The meeting began with a scripture reading and the Centennial Prayer.

Rosemary Kubera said we would focus this evening on the action items decided during our last meeting, namely; development of a Newsletter, promotion and conducting additional Scripture meetings and promotion and marketing of the “Giving Tree.”

Regarding our Adult Education initiative, Fr. O’Brien discussed inviting Celia Sirois who is a very qualified individual and her program would be fantastic. He did extend an invitation to her to do something during Lent although he has not formalized it. This week in the bulletin he will place a notice inviting people to attend the Scripture discussion Weds 9:45 AM to 10:30 AM and beginning in January 7th from 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM Weds evenings which will be done once a month. We will evaluate the attendance and change the time to accommodate people if we believe a different time would be more convenient. There, of course, may be conflicts with other events but that is something you cannot usually avoid. Another piece of this Adult education is the formation of a book group which has been under discussion for some time and someone is doing some research on it. A book by Thomas Groome, “What Catholics Believe” would be our first book. It may take about a month to read a book and then perhaps a meeting for discussion on a Sunday night. More to come.

John Princiotti reported on the progress of the Newsletter. Although he only received one item from the PPC group he brought to the meeting the first sample of a newsletter and asked for comments and input regarding the content and delivery system. We asked John if he could have pictures in the newsletter which we thought would create more interest and attention. John is thinking of this newsletter in a booklet form of four pages. We also talked about using this vehicle as a way of marketing and recruiting people for the Giving Tree and we need more information directly from the Mannings. Margaret Kinsella will go back to the Mannings for the details of the level of involvement they would be interested in having from volunteers. We thanked John for all the work he did on the newsletter and the group had a lot of ideas in terms of making it more of a marketing piece because ultimately we are trying to attract our parishioners that are not attending church, and informing our parishioners who are attending services of some of the activities and accomplishments. At the outset—we are inviting more participation. A discussion took place on the possibility of some parts of the newsletter to contain a bilingual piece which Peter Jae offered to coordinate. We may summarize just the main points. Initially we may just do this in Chinese and then evaluate it.

More discussion occurred regarding the Giving Tree and the number of volunteers needed on December 14. Margaret Kinsella will have another conversation with the Mannings. We want to be certain that we provide the correct kind of assistance.

Regarding volunteers we said that people need to know how and where to volunteer—who do I contact??

Our goal for the Newsletter would be to get something out by November 29th if the printer can accommodate us. It will be mailed out to 1800 parishioners. We decided on an ivory color with black print. We also were reminded by Rosemary Kubera that George Clisham was going to contact the leaders of the various Ministries in our parish for input on the Newsletter. Angela Marre suggested we use a list of contacts from each Ministry as a way of making it easier for people to work together on the newsletter.

We agreed to get a copy of the flyer on the Giving Tree and then continued with a discussion of who would be appropriate to work on the Dec. 14 work of wrapping and loading the truck We will wait to hear from the Mannings.
We need detail on cleanup assistance, food needed and the establishment of a family tradition keeping in mind that we need clarification on the age of children participating. We heard that this is a very detailed and tedious event which could be very confusing if the children participating were too young.

Archbishop O’Malley will be meeting with all of the priests at BC High School on December 6th.

The next PPC meeting will be held on December 9, 2003. We plan also to offer the minutes to those interested as well as place it on our church web site.