St. Joseph Kitchen

I believe that the story of our new kitchen is really the story of the re-founding of our parish.  In reflecting on where our parish has been and where it is currently, I realized I should share this story with you in full detail so you can understand what a miracle this project really is — and how it fits into the story of what God wants to do through us as a Parish. 
When I arrived at St. Alice in 2016, things appeared good on the outside:  we weren’t in debt, there was a healthy atmosphere of volunteering and serving the poor, the staff were very competent and worked well together, and people always commented that St. Alice is such a welcoming place.  Indeed, those were our strengths — the people of St. Alice.  However, from an administrative point of view, there were many problems:  the staff were vastly underpaid, which was an issue of injustice; the physical plant was in disarray from years of deferred maintenance; and spiritually there was neither much common prayer nor the desire to evangelize our neighbors.  Our future didn’t look good as we had only one or two young families attending mass in the Anglo side of our parish.  Our Latino parishioners were underserved and, sadly, I witnessed even racist and resentful attitudes between our Latino and Anglo parishioners.  There was a lot of work to do!
Having been a priest for only three years, all of this was pretty new to me.  I didn’t have the answers — or even really know what questions to ask!  So, I began on my knees, praying for one to two hours a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament, asking for God to help our parish.  After the archdiocese helped us see that we needed a business manager, I began praying for one.  God provided us our first miracle a couple of months later.  Christine Beldner joined our staff, and in one year did forensic accounting and charted the course forward that we needed to take.  In short, our offertory had been flat for ten years; our staff had basically been purchasing supplies for their ministries — as well as being underpaid — so that the budget would balance.  The parishioners in the pews were never asked to participate in the real cost of ministry here at the parish.  We determined that if we were to pay all staff a living wage and cover our then current cost of ministry with offertory, we needed to raise offertory almost 50%!  This seemed impossible. 
So, in 2017 we dedicated our parish to St. Joseph and began our offertory campaign under his patronage.  In that one year, we increased our offertory 26% — which is unheard of!  Each year since then we’ve set an aggressive growth target to bring us to a place of financial health — and St. Joseph has brought us there each year!  We are finally, for the first time in decades, covering our expenses with offertory.  We have also gradually welcomed new staff members who are bilingual to ensure that all  parish members can be served when they ask for help.
During that same year, we realized that our parish needed a focus — a mission statement to rally around in the coming years.  During the founding of our parish under Fr. Sohler,  there was a lot of energy, community life, and the building of the school and convent in his almost 40 years as pastor.  But 

since his departure, we’ve been struggling  with decline, the implosion of the lumber mills, the closure of the school, a recession, selling half our property to pay debts, and just plain burnout from people who had been pouring out their hearts for years in ministry.  We needed new fire and new hope.
We gathered our parish’s leadership members and key volunteers over a few months to develop a mission statement.  We came up with this: “Seek Jesus, build relationships, and share the joy of the Gospel.”  It might seem too simple, but it is designed to be something you can remember easily and fill in the details with greater depth.  It is nothing less than the truth of our baptismal calling:  as we develop deep intimacy with Jesus in prayer and the sacraments, we will hunger for holy relationships with each other in the parish, and then that joy we share in the Lord necessarily will pour out into our community and invite all souls into relationship with Jesus
               In 2018, I was appointed Pastor of St. Alice.  After being here for two years, I knew that the single most important thing we could do to “seek Jesus” as a parish was to devote ourselves to Eucharistic adoration.  That story is yet another miracle!  We went from once-a-month adoration to perpetual adoration in less than six months!  This was due to many dedicated prayer warriors, but most of all to the sacrifice of Carmelo Varo who, along with his wife Sylvia, shouldered many of the night-time hours alone for the first few months to keep it open.  I also made it an expectation that all our staff and key volunteers would commit to a weekly holy hour.  This change reminds us that prayer is first, and then our service flows from our prayer. 
After adoration was well established, we — as leadership — realized that if we want to bring everyone together in our parish, we need to eliminate misunderstandings and learn about each other’s cultures.   Eating together and cooking for one another is a great way to do this.  We have so many wonderful cooks in the parish, and our old kitchen was not even approved for cooking — just warming things up!  So, in the spring of 2019, we began exploring the feasibility of building a commercial kitchen.
               Here’s where God’s providence is truly manifested.  I’m impatient by nature and was getting frustrated that it was taking so long to get answers.  Months were going by without firm answers about designs or cost estimates.  Finally, close to Christmas time in 2019, we got an answer for the estimated cost of the kitchen — around $280,000.  I was a little disheartened because that was a lot higher than I hoped.  But we accepted it and prayed about how we would pay for it.  One of our council members who works at PeaceHealth knew they were doing grant projects for local health initiatives.  PeaceHealth was so excited about our project that they pursued us and asked for a grant proposal.  We asked for $100,000, which was about 40% of the project cost. 
They came out for a site visit and began the  meeting by saying, “We love this project and are going to recommend full funding!”  After seeing our campus and hearing about our dream for St. Alice, they asked, “How are you going to pay for the rest of it?”  I said, “Fundraisers, bake sales, personal asks, 

etc., but if you want to give us more money, I  won't  say no!”  After that meeting, they send us the approval letter for $115,000!  It is unheard of to receive a grant larger than the amount requested!   At this point we were elated.  We got the check, deposited it in the bank, and then COVID restrictions began. Shortly thereafter, the price of the kitchen jumped to $380,000 because an engineering inspection revealed that we needed a new HVAC system in the parish hall to handle the increased load of the commercial kitchen exhaust system.  At this point, we had a crisis — do we go ahead with fundraising — or wait?  This was a lot more expensive than we thought and it wouldn’t be easy.  Also, we were in a pandemic and feared that people’s resources might be thin.
Our Administrative Council prayed with me and realized that St. Joseph had organized the timing of this.  Had we known the full price at the beginning, we probably wouldn’t have started the project.  God made it move slowly so that the hospital would partner with us and encourage us to keep going.  Then COVID made it an ideal time for construction because no one was using the building.  All the signs said we should step out in faith and try it.
 So, this past summer, our business manager Peg Ries and I went to make asks of individual donors to cover all but the last $80,000 of the project — and they were so generous as to say “yes”.  Then, just before we were ready to ask the congregation for the last $80,000, one donor offered a matching gift of $40,000 — and all of you covered the remaining $40,000!  This was truly a group effort, but St. Joseph made it go so smoothly as to be simply miraculous. 
               To give context for how miraculous this project is, it is the first building project we’ve done since 1999 when the parish center was built.  It is also the first building project we have done in years where we didn’t have to sell anything to pay for it — we raised all the money from donations!  We also raised the majority of the money during the greatest social crisis many of us have ever experienced without reducing our offertory.  This shows us that when we are committed to loving God first and seeking the kingdom of heaven, “all the rest will be added unto you”.  This is just the beginning of a new chapter in the history of St. Alice, and I am so excited to see where God will take us in the coming years!         
               As we dedicate this kitchen, I can think of no more fitting name than to call it St. Joseph’s Kitchen.  This year is the year of St. Joseph, and I can say with great confidence that this project is just the beginning of new life here in the parish.  As we cook and eat together, share food, faith, and culture together, we will realize why our Lord chose to become our food in the Eucharist.  Food unites us as family.  We can’t break bread together and remain enemies — we will either refuse to eat together or give up our rivalries.  The communion we share in the Mass needs to spill out here to the hall, and then from the hall into the world.  That’s what our mission states: “Seek Jesus, build relationships, and share the joy of the Gospel”.  It’s been a year of isolation and division; let’s start building our relationships again and discover the joy of being the family of God!