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President's Message - December 2021
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Hope everyone had a wonderful family filled Thanksgiving.
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I cannot believe we have only four weeks left to the Year.
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This month our General Meeting will be in person at Bronco Billy’s (Grimmer/Blacow) on Tuesday 7th December at 7:00PM.
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Please bring your 2022 dues as we will not have a Christmas Party this year. Our Treasurer, Axel Brisken will be delighted to collect dues and any donation you wish to make to the club. We will elect our 2022 Board during this meeting so please attend if you are available.
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Several of the guys got together to play a few rounds of Bocce ball at the South Fremont “Age Well Center” on Friday, 3rd December, a great time was had by all.
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We also helped the Parish during the procession on the feast of “Christ the King”. A special thank you to Mike Gaffey, Steve Radigan, Greg Stephens, Jerome Hubacek and Ashley Weerpass for helping.
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Ron Brazil has a special donation appeal in this newsletter for a couple of very worthwhile organizations (please read the article and donate if possible).
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It has been my pleasure and honor to be President for 2020/2021,
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I thank all of you for your support, coaching and most of all your friendship.
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I will close by wishing all of you a blessed and warm Christmas and a wonderful New Year, May 2022 be all you wish it to be.
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VP for Spirituality December Message
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This is the fifth and final installment of my series explaining some history of the five saints portrayed down the left-hand side of the church. This last image is one of our Lady – our Lady of China and obviously represents our Chinese community. Mary needs no introduction and rather than trying to give some history, I have scoured the Internet to find other images of our Blessed Mother, a woman most Beautiful, “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" (Rev 12:1). Father Anthony has stated that he is making changes to beautify the church so that people can come and feel at peace. We can certainly feel at peace in the presence of our beautiful Mother. Since we are all one human race and our Lady is the Mother of us all, it is quite appropriate to find her represented as different races. The next image is the classic Madonna of the Street, followed by our Lady of Perpetual Help, which has been promoted by the Redemptorists. As we face the intimidation and threats of the Corona virus, we see the child Jesus being forewarned by angels of His future suffering and death as he runs to his Mother for comfort. A most famous image is our Lady of Guadalupe, portrayed with a native American face. Since we have that image already in our church, I did not reproduce it here.
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Next comes an image of our Lady in the Sistine Chapel followed by the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, in Poland, to which Pope Saint John Paul II had great devotion. That image, like John Paul, was attacked. It has two slash marks where it was cut by a sword. Then there is an image of our Lady of Santiago in Guatemala, which used to be our sister parish, referenced by the confessional and holy water fount near the Eastern entrance of our church.
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And finally, we have a meme style image which can nonetheless lead us to a moment of contemplative prayer, and the image of our Lady of Antipolo, a famous shrine in the Philippines.
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The Men’s Club returned to our annual tradition of an in-person retreat right before Thanksgiving. The retreatmaster was Fr Ken Laverone, OFM, and the theme was “Wrestling with God.” It was built around the story of the seven Trappist monks who lived in peace with a Muslim community in Algeria, were taken captive by some Islamist extremists and killed in 1996. The story was made into the movie “Of Gods and Men”, which we viewed Friday night at the start of the retreat. The movie showed how each of the monks progressed in his thinking as the threat of violence began and escalated, and they were warned by the military that they should leave. It showed them wrestling with their decision until all seven monks decided to stay, at the risk of their lives. Fr Ken applied the story to us, asking if could have foreseen and bought into our present circumstances, way back when we first converted or reverted to Catholicism, or if a cradle Catholic, when we decided to keep the Faith and go forward. We find that our spiritual life is a constant wrestling with that life and commitment as new circumstances present themselves and we must constantly decide whether to continue in our Faith on a daily basis, taking up our Cross, or not.
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Fr Ken also was able to relieve some of the stress of the pandemic when he told us that some doctor friends of his say that on any day, 1/3 of the workforce in their medical building called in sick -- a sign of depression. He said the same was noted by a group of CEO’s who had met. He said that depression is the pandemic syndrome. Everybody is feeling it. It is in our psyche and we should not feel ashamed to admit that we are depressed.
