“After many meetings and much discussion, St. Agnes Parish decided to adopt a parish closer to home so that parishioners could establish a sense of community as well as have the opportunity to visit the sister parish and have them visit us as guests,” said Father Neuman.
“They definitely have much to offer us in growing our faith and we can assist them in the growth of theirs. We have discovered that the basis for adopting a parish is primarily to build a relationship and not to just give monetary donations in a collection once a month,” he said.
To kick off the parish’s new relationship, the pastoral council issued a Christmas challenge on Sunday, Dec. 6, asking each family/individual in the parish to donate one plastic grocery-size bag with items to send to Good Shepherd Mission in time for Christmas. Items being requested for the mission included basic necessities of food, toiletries, school supplies, mittens or gloves, hats, socks, underwear, baby pantry items and children’s books.
On Dec. 13, the council held a Christmas packing party after the 10 a.m. Mass and packed up more than 85 boxes of donated items. In addition, parishioners donated more than $360 to help with the cost of shipping and/or delivery and wrote out Christmas cards to Good Shepherd parishioners. The following week, several Knights of Columbus members made the trip to West Virginia to deliver the items to the mission.
“The pastoral council and I were so pleased at the overwhelming response of donations from St. Agnes parishioners to assist our new sister parish. The heartfelt and sincere outreach from our parishioners to those in great need was definitely the gift of the Holy Spirit working in all of us,” said Father Neuman.
According to Betty Bannister of Good Shepherd Mission, “It was wonderful opening the boxes and seeing the items for the baby pantry and other items for the people who can’t buy them. It was a great surprise to receive all the items and is a very good start to the new year.”
St. Agnes parishioners are looking forward to building their relationship with their new sister parish with a variety of projects, while the children of the parish are interested in establishing pen pal relationships to share their ideas of faith and what it means to be Christian.