It was exciting to see the enthusiasm in our students, staff and parents as they renewed and made new friendships on the first day. I would like to extend a warm welcome to our new and returning families and staff members. Our caretaking staff deserves a huge round of applause as they did an amazing job of getting our school ready. My favorite part of a new school year is checking out the shiny floors! Thanks so much to Mr. Wensveen and Mrs. Wallace and the relief caretaking staff who helped to make our school opening special. Those floors, among other things, look fabulous. If you see a caretaker in the halls, please express your gratitude for all the things they do to keep our school clean.
On September 21st I look forward to seeing everyone out at our Welcome Back BBQ and Family Blessing. The evening starts with a family blessing by Father Salvador at 5:45 followed by hamburgers. Following the supper at 6:45, teachers will be available in their classrooms to meet with parents until 7:30. Jennifer will have information on Sacramental preparation and our Parent Council members will also be available to meet people. Please come out and join us for a wonderful evening of fellowship and community building.
We are in Year 2 of Growing in Faith Together and this year our theme is Growing in Spirit. We will nurture our faith this year through Pope Francis’ teaching that “all human persons, all of us, are important in God’s eyes.” Keeping this in mind, we will recognize the gift of others: that we are all children of God and to embrace this and recognize it in others. This teaching fits in well with our Van Tighem Virtues of Honest, Accepting, Wise, Kind and Spiritual which we will continue to develop and imbed into our school culture. Our call to action for this year is to deepen our experience with prayer. To help facilitate this, staff members received the Vatican approved book The Essential Guide to Catholic Prayer and the Mass by Mary De Turris Poust. Staff and students will receive prayer journals and a blessing from school administration. Each month we will introduce staff and students to different forms of prayer. To start the year, we prayed for our FLVT and Holy Spirit School Communities with a sweet prayer that uses M &M’s or Skittles. As you eat a candy piece, you pray the prayers according to the color of candy. I have included the prayer in the newsletter so that your family can pray for the school community.
Our speaker David Wells talked to us about prayer and this was one of the things that really stuck with me: “Pray as you can, not as you ought.” He went on to say that praying in different ways will enrich you and will enrich your community. It will help in the journey towards being more missionary. I invite you to follow along with us in our journey to deepen our prayer life, try out different forms of prayer grow in our spirit as children of God. God Bless and have a wonderful year.
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