Celebration of Gifts and Talents Recap

About a month ago, we held our parish’s annual Celebration of Gifts and Talents (CGT), which coincided with the celebration of the feast of our patron saint, St. Timothy. I just wanted to write a little review of what took place that evening, share what happened, and preview for a future one.

Our CGT evening began right after the Saturday evening Mass. We had about 65 or so in attendance, and nearly everyone who had registered was able to be there. We began with a brief word of welcome and a prayer of grace before diving into the food. The food was made and delivered by a local restaurant and served up by members of our Parish Pastoral Council and other helpful volunteers. The food was certainly one of the highlights of the night, which was echoed by the comments and feedback of those present. We had three different types of lasagna: beef, veggie, and a chicken alfredo variant; Caesar salad and garlic bread filled in whatever gaps were left by the lasagna.

Once our hunger had been sufficiently satiated, we began our formal presentation of the evening. We recounted the many things that our parish experienced since the beginning of 2022, which was still quite marked by the pandemic restrictions, and could see how many things in our parish continued or came more to life as the year progressed. We had a list of notable things from the year that took up over a page, so I won’t re-post those all here. I would say one of the highlights that would be important to recount though was that our parish was able to hire on Jerico as our part time Youth Ministry Coordinator.

The next part of the formal presentation highlighted some of the works of various ministries, which included Jerico who reviewed what’s been going on. Daniel from our PPC also presented a ministry that he’s been part of for quite some time in revitalizing and updating our parish website, which was full of content and functional, but needed a new design and vision. Daniel gave a quick preview of the newly launched site. Please be sure to check it out if you have not yet!

Our CGT wouldn’t be complete without the all-important update from our Parish Finance Committee, which was presented by our current Chair, Nick. He put together some very nice slides which gave a good summary of our 2022 financial situation and what we expect to see in 2023. People commented that this presentation was informative, interesting, and helpful.

We concluded the formal presentation with a brief preview of some things we might expect to see happen in our parish for 2023. Some of these things are already happening and will be ongoing, such as pancake breakfasts or faith and family events, but also include some new events like celebrating 35 years since our first Mass as a community. The evening finished with some cake and fellowship.

We had planned to record by video the more formal presentation part of the night, but I had forgotten to hit the small, but essential “record” button when we started (I was distracted by the good food!). But we were able to record the latter half, and then I separately recorded a voice over part to cover the missing beginning half. We’re currently in the process of getting that put together and edited, and plan to upload that to our parish YouTube channel– hopefully, it will be up within 2-3 weeks. Sorry for the delay for those looking forward to it! We will be sure to advertise it in the bulletin and our website when it’s ready. And hopefully more will be able to join us for it next year!

UPDATE: We finished editing the video and you can now find it here! Enjoy!

May our patron, St. Timothy, continue to guide us as we continue into 2023!

Fr. Brian Trueman and St. Timothy PPC