Dear friends in the Lord,

I’ve now been back to IHM for two and a half months. The time has passed quickly, and day by day I find myself reflecting even more on the history of this parish, its present and future. Renewing old friendships and making new ones is very important to me. We gather here in this Church to celebrate the Eucharist. It is the source and summit of our faith. We come here to join in prayer as a Community of Faith and to go forth every time we do so to put our faith into action.  All of you as a parish family are very important.

In 2001, when I was previously pastor, we focused on a Strategic Plan for the parish. The leadership who worked with me recognized the need to look at our future. We talked about whether we were going to build a new church or totally renovate the one we were using – what you call the historic church. We also wanted a place to gather and enjoy one another’s company with food and other kinds of activities. We wanted a real kitchen of our own.  We wanted a large parish center so we would no longer be dependent on the IHM School cafeteria for all our large gatherings outside of Mass. We hoped for more meeting rooms for our Ministries and Religious Education, particularly Adult Education. We knew that we would still need to use the school for our young people’s religious education because of the number of rooms that we would need. These were our hopes and dreams.

Of course, in 2002, I was transferred to Prince of Peace in Buford and then on to Flowery Branch. What began here as a hope continued to be pushed forward with ultimately a first focus on the building of a new church. In 2008 you moved into this church. It’s a beautiful space and there is great gratitude for all who helped this project come to completion with planning, implementation, and most especially very generous donations. I believe this project ultimately cost somewhere over $8 million dollars. Were we to do this project today, I have no doubt the cost would be at least double that. At the same time, there were hopes to go ahead and renovate the historic church as the Parish Center, but this was put on hold because of money issues.  Around $500,000 was set aside to eventually be used to help fund the renovation.

Now we find ourselves in 2023 and it’s time to renovate! As to the exact date we will begin, it is still in the hands of Dekalb County; but hopefully it will be sooner than later.  Monsignor Al Jowdy, along with you began a campaign called:  FULFILLING THE PROMISE. Many thanks to Monsignor Al Jowdy for pushing ahead with this project along with the building of the new rectory in 2019.

I want to bring you up to date then with where we are:

316 families have pledged approximately $2,200,00. Collected in cash so far from monies received from pledges, and all other monies collected over time, including the money held over from the campaign when building the church and the wonderful food that our Hispanic community has sold recently after Masses is approximately $1.5 million. We still have outstanding pledged money to be collected in the amount of approximately 1.4 million. The total cost of the project is a little over $4.1 million. This means that we will need to borrow approximately $1.4 million. With our present debt on the rectory of approximately $800,000, we would be serving the total debt of approximately 2.2 million at around $18,000 a month out of our collection. I would hope that we can do whatever necessary so that the ongoing life of our parish is not greatly affected by our debt.

I stand before you today asking for your assistance. If you have not pledged, I ask you to please consider doing so. I’m also asking those of you who have pledged to consider increasing the amount of your pledge to be completed over 5 years rather than 3 years. I believe in this project as an opportunity for us to have a wonderful space where we can gather in fellowship and celebration. It’s been a long time coming and I’m excited to think that we can finally have a PARISH CENTER. For all of us this is our parish home, and we recognize the need to upgrade our facilities to accommodate our needs.

Thank you for your generosity to our Offertory, Archdiocesan Annual Appeal, ministry events, outreach and all the many ways you make a difference in this faith community and in the greater community. If you wish to pledge or increase your current pledge, please call the parish office, or stop by.  Thank you for your attention, your prayers, and your presence.