Congratulations to Karina Rocha, our wonderful business office coordinator, and to her family for the birth of her son Matteo last week. Mom and baby are both healthy, happy, and holy! Karina is grateful to everyone in the parish who has prayed for her during the pregnancy and delivery and looks forward to returning to SJV after her maternity leave time with Mateo.

Speaking of pregnancy, you’ll notice the two new parking spaces reserved for pregnant moms in our SJV parking lot. We love life at all stages and just as we try to ensure parishioners with mobility limitations can park close, so too for our families with pre-born babies. Certainly parking is a precious commodity here at church, and we are all grateful for your observation of these new reserved spots. As well, let’s pray all these babies keep growing in good health!

As you may know this is the first year for the Arizona Diamondbacks to host a “Catholic Night” at their ballpark. Previous years were a general “faith and family night” and while fun, this year will be even better as the many Catholic parishes of the Diocese join together and cheer on the D-backs (or the Houston Astros if you’re of that persuasion…). They have set aside a block of 25 tickets in a reserved section for our parish.

The Mother Mary Grotto and Plaza is just about completed and the Knights of Columbus are very excited to announce that the first inscribed paving stones will soon be placed. Over the previous couple of months the Knights have been outside after Masses working hard to help parishioners donate to the project by purchasing stones with personalized inscriptions. Now that the first set of these are coming back to SJV these will replace the current stones. Hopefully the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, donated by a wonderful anonymous parishioner, arrives in early October and we will celebrate with an all-parish dedication ceremony and blessing.

Some unfortunate news is that someone has been emailing staff and parishioners claiming to be me and asking for gift card donations. This is a scam - please do not respond to it! I will never email you asking for cash or gift card donations and please always check the email “domain”, as any official SJV email will end in @sjvaz.net.

Finally, we ask for your prayers for the priests of the Diocese and many of us religious priests who will be attending the diocesan convocation in Flagstaff this week. It is an opportunity to be together as priests and with our bishops in prayer, fellowship and continuing education. Frs. Andrew, Brian and I are very, very grateful to Fr. Tom for remaining here and holding down the fort while we are gone. Given the convocation we will not have confessions this Tue Sep 19, so please don’t sin...

See you all next week, peace be with you!

Fr. David Halm, C.S.C.

Pastor

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