June "Thought of the Month"

Watch how you live. Your lives may be the only gospel your sisters and brothers will ever read.

    

Dom Helder Carama

Saint Joseph and Sons, Stewards of the Carpenter Update from the Leadership Team

"We restore, maintain and enhance facilities to worship, learn and live our Christian faith."

We have had a busy Spring with 3 projects;

We have completed the plaster wall and painting restoration at St James Parish in Rockford.

The project took over 100 man hours to complete. The walls are now free of any cracks and voids.

Thanks to all who participated.

We also assisted St. James Parish Belvidere with installation of plants and shrubs for their new church landscaping project. The grounds look great and there were many St. James parishioners assisting.

The “Joe’s” provided over 50 man hours of assistance.

We are completing the Mary Garden at the Poor Clares in Rockford. Weather has hampered our completing date but we should have it finished by the end of May. The Sisters are thrilled that they will have a formal outdoor sanctuary to honor Mother Mary during the months of May and October.

Please help us to get more followers on FB. Ask your FB friends to follow us so we can continue to let people know of the work that we are doing within the Rockford Diocese.

Thank You Letter from St. Stan's

Poor Clares Project Update

The Poor Clares Mary Garden project has seen a lot of progress from the Joes as of late. The trellis is almost complete, cement is almost complete, and the Mary statue has been cleaned and is ready to be put back in place. Check out some of the new pictures from the project! There will be another update when everything is complete.

BEFORE CLEANING

 


AFTER CLEANING

 

The sisters asked for help on a special project. Replicating their spoon that they use for all of their meals. Each sister is given a spoon and uses it for life. They each have a symbol carved in the spoon that represents that it belongs to that particular sister. Not an easy task!

May "Thought of the Month"

You can not put straight in others what is warped in yourself.

St. Athanasius

Update from Bill Derry and the St. Joseph and Sons' Leadership Team

There has been a great deal of good work being by the Joes during the past few months. We have completed a project at St. Stanislaus parish that replaced and repaired several entrance doors. We are working on at both St. James in Rockford and in Belvidere. The rectory in Rockford is in need to plaster repair and painting. This is being accomplished by the Joes and the parishioners. At St. James Belvidere we were part of the team that rallied to prepare the church for the dedication Mass in December and will return to assist with the landscaping in May. We continue to provide assistance to St. Elizabeth Center and the Poor Clares.

We are working with the men of St. John Neumann to establish a St. Joseph and Sons team at their parish. The Leadership Team is in place and there are a number of men committed to identifying and completing a project in the area.

We are continue to give of our time, talent and treasure consistent with our mission statement. Thank you for your support and we encourage you to consider more involvement.

- Bill

2015 Lenten Project Recap - St. James Rockford

St. James Church in Rockford was in need of some updating to the paster walls in some areas of the rectory and guest areas. 

Here is previous post from the removal of plaster and first day of work.  

2015 Lenten Project - St. James Church of Rockford

Any time the Joes get together to meet or work- we specifically include a time of spiritual reflection and discussion.

Joe Altenhoff has this to say about the spiritual reflection at St. James on our work days here:

"Our Lenten project at St. James rectory was done at the same time as our other Joes worked at the Poor Clair's Convent.  For our first Lenten session, we read the daily reading and reflected on how it impacted us this Lent. 

This first weekend was also the first weekend at Poor Clair's.  Life at the convent is mostly quite so we decided to work in communion with our Poor Clair's brethren for the first hour in silence. 

It was difficult at first but then the work seemed to take on a uniqueness.  We thought about working as a sacrifice, as a penance, as a gift.  

At one time the sound of scraping water damaged plaster from the walls sounded like a strange type of song with repeating rhythms and notes.  

The silence actually lasted more than an hour. Discussions during lunch were richer than normal and spiritually healthy for the team.

Our second session was lead by an active participant from the first session, a fellow Joe from St. James, Tim Barkdoll. Tim started the reading from the Acts of the Apostles where they are feeling the affects of the Holy Spirit on their bold beliefs.  

Tim asked us the question, 'Why do you believe?'  The responses challenged us to really think about our faith in a way that we could discuss it with others. The question pushed us all to think harder about our gift of faith and to be able to express it to ourselves and the outside world.  

We thanked Tim for his good work in preparing our group for the work ahead that day."

Here are some photo updates from the second day and painting portion of the project-