Here is a reminder of our meeting this Wednesday at 7:00 PM at St. John’s Parish Center, in the Fr. Joyce Room. We will be having food and light refreshments at the meeting. I will be arriving around 6:30pm to get things in order.
In the meantime, thank you very much to all those who helped with our Councils and Grand Knights list. We are still short on the list, and I NEED YOUR HELP!!!!
Here is what we have, and you will see what we need: Click here
My fellow knights, as your Worthy Faithful Navigator, it is part of my sacred responsibility to promote Patriotism, Charity, Unity, and Fraternity. By this, we need to bridge the councils with the 4th degree.
More council involvement = more council participation. By doing this, we are ensuring our young children the importance of our mission to pass on a great brotherhood to benefit our nation, which today’s moral and Godly values are under extreme challenge!
Officers, we will have a meeting Wednesday, August 21 at Saint John’s Parish Center (Fr. Joyce Room) 833 Main St, Agawam, MA 01001 at 7:00p.m. to 8:00p.m.
Our next business meeting will be at All Saints Catholic Church, 17 North St, Ware, MA 01082. There will be a Patriotic Rosary at 5:30, Dinner at 6:15, Meeting at 7:00.
Worthy and Faithful Sir Knights of Columbus. This past weekend, the world Olympics opened their ceremony with Blasphemy directed towards our Holy Creator, God. They depicted the Last Supper with pornographic content. A couple of weeks prior, there was an assassination attempt of our former president, Donald Trump. As you may be aware of in one of Donald Trump’s speeches, “They are after Catholics and Christianity, and I am in the way.”
These types of events, witnessed by the entire world, is a direct attack against the Roman Catholic Church, Christianity as a whole, and directly against our Fourth Degree Faithful Knights of Columbus.
Fr. Chris Alar, who will be a guest speaker this year, at Faith on Fire, August 22, & 23, 2024, created video content regarding the Olympics opening ceremony. Fr. Chris gives the faithful good direction. There are immediate brands to stop using, who have sponsored this gross content: Please see attached photo.
Lastly, Our Lord tells us to not worry of be surprised, but be prepared. Pray the Holy Rosary Daily, and pray a Surrender Prayer daily. “Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything.” Repeat x 10.
God bless you and keep you always and everywhere. Worthy Faithful Sir Knights, we know who wins in the end!
Vivat Jesus!
Worthy Faithful Navigator,
Leo Marinak
Sources:
1. Former President, Donald Trump states, “They’re after Catholics,” and he even mentions the Knights of Columbus.
2. Fr. Chris Alar – Divine Mercy:
3. An apology, but not really an apology from France Olympics:
Knights deliver new cribs to mothers in need in northern Virginia
By Cecilia Engbert6/27/2024
Joe and Michael Jewell deliver a crib and mattress to a young mother and her baby June 15 in northern Virginia. (Photo by Matthew Barrick)
Joe Jewell, past grand knight of Holy Spirit Council 11922 in Annandale, Virginia, and his son, Michael, got up early June 15, packed their vehicle with four baby cribs and mattresses and hit the road. They were joining more than 40 volunteers, including many Knights, to deliver cribs to more than 100 mothers in need across the region.
The Jewells’ first delivery was to a young woman expecting a baby girl soon. Brisa Sifuentes met them at the door with a big smile.
“It was exciting, seeing the crib come through the door,” Sifuentes said. “I’m excited and happy because we haven’t been able to buy anything yet, so it’s a start and it’s a blessing.”
Sifuentes plans to name her baby Skyler — “Sky” for short. “She already has her nickname,” she laughed. “I’m really thankful for this crib. When she grows up, I can tell her about this, and hopefully I’m able to show her who helped her out.”
The crib was a gift from Project Manger, a nonprofit that supplies cribs and bedding to mothers facing financial difficulties or crisis pregnancies. It began in 2008 as an initiative of A Woman’s Choice, a local pregnancy resource center, before becoming a separate organization in 2022. Knights in northern Virginia have been deeply involved from its earliest days.
