It has now been one year since I arrived here at St. Mary's Church as your
pastor. It has gone by fast! This past year has been a blessing
for me as I met new challenges and have learned many new things in my
priestly ministry. Taking on new challenges in new settings with new
people helps us to grow and I am so happy to be here serving all of you in
our large dynamic parish community. I have been enriched by all of you
and by meeting and working with Fr. Fidelis, Fr. Loji, Fr. Chris, Fr. Tomas
White our priest in residence, and now Fr Rolly. It is a gift to have
so much priestly fraternity in an age when many parishes have only one
priest by himself. I have enjoyed for the first time being pastor of a
parish with a school and helped lead the process of choosing a new
principal. I have enjoyed getting to know the Antelope Valley and our
outlying missions and as I have said, I have a sense of coming home to the
desert since I grew up as a child for 7 years up in Ridgecrest.
We have undertaken various new projects to pay
down our debt to the Archdiocese for the cost of our new Church and Hall,
including selling devotional candles for the Church, having our fireworks
booth, establishing the Parish Gift Shop, taking $1,000.00 per week from the
regular collection, and most significantly our upcoming 3-day Festival Aug.
13-15 which I am very excited about. As soon as the one day Festival was
concluded in May, Rudy Bautista and all our Festival leaders swung into
action on this big new project. Thank you for your support especially
through ticket pre-sales for the rides for our Festival which will celebrate
our school's 50th anniversary. I would love for this event to become
an annual tradition here at St. Mary's and grow bigger and better each year.
God Bless you and thank you so much for your support of myself and all us
priests as we continue our parish's mission to be a light of Christ's love
and to help guide us Home in this journey through life!
Sincerely yours in the love of Christ,
Father Vaughn
