The New Year has begun — what will it bring? May God give us the grace to be rooted in gratitude for his many gifts to us, so that we can also look forward with hope to the gifts which will be coming!  Remember to place the names of friends, neighbors, and families in our St. Monica boxes. And let’s pray that these people dear to us will come to know Jesus’s love more deeply and find the support of a church home.

Serve Together is a program at St. Stephen Protomartyr that makes it easy for people to take their next step in serving others. Our first spring Serve Together event is coming up. We’ll be helping with a great cause: Crisis Aid International’s work with those facing human trafficking. On the weekend of Jan. 13-14 we’ll collect used jewelry at all of our churches; all kinds of jewelry are welcome — plain or fancy. Then, on Jan. 21 at 11 a.m. in the Father Keaney Center, we’ll sort and clean all the donated jewelry so that Crisis Aid International can sell it through their Monarch Jewelry fundraiser and use the proceeds to help those enslaved by human trafficking. To sign up to help on Jan. 21, click here.

We are working on our sixth month of being a combined parish family, and I’d like to hear your thoughts on how the transition has been going. You’ve likely already seen that I like surveys; it’s a great way for us to learn what people are thinking and how we can advance our mission. In the past, surveys have helped us set our Mass schedule and form our school strategic plan, and back in December, you gave us some information about songs we should use in the coming year. But this survey is different; this survey is more important.

The survey we are featuring this month, our 2024 Winter Transition Survey, will likely be the most important survey for all of 2024. We’re going to use it to consider how we are doing and what we should do next. So please take a few moments to fill it out.
Here’s three reasons why this survey counts:

• On this survey, we ask your thoughts about whether or not we should add another Sunday Mass to our weekend schedule.
• On this survey, we ask your preferences regarding our music ministry.
• On this survey, we ask you to give us your gut read on how the transition is going, and what should be our focus next.

Whether you are thrilled with our current direction, or whether you see that it should change, let us know! We need to hear about what should change, so we can wisely pick priorities for the coming year. We also need to hear about what is going well, so we don’t accidentally break something good while we try to make something better.

You can fill out the survey online, of course, or pick up a printed copy available at the doors of our church this weekend. If you have children or teens in your family, feel free to help them fill out a survey, too. We want to know what young Christians are thinking!

God bless you, and may God bless our parish in the week ahead!