Jul 22, 2026

Greetings,

This week is our Parish Festival! Slowly, fellow St. Sebastianite volunteers have been building up our festival so that we will have something pretty great in place when we reach our 100th anniversary. The festival covers several days in the summer around the date of our founding and is echoed in January around the Feast Day of St. Sebastian. The summer season of our celebrations is about to commence! The first two nights are ticketed events, followed by a parish-wide fun day beginning with Mass on Saturday followed by a procession with our St. Sebastian statue to the Festival Grounds, where there will be food, drinks, raffles and games. That night will finish off with a procession back to the church and a candlelit praying of Compline, the official Night Prayer of the church. That was such a special moment last year with the seminarians assisting us! I look forward to it this year.

Here is a calendar of events:

Thursday, July 30 Ladies Night Out from 6-9pm (Ticketed event)

Friday, July 31 Bourbon Tasting and Pig Roast from 6-10pm (Ticketed event)

Saturday, August 1 Mass at 4:30pm, Parish Festival 5:30-9:30pm (There is no entrance fee but food and beverage tickets can be pre-purchased online or will be available at the door.)

Bourbon Raffle Purchase tickets for a chance to win a basket of top-shelf bourbons!

A huge thank you to all our volunteers who are helping put on these great events to mark the founding of our parish. Many blessings upon you who help bring so many blessings to our parish!

IN OTHER NEWS:

AWAY: I will continue to be gone most of this week. My sister, Joanie and I are in Lake Placid, New York visiting my other sister and her family. Fr. Joseph will be on hand to assist you in anything you might need. I will be returning in time for the festival.

FINAL SEMINARIAN WEEK: Mr. Johannes, our seminarian intern, will be bringing his official time with us to an end soon. His internship evaluation will take place a week from Monday. It seems that I am just getting ready to start enjoying summer and it is coming to an end! Thank you to those of you who have served on his Lay Board. It is their role to help form future priests, so their role is vital for the future of the diocese.

We will also be winding down our time with our lay interns. It has been so wonderful having them around! The summer not only included decent renumeration, interns across the diocese also enjoyed retreat days and fun adventures together. If you are a college student or a parent of one, I highly recommend keeping an eye out for the internship offerings next summer!

God bless,

Fr. Valencheck