District 208 recently held an exemplification hosted by Charlevoix Council 7172. Charlevoix welcomed 3 new members into their council, and a 4th member completed the 2nd and 3rd degrees. Council 7172 has reached their quota for the year!! Petoskey Council 923 welcomed 5 new members into their council. The ceremony was led by 7172 Chaplain Fr. Peter Wigton and DD 208 Andrew Mayer and a dinner was held after the ceremony.
Congratulations to Nicholas Savoie on being named as the Au Lac Council Youth of the Month for February! Nicholas is the son of Mark and Karen Savoie and is an 11th grade student at Richmond High School where he is a three-sport athlete (baseball, basketball, football), a member of the National Honors Society and has held a 4.0 GPA for the last three years. Through his affiliation with the NHS, he is active in community service projects helping the elderly, as a mentor to youth athletes and he is also active in our parish. Nicholas has been involved with numerous parish events such as the church floor replacement project, Breakfast with Santa and IC School locker installation. We thank Nicholas for sharing his faith through service to his parish and community!
Au Lac Council 10724 in Ira Township started the Youth of the Month Award in January 2023 to recognize students in grades 3-12 for demonstrating their faith through service to others. So far the council has honored 38 students with a certificate of appreciation following a weekend Mass. Every six months they host a pizza dinner for the winners and their families with Pastor Fr. Joseph Esper in attendance.
Grand Knight Mark Kehoe; Nicholas Savoie; Fr. Joseph Esper
Council #13499 began its Soup-er Bowl Food Drive 10 years ago, and it has grown from collecting around 600 pounds in the early years, to achieving over 2 tons of food collected in each of the past two years, under Grand Knight Brian Williams.
All of the food donated is distributed through food pantries at St. Francis Xavier/Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine, and St. Alphonsus parish, both located in Grand Rapids.
The Council has found that while many organizations have food drives between Thanksgiving and Christmas, local pantries are sometimes running low again by this time of the winter.
Packing and delivering the food has become a great afternoon tradition on Superbowl Sunday before the big game.
Congratulations to the winners of District 406's Free Throw Contest held at St Catherine of Siena Church in Portage on February 8. This was led by Joe Comiskey from Council 6980.
As an anonymous early Church Father explained, Christ's commandment contains the law, but the law does not contain Christ's commandment. In this Sunday's Gospel, Jesus walks through several of the 10 Commandments, then elevates them by explaining how we must avoid sin interiorly as well as exteriorly. We'll explain what this means in today's Dad Talk. Please share with a friend, and God bless! Dad
