News - April 2022

Mary's Place's Burien location, one of annual Day of Service sites, has a couple events coming up and could use some volunteer help (ages 16 and up)!. Help them put on a Bingo and Stars Wars night for families on May 4th (May the 4th be with you!) and/or make Mother's Day cards on May 6th. Click above to learn more.

Gather up your hard-to-recycle products and drop them in our new BeautyCycle box in the church. The empty containers will be recycled through Nordstrom’s BeautyCycle program. Click above to learn which items we can take.

As we discern sponsorship of an Afghan refugee family, we invite all to attend a virtual event hosted by St. James Cathedral on Wednesday, April 27th from 6-7pm via Zoom and Facebook.   Over the past 6 months, more than 70,000 Afghans were evacuated and brought to the U.S.  Learn about the history and culture of Afghanistan, hear about the current situation, and better understand how families came to be here and the resettlement issues they face.  Hear from a panel of Afghans and volunteers to learn how to support current needs.  Click above for the Zoom and/or Facebook link to join.

Over the last few years the Catholic community has hosted a series of Immigration Summits focused on advocacy and Catholic Social Teaching, largely focused on allies of the immigrant community. This year, the steering committee has chosen to re-orient the Summit to focus on serving directly impacted communities. If you identify with an impacted immigrant community, please take a quick survey to help guide our planning .  We hope the information gathered in this survey, from the immigrant community, can inform the structure, content, and planning of the forthcoming summit. Click above to access the survey.

As we enter Holy Week, we remember how our Lord suffered and died so that each and every one of us might be saved from sin and have eternal life. Reflect on God’s infinite love for you. How have you responded to that love this Lent, and how can you share it with others? Visit crsricebowl.org to learn more and to find Stations of the Cross you can use for prayer during this Holy Week. Remember to turn in your Rice Bowl at the Holy Thursday Mass or at OLG School. Please convert coins to cash or checks (made out to “OLG” with “Rice Bowl” in the memo). Our counters thank you! Click above to learn how to give online.

Thank you to the 186 volunteers who signed up for our 9th Annual Day of Service. We served at 11 different sites in the region and also contributed donations to 16 additional organizations, including 20 lunches for AIDNW, 400 sandwiches for Operation Nightwatch, 110 Care Kits, 11 Rice Bowl meal kits, 21 Welcome baskets for Mary’s Place, 47 blankets and crafts for Children’s Hospital, 108 mats and toys for Seattle Humane Society, 45 paracord bracelets for Operation Gratitude, and 38 care bags for our homebound parishioners! We especially thank David Lindholm/Boar’s Head and Leschi Market for their generous donations of meats and cheeses that helped make our sandwiches possible. We appreciate everything everyone did to make this day possible, including our incredible volunteer leadership team: Karen, Colette, Marlo, Catherine, and Molly! Save the Date for the 2023 Day of Service coming up on March 25!

Hunger impacts millions of women, men and children around the world. Throughout Lent we have encountered communities in Guatemala, Bangladesh and Rwanda that are overcoming this problem so their members can have brighter futures. How is your community working to address hunger or other injustices locally and globally? Visit crsricebowl.org to learn more.  Check out the Stations of the Cross resources to deepen your Lenten journey. 

In his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis writes, “The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community.” As we look to the future in the Archdiocese of Seattle, the Lord is calling us to this openness and creativity. We face immediate and long-term challenges that call us to move beyond the familiar and the comfortable. These challenges also provide an opportunity for us to grow in our life in Jesus Christ, to accompany one another on the journey of faith, and to live the joy of the Gospel each day CLICK TO READ MORE