Each year, Project Manger buys hundreds of new cribs — $150-165 each — with fundraising help from several K of C councils. Two major distributions take place, one on Father’s Day weekend in June and another during the Christmas season. Volunteers, primarily Knights, gather at A Woman’s Choice, load their vehicles with cribs, mattresses and bedding, and travel in pairs to each client’s home until every delivery has been made.
Knights carry a crib to the door of a Project Manger client June 15. (Photo by Matthew Barrick)
“Being able to do in-person deliveries is a big motivator for me,” said Jewell, who serves on Project Manger’s board of directors and has helped with deliveries for about a decade. “We’ve seen people sleeping on the floor, kids having to sleep on the floor themselves. Just the look on their faces when they see us coming in — to get help in those situations really makes a difference.”
It was a difficult living situation that first inspired Project Manger. Dolores Wisecarver, executive director of A Woman’s Choice at the time, found out a client had had an abortion because she didn’t have anywhere for her second baby to sleep.
Determined that no client would ever make that decision again, Wisecarver put an ad in all the local parish bulletins asking for donations to supply baby cribs to expectant mothers who could not afford them. Denny D’Alelio, a past grand knight of Council 11922, responded immediately and became the powerhouse behind the operation.
“In the beginning, it was just going to be a small project,” said Wisecarver, who retired from her role as director of A Woman’s Choice in 2017 and now serves on the board of directors for both A Women’s Choice and Project Manger. “But the Knights made it grow; they did all the fundraising. Denny took this project and ran with it.”
D’Alelio involved not only his own council but several other local councils as well. In its first year, Project Manger supplied around 25 cribs to families in need during the Christmas season.
“It was Christmas time, so I had this idea to ‘bring a crib to baby Jesus,’” said Wisecarver, explaining the name of the organization.
Before D’Alelio died in 2016, he made sure Project Manger would continue without him, working with Wisecarver to establish a board of directors, mostly Knights, to manage the operation.
A young woman opens the door to a new crib from Project Manger. (Photo by Matthew Barrick)
“Without the Knights, there wouldn’t be this program at all,” Wisecarver said. “They continue to be involved and the program has taken off.”
Since 2009, Project Manger had delivered more than 2,700 cribs, and Wisecarver expects to deliver around 300 more this year. The program now assists clients of about 20 pregnancy resource centers in northern Virginia, in addition to A Woman’s Choice.
“People are very generous with this program. There’s something about donating cribs that people like,” Wisecarver said. “It’s a very specific mission.”
For Bill Baer, a member of Msgr. Thomas P. Scannell Council 14523 in Annandale, delivering cribs is a win-win situation.
“We get a lot out of it and so do the people who receive the cribs,” said Baer, who has volunteered with Project Manger for several years alongside fellow Knights. “It’s just a small way to let people know that we want to help them greet this baby into the world — a token that will hopefully be useful but also an expression of gratitude for another baby. Because it’s always wonderful whenever a child is born.”
Building a culture of life is a long-term process that will take more than a change in law, Jewell said, and Project Manger is part of that effort
“It demonstrates that we really care about the women and children involved,” he said. “Showing that there are people who care about women in crisis pregnancies is the first step in changing hearts and minds.”
*****
CECILIA ENGBERT is a content producer for the Knights of Colubua communications department.
I AM A KNIGHT
E ARE Catholic men building a bridge back to faith. There is much work to be done in this world. Good work. Necessary work. And that’s what the Knights do. Every day.
Assisting the sick and disabled. Protecting those who can’t protect themselves. Whether they are next door or halfway around the world. This is the journey we are on. Our path.
We do it to be better husbands, fathers, sons, neighbors, and Catholics. We invest our time, our effort, and our resources into our values: Charity, Unity, Fraternity, Patriotism.
We come from many places. And backgrounds. And stages in our lives. But we are all of one faith. A fraternity of men striving to better ourselves and our world.
It’s one thing to say who you are. It’s another to live it. To put your values into action. That’s what we do at the Knights of Columbus.
That’s who we are. (shared by our Faithful Friar Fr. Jeff Ballou)
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Dear Worthy Sir Knights,
Officers, we will have a meeting Wednesday, August 21 at Saint John’s Parish Center (Fr. Joyce Room) 
