Conference Reports
Click on a conference to view their report:
St. Lawrence – President Eleanor Williams
We distributed food baskets at Christmas to 50 families and a $40.00 Gift card to 107 children thanks to the generosity of our parishioners. Our Resurrection choir sang at two funerals and we served lunches for four funerals totaling 160 family members and friends of the deceased. Our Conference scheduled 8 masses from November until now for deceased parishioners. We served Coffee & Donuts on Sunday, December 31st, after the 10:00AM Mass with 8 of our Vincentians assisting. As a result, we added two more parishioners willing to donate food for the funeral lunches.
St. Philip Neri – President Mike Hagist
We have received $500 from a conference in Bloomington and are in decent shape financially. This helps tremendously since we lost our donations from St Maria Goretti parish who has twinned with us for many years. We are concerned and struggling a bit with the Safeguarding policy roll-out. Vincentian Phyllis Manfredi has kindly agreed to take the point on this and we are working to get caught up with everyone at our February 4th meeting.
Holy Spirit – President Theresa Igel
Holy Spirit was able to provide Christmas assistance to 21 families (103 adults and children). Each family received a Meijer gift card for $40 per person. In addition we were able to pass out bicycles to most of the children. The bicycles were donated to us from the bicycle program at the SVDP Distribution Center.
Little Flower – President Frank Mackell
We held our Thanksgiving Blessings Bag drive in November, filling 100 bags for neighbors in need. Our Christmas Giving Tree program helped 96 families (including 200 children).
St Simon – President Tom Adkins
- Delivered Thanksgiving food baskets to 73 families, impacting a total of 240 individuals.
- Delivered Christmas gifts and books for children and food baskets to 51 families (impacting 68 adults and 143 children).
- Changing Lives Forever – graduated 8 Investigators from a program led by St Simon in conjunction with Domiciliary at Fort Benjamin Harris.
- Held an end-of-year fellowship holiday celebration with the St Simon
conference – good time had by all in attendance.
Tri-County Good Samaritan (Richmond, IN) – President Tony Talbert
Our food ministry operations are kicking off this month, on January 28th we are offering dinner with our pastor. He selected his favorite meal, we developed recipes and will limit RSVPs for 12 parishioners; $50 per person. Beginning February we will kick off neighbor cooking lessons for free. We will demonstate recipes that are healthy on a budget, highlighting recipes for food items that are given out by area food pantries. The last phase of the food ministry is to produce fresh foods for sale, this will launch in mid April. Our goals is for this program to sustain us financially. Our plan is to launch CLF on May 12, still lots of planning going on to launch the program. Lastly, our annual Advent calendar was a success, we had over 100 comfort boxes donated for the homeless and impoverished.
Our Lady of Lourdes – President Jennifer McNulty
OLL had a successful Christmas program serving 35 families gifts and food! We are starting the new year with a blanket drive for the warehouse and completing our safeguarding training.
St. Mary – No Current President
In late November we coordinated the annual giving tree for clothing and toys for children which we distributed via the Catholic Center’s Christmas Store. We held a year-end holiday celebration dinner for volunteers to enjoy a meal together and reflect on our accomplishments for the year. Our home visit call volume has been high with more requests being financial assistance for rent/utilities. Contributed $500 in December to support the St Mary “SVDP work program” for calendar year 2024. This program is a unique way that we help our neighbors in need. When neighbors come to the parish office asking for money, instead the parish facility manager (also a Vincentian who does weekly food deliveries) offers to pay the neighbor an hourly wage for a couple hours of work at the church. The facility manager supervises the neighbor, working side-by-side on the same task or project. At the end of the task the neighbor receives cash in hand as well as a boost in dignity and confidence.
