Grand Knight's Report
Tom Sixsmith
First of all, I would like to thank and acknowledge the great article in the newsletter regarding Knights of Columbus, protocol, procedures and decorum that is expected by the Knights at meetings and assemblies. For new members coming in, many of our meeting rituals may seem odd and often there is no explanation provided as to why we do a vertical hand wave or a horizontal cross wave, how do we ask a question, how do we address a fellow Knight, etc. This was an attempt to provide a summary of those honored traditions. For new Knights, please read this article and if you have additional questions, please send me a note. Thank you Mark!
The parish ministry fair was held this month and while the Knight of Columbus is not a church ministry, we are a significant contributor to various functions at SDC, and therefore were given a booth to help recruit new members. As expected, our number one recruiter, Ricardo, was actively roaming the aisles looking for possible candidates. It turned out that 4-5 new members may follow up and join our ranks. With the number of possible new candidates, Ricardo was able to schedule an Exemplification on March 31st. I’ll report the outcome at the April general meeting. Thank you, as always, Brother Ricardo for your hard work and inspiration.
Unfortunately, a couple of March activities were either cancelled (St. Patrick’s Day Dinner) or postpones (campus cleanup). The cleanup has been rescheduled for April 12, just before Easter.
Let’s try to get as many Knights involved in our Lenten dinners this month. Mike Ulibarri has scheduled two, the first is April 4 and second is April 18th. Please contact Mike if you’d like to help in the kitchen or clean up after either dinner. Otherwise, please try to bring your family in for a modest Lenten Friday dinner.
Other great activities you can get involved with will be the Breakfast Burritos on April 6th. In addition to the morning crew that gets things started at 6:30 for breakfast burritos, we are really in need of a second shift to support lunch burritos after the 10:15 AND the 12:00 Masses. We’ve not done a 12:00 Mass before but we’d like to see what the response will be since we have everything in place. However, a second shift is needed to support this. PLEASE look at your schedule and see if you can help - especially new members who are looking for ways to get involved. If we don’t get the help, we can’t do the other Masses.
Another great opportunity to get involved will be our first 2025 carwash which will be just before Easter on April 19th. Looking to have nice clean wheels for the Easter weekend and raise a few dollars along the way. This is a great event that you can bring in your kids and family members to help out, have some fun and get rewarded with a burger or hot dog bar-b-que.
I had an opportunity to meet with Chapter officers this past month to address a number of questions we had regarding the destination of funds raised through our ID drive. I will report out at the next general meeting the outcome, but it looks like we will channel our funds to the Donnor Advised Fund (DAF) instead of the Columbian Foundation. This will yield an additional 7% of the monies going to charities instead of overhead.
Lots of things are going on in April and there are many opportunities to get involved and represent the Knight of Columbus at Santiago de Compostela.
We hope to see you there!
WGK Tom
