St. Anne Catholic Church
A "Few" Words from Fr. Robert
The New Normal For Now
My “new normal” day usually begins with a solitary walk over to the church. I turn on the lights, make sure the broadcast is set, and then, if I am presiding, I get the chalice and paten ready for Mass (I sure do miss Edie and Roger). If I have any time left I sit in the back pew prayerfully and prepare for Mass. Below are some pictures of what we see when we celebrate Mass. It’s beautiful for sure. Sometimes during the day I just walk up and down the pews and pray for the parish. We’re trying our best to keep in contact with you and reassure you that we are praying for you and with you. Most of my days are spent in the office trying to enhance our parish’s presence online. I also enjoy calling our senior citizens to see how they are doing. Let me tell you - some of them are characters and they are fun to talk with. I miss my old German ladies but they are resilient and never complain about anything.
A Financial Perspective
On March 1st, our offertory collection (online and in pew) was $38,543. People usually give more money the first weekend of the month. Usually our collection is between $25,000 and $30,000 a week. This week, our collection (online and dropped off to the Parish Office) was $10,494.00. We also received a very generous one time gift of $10,000 to help us with our current situation for a total of $20,494. To put that in perspective, last Thursday the payroll for our School, Parish, and Outreach Center was $184,349. Obviously, most of that comes from the tuition payments of our school families. I have always been completely transparent when it comes to our finances. Here is what I hope you will consider. Please think about joining our online giving program. It will help ensure a regular cash flow so we can pay our employees, Georgia Power, and all our bills. Also, we just installed a mail slot in the door of the office. If you don’t want to participate in the online giving program you can use our new mail slot or you can simply mail your offering to our church. Some people just need a little help when it comes to setting up the online giving program. Kimberly Kaup, our Director of Stewardship, would be happy to help you set up and manage your online giving, if you wish. You can simply call the office and leave a message and she will get back to you, or you can email her.
Our website is our most important way to stay in touch, so please check it often. While many communicate with us via Facebook there are also many who chose not to use it. So we make sure that our parish website is always up to date with the latest information. It is the best place to find out what is going on or to watch our live stream. Please check it always. We may eventually relaunch the parish app when we get a chance because it offers push notifications. Staying in touch is so important right now and please know that we are doing everything we can to make that happen and share current and pertinent information.
Caring by Calling
As I mentioned above we are calling everyone in the parish 70 years of age or older. If you did not receive a call it may be because your telephone number is incorrect in our parish census or it may be because we haven’t gotten to you yet. Most of our parishioners are fine, but some are alone and we will make sure to keep in contact with them. I am so grateful to Margo Truett and the people who have offered to make the calls. We also have a shared Google spreadsheet which tracks who has been called and how they are doing. Some people we call are surprised, some think we are telemarketers, some haven’t been to church in years and are amazed they are still on our lists, but no one has been unhappy or ungrateful for the call. 

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!
We are still waiting for people to send in their census update forms. We have received about 120 all together. It sounds great until you learn that we sent out 1,200. If all your information is correct just sign it and send it back anyway. If you don’t want to mail the form in, feel free to send us a pdf or even a picture of the form. We appreciate everyone who is taking the time to review their information and make the changes that need to be made. Tonya is busy working at home making sure everything is current.