July/August Newsletter

KofC 17043

July – August 2021 Newsletter

Brothers in Christ, I bring to you our newest Newsletter combined with our notes from our recent Officers Organizational and Strategy meeting.  First and foremost, I wish to thank all of the Officers of Council 17043 that were a part of enabling this Council to receive the coveted Star Council award for the third consecutive year.  I salute each and every one of you as you are the backbone of this Council – Thanks a million on behalf of your fellow members of 17043 and your brothers and sisters at Little Flower Church.  Next, I want to welcome all of our newly elected officers.  We again thank you for standing up to the call to further serve our Lord and your brothers and sisters in Christ.  We look forward to another great year of serving the Spiritual leader of our Parish Father Julius!  We are Blessed by his presence.  We will always remember our main mission is to serve his needs and assist him in growing and leading our flock.  Let us always remember we it is one thing to speak the word, but it is another to be doers of the word – Let us in 17043 be the soldiers or doers of Jesus’ work here in our community!  We look forward to yet another successful year as we look forward!

Spotlight on a Member Knight – Sir Knight Rick Alexander – Words can not express my sincere thanks to brother Rick for his guidance as we move along and write the history book of Council 17043.  It was only a few short years ago that Rick’s foresight with guidance from Father Terry that a Council at 17043 was a vision.  With his knowledge of the Knights of Columbus as an organization, he was able to get this going almost immediately.   We see the results of Rick’s efforts – 3 years in existence – 3-time Star Council!  This is an amazing accomplishment.  Next, when it came time to seek time to spend with his newly anticipated twin granddaughters and not run again for Grand Knight, it was time for someone to step into his shoes, a huge task.  Knowing that I could count on him to guide me through the process with some uncertainty God led me to accept the nomination to run for Grand Knight.  It was only through the guidance and constant assistance provided by him that enabled our Council to continue to operate at a high level.    I want to give you a little background on him, Rick has been married to his Bride Kathleen nearing forty years.  Rick joined the Knights of Columbus in 1993, awarded the fourth degree in 1995.  In the time since he has held almost every position available to a member of the Knights of Columbus from a member, Grand Knight, Trustee, Color Guard Commander, District Deputy, and the list goes on and on.  Sir Rick, we salute you and we are fortunate to have been able to pull from your vast knowledge of our Fraternal Brotherhood.  We look for years of guidance, friendship, and brotherhood in Christ!  God Bless my friend!

Welcome, Father Julius – We are excited to welcome Father Julius to shepherd our Little Flower Family!  We are also excited to welcome him as a member of our Brotherhood and Council.  He recently transferred his membership to Council 17043 and has volunteered to serve as our Chaplain and Spiritual advisor with the approval of Bishop Rhoades.  We are excited to have you as our Spiritual leader!  Father Julius is a Fourth-Degree member of the Knights of Columbus.  May God pour out his Blessings upon you as you become our Spiritual guide, we are certain that with God’s Blessings and guidance we together will accomplish great things together.  

Highlights of Officer Organizational Meeting August 2021

Committee Formations – We will be forming committees in all Faith in Action Categories – Faith – This area includes Spiritual Reflections, Sponsorship of Seminarians, Holy Hours, Rosaries, etc. Family – Food for Families, Family of the Month, Family Prayer Night, etc.  Community – Coats for Kids, Global Wheel Chair Mission, Habitat for Humanity, Leave no Neighbor behind, etc.  Life – March for Life, Special Olympics, Ultrasound Program, Pregnancy Center Support, etc.   Brother Brian Peterson is our Program Director and as such, all committee will report to him.  We are seeking leaders of each of the above committees along with members of the committee.  We are asking each member of our Council to find one of these committees in which he has an interest and join and help this committee serve Christ by serving our brothers and sisters.   If you have an interest in leading or being a member of one of these committees please reach out to Brian Peterson or me.   

• Fund Raiser – We are planning an event called Dinner and a Movie, at the present time we are looking at either the last Saturday in September or the First Saturday in October.  The event will be a Spaghetti Dinner followed by a movie.  For the September event we are planning a movie Therese – An Ordinary girl – An Extraordinary Soul.  We are excited to show this movie about the life of our Patron Saint!  More details to come.  Should this prove fruitful, we plan to have a dinner and a movie event once per quarter as a fund-raising event.  Stay tuned and please be prepared to assist in these events.  The first fundraiser is to support our mission with the Gibault Home in Terre Haute.

• Men’s Prayer Breakfast – As in the past our members have been instrumental in helping to make this event a real success, please be ready to stand up and assist.  See brother Charles Ingram for more information and to volunteer to assist.