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He concluded by telling us what a wonderful group of men we are who have stuck together all these years and the great good we have done and can still do. As you know, we have not been getting many new members, we are older and don’t have the energy we used to have. It is difficult to find men to take on leadership positions, and in addition to thanking the current Board which has agreed to stand for election, I want to thank Greg Stephens for agreeing to step forward as “contact” President – the person who will provide a single point of contact for our clergy and the other ministries to communicate with our Club. With Fr Ken’s commendation, with hope, I urge you all to pray for a regeneration of our Club so we can continue the good works and prayers we have contributed to St Joseph’s in ministry.
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In keeping with my usual custom, I am asking that you pray for our clergy and the following seminarians for our diocese -- Eric Ruiz and Rodolfo Quinteros.
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Dennis – VP for Spirituality
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General Meeting - December 7th, 2021
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Our 2021 General Meeting will be held in person at Bronco Billy’s in Fremont at 7:00PM on Tuesday December 7th. The club will sponsor the Pizza and drinks will be at members cost (no host). We will nominate our 2022 Board of Directors and begin our Membership drive for 2022. The rest of the meeting is for fellowship.
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Address of Bronco Billys (Grimmer/Blacow)- 510-438-0121
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41200 Blacow Road, Fremont, CA 94538.
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Please plan on arriving between 6:30- 7:00PM; pizza will be ready by 6:45PM.
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SJMC Assist in Graffiti Removal on Mission Church
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Removing 21st century red spray paint from 225 year old adobe walls and 35 year old historic recreations is not something you find in the DIY videos on YouTube. Gary Dorighi and Steve Radigan spent considerable time exhausting local resources trying to find a solution. Professional painters wouldn’t touch it. “Helpful Hardware Guys” had no suggestions. Washing, scrubbing, light sanding, wire brushing and power washing had little effect. The rough uneven surface of the wall made removing the paint evenly without damaging the underlying layers difficult if not impossible.
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Ultimately a “You might try this” suggestion was gotten at a local Kelly Moore store. A three spray bottle sample kit of three different mixtures of caustic and solvent solutions geared to mild, medium, and difficult problems was tried. The strongest solution had the best effect, but mostly dissolved just the surface of the paint and both dried quickly in the sun. After a little experimentation, application of the spray followed immediately by scrubbing with fine steel wool and just as quick, a water wash was found to work the best. As one can see from the pinkish hue where we started near the bottom of the wall as we learned, we got betteras we moved up the wall, only working small sections at a time.
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After 6 hours of hand work the result is good but not perfect. Even so, the remnant of the graffiti won’t be apparent to the casual observer or passerby.
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The graffiti on the much older, more delicate Mission Museum/Gift Shop exterior remains hidden under paper until a better solution can be found.
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Donation Opportunity- Make Christmas Bright
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Bring gifts for RealOptions, a program for women struggling with pregnancy and motherhood. Items needed are clothes, diapers, blankets, toys for 0-6 months.
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For homeless, items to keep warm like gloves, sweats, socks, caps, tarps, sleeping bags, jackets, etc. Multiple items should be individually wrapped. Stan is now serving 50-80 people per week. It would be nice, if possible, to have something for each person getting a bag of food.
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All items should be wrapped, with a Christmas greeting card attached, and all items, especially for the homeless should be labelled on the outside as to what it is, size, and gender. Example, socks, female, medium
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I will bring some sort of container to hold the items.
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See you Tuesday at Bronco Billy's
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A group of us got together on Friday December 3rd at 9:00AM at the South Fremont Age well Center for a pick up game of Bocce. Ashley Weerpass, Fred Tierney, Jim Boomer, Dennis Dubro and Lou Zenzen met and played for just about two hours. It was a great time of fun and fellowship. If there is sufficient interest we could do this a couple of times a month, look for more information to come by e-mail. Coffee and doughnuts will be provided. if you are interested let Ashley Weerpass know.
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Year at a Glance
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Here is a link to our "Year at a Glance" calendar:
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