider volunteering and not just ducking the call when it comes in.

Vivat Jesus

Chris

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