The Knightly News – Council 11091
From the Grand Knight’s Desk
My Worthy Brother Knights!
Now that Christmas season is behind us, it’s time to start preparing for Easter, with Lent beginning on Ash Wednesday, February 10th.
Supreme Knight Carl Anderson has announced a new initiative for the order, Building the Domestic Church While Strengthening Our Parish. It’s a mouthful, but one of the core aspects is support of our youth. I think our council has been ahead of the SK on this. You have heard the youth leaders who are members of our council speak about the youth of our parish and the support we have given them in their programs. We already have plans in place to continue to increase our support and to create a closer relationship with them. You can read more about the initiative in recent issues of Columbia.
January was a month that saw only a few council events, starting with the removal and storage of the community nativity sets and the lights on the Church and Friary. We also had another successful blood drive on the 10th. Kudos to Scott Shepard and his crew. Scott left early that day to go watch his Vikings – I bet he wished he had stayed at the blood drive. We also hosted the youth free throw contest on the 16th. Unfortunately, there was a smaller number of participants than usual.
February starts to get a little busier. The district free throw contest, hosted by our council, is on the 13th, and the new Knight social has been re-scheduled for that evening. The new member social will be a chance to introduce the new knights to not only some of our members, but also to the programs and activities of our council and to see what interests they have in getting involved. The fish fry dates are February 19th, March 4th and March 18th. The Shamrock Shave is on March 5th. Those events require many volunteers, to steal a phrase: “All Hands on Deck”!
Speaking of getting involved, some of our programs need an infusion of new participants. The magnet program, by far our biggest fundraiser, has been run by many of the same individuals for years now. For example, Scott Nejman will be Grand Knight next year, and while he really loves the program and has worked very hard this year to try to grow it, he will need some relief so he can take over the duties of GK. The program also needs new ideas to help it continue to grow and prosper. Likewise, many of the food events from Fish Fry’s and breakfasts to Founder’s Days have been run by the same group of men. They could use some new volunteers to start taking on some of the responsibilities. Take a look at the list of programs later in this newsletter. If you think you might be interested in any of them, just ask the chairman if they need some help. Take the activity for a test drive, and then decide if you want to become more involved or take over as the chair. Our council only prospers due to the strength of our volunteerism. Please get involved!
Every year we report our service programs and volunteer hours to the Supreme Council. We started working on this report and I am pleased to report that our service hours increased once again over the previous year with nearly 20,000 hours! Some of the increase was due to new or expanded programs, for instance having 3 fish fry’s instead of 2. We also conducted a major degree in 2015 as well as an extra 1st degree ceremony and prepared and served food for the parish’s Corpus Christi picnic. I would like to thank all of you and your families for all that you do in serving our council, our parish and our community. I am proud to be your Grand Knight.
P.S. Be sure to hold the date for April 2, 2016 for our 23rd Anniversary Dinner. This as a night where we get together with our wives/dates to celebrate our successes over the past year. If you have any pictures of council events over the past year, forward them to Dan Kotleba so he can upload them to Shutterfly and so we can use them in the multimedia show during the evening.
I look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting, Thursday February 4thth at 7:30.
Vivat Jesus!
Dan Perna, Grand Knight