• Soccer Challenge & Free Throw Contest – We will be participating in these (2) important youth outings sponsored by our Supreme Council.  Brother Scott Smithburn has volunteered to lead these events.  Contact him if you are interested in assisting.

• Recruiting New Members – Each of us is tasked to bring fellow Catholic Men to our Fraternity.  Any member can sign someone up by visiting KofC.org and select join now, then sign the person up, be sure to list our Council as the Council they wish to be a member of, and then when asked to pay the fee place – mcgivney2020 and the application fee will be waived.  We are also planning an event where the Grand Knight, Deputy Grand Knight, and Chancellor will address each mass session.  With this, we will need fellow Knights available after each mass to answer questions and possibly use phones or laptops to enroll interested members.  No more chasing down the form 100.   I challenge each of us to help grow our Council.

• Planning – This message is to each and every member of our Council, if you have an event that you would like to see our Council participate in, please reach out to either Brother Peterson, or myself so we can get it to the committee and then on our calendar.  We would like to plan out the entire upcoming year now.

• Pumpkin Sales – We discussed selling Pumpkins for a fundraiser.  As we left our meeting Brother Peterson will be researching this event.  It will involve 2 Weeks of selling Pumpkins, no upfront costs to our nothing to lose just funds to pursue.  The obstacle will be finding volunteers to man our sales operation for a 2-week period of 8 hours per day.  We would ask each member of our Council to consider committing a day and time where he could man this pumpkin sales event.  Again, this is under consideration only at this time.  We look to make a decision at our September meeting, this is to give you an idea as to where things are at.

• Special Olympics – We have been making attempts to get involved in Special Olympics since our Council’s birth some 4 years ago.  We recently had a call back from Jennifer Brown the Special Olympics Coordinator for the St Joe area.  She is as excited about forming a relationship with us as we are with her.  This is a Specific Faith in Action Item so we are excited to partner with this organization.  Brother Scott Smithburn will lead this mission and we thank him for this.  There are a couple of areas that we will be able to step up and assist.  First and foremost, this group will be participating in the Special Olympics Softball outing in Greenwood on August 29th.  With this, they have not been able to do sufficient fundraising due to Covid and could use whatever financial assistance we could provide to help them make this trip.  We discussed providing 50% of the funds we raised from our Tootsie Roll Drive to help them in this journey.  These are the brothers and sisters in Christ that the Tootsie Roll Drive was intended to help.   Secondly, they will be having a Bowling Tournament in our area later this fall and will need some manpower help in this event, it sounds like a lot of fun helping keep participants on the lanes, etc.  More to come, Scott will be gathering more information as we move forward.

• Member Involvement – Brother Alan Chamblee mentioned that we have members that we do not even know.  They pay their dues and we never see them.  Several areas were discussed, first, we will see if Brother Mikel Hogan can create a directory area on our Web Site where a member can go and upload information on him and his family and maybe even upload a photo so we could look at the directory and know as many members as possible, maybe even make this a part of our recruitment program.  We also discussed calling all members.  Grand Knight suggested we divide our membership list up and have calls made to members and see if there are areas, we can either help them or they can assist us.   The following members have volunteered to make these calls – Grand Knight Ben, Warden Alan, Deputy Grand Knight Brian, and Trustee Mikel Hogan. 

•  Family of the Month – This program has been such a success; we will continue to conduct this program in concert with our Parish Families.  We salute the Royeca family, our family of the Month for June.  It was just announced that the Feck Family Vince and Maria are the selection for Family of the Month for July.  Many thanks to all who have made this program such a success, especially Brother’s Jerry Zent, Jim Reilly, Rick Gallant, and our brothers and Sisters at Little Flower Church.  While we thank everyone, we also ask that we keep involved in the program by submitting new families that can and should be considered for this recognition.  If you know of a family that is deserving, please take the time to complete the nomination form and submit them for consideration.  In the event, you have observed a family over a period of time and do not know them but admire the attendance and participation do not be frightened to introduce yourself and learn more about them.  I myself have done this on a couple of occasions.  Then you will have the information to support your nomination.  This is another program listed in the Faith in Action so please continue to support the program.

Summary – I want to express my most sincere thanks to all of our Officer Team that attended this meeting and helped in plotting out our direction for this Fraternal Year.  We also thank Brother Nevin Siqueira and his Wonderful Bride Jennifer for hosting our meeting for this planning session.  We just ended one of the most challenging times in which to operate and came out on top as a Star Council, nothing would be more satisfying than to reach that goal again in the upcoming year; however, this will take planning now and involvement throughout the upcoming year.  Let us never forget our mission – We are to serve the needs of our Pastor, our brothers, and Sisters in Christ, and lastly One and another through the fraternity.  So, let us march on and make a difference in the lives of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.