THE PARISH THAT WORKS TOGETHER WILL FLOURISH TOGETHER

Three years (2015-207) vision and mission statements “Towards Strengthening Our Faith Community” has inspired and motivated and gave us the direction for our parish and parishioners to grow spiritually. We as parishioners have brought life to our parish and fostered a sense of belonging for all parishioners through various activities, faith formations, events and fellowships. These have provided both building and strengthening our community within the parish and through the outreach efforts. Our three-year faith journey with vision statements have brought our parish to the height of celebrating the First World Day of the Poor cum Parish Family Day on 19 November from 10.30 am to 5.00 pm. On this auspicious day there were more 2000 people who walked in and out through out the day.

When the Holy Father announced about the First World Day of the Poor on the feast of St Anthony of Padua (13^th June) with the theme, “Let us Love, Not with the Words but with Deeds” I was thinking and reflecting what shall I do at the parish level. After much thought and prayers, I called upon few representatives from five ministries to work towards this event. Among the five ministries were the Fundraising Committee, Catechetical Ministry, Parish Integral Human Development Ministry (PHIDM), Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC) and Youth Ministry.

Initially, we just wanted to celebrate the First World Day of the Poor by inviting 1000 poor people who are staying around our parish vicinity - the local as well the foreigners and not forgetting our own Myanmar Zomi community. The PHID members were assigned to collaborate with the Catechetical Ministry to coordinate on the arrangements of food and other activities for the poor children and their families. We served lunch for 1000 poor people. In addition to this, each individual was given free coupons worth of RM10-20 for them to participate in various games and to purchase food/drinks and other items from jumble sales. They were also given 2-4-raffle tickets worth of RM4-8 each to win more than 100 exciting prizes. Our own catechism students too had an opportunity to mingle around and have a meal together with these poor families.

The Fund-Raising committee was solely in charge of selling of the raffle tickets and coupons. They sold all the tickets by distributing them to the BEC leaders and some individual parishioners. They managed to sell all the 30,000 printed raffle tickets just before the first draw took place. All those who came for the event purchased the coupons and participated in games and bought food/drinks at reasonable prices from the various booths such as ice-kacang, ice-cream, hot and soft drinks, rojak, burgers, etc. The assigned BECs managed to sell off all their food and beverages. These sales of raffle tickets and coupons will proceed for the installation of air conditioning units in our Dewan Monsignor Anthony Thomas and other refurbishment. This project is expected to commence in January/February 2018. We also invited three live bands to entertain the people who came for the event through out the day. All of them enjoyed their performances.

These past two months the Fundraising and 1^st World Day of the Poor committees worked around the clock to make this occasion a memorable and significant one. “Well done, good and faithful servant,” (Mt 25:23). On behalf of the organising committees I take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported, contributed, donated and prayed for the success of this event. I too would like to express my heart-felt gratitude to all parishioners for assisting and working with me since June 2014. Let’s commit ourselves as parishioners of St Joseph, “As for my family and me, we shall serve the Lord,” (Joshua 24:15), with the spirit of New Evangelisation for the next three years (2018-2020).