Parish Blog: a vIEW fROM tHE pEW

We are Don and Donna Conn. We have been asked to put down a few thoughts about what marriage means to us and what has helped/helps us to stay strong in our relationship.

We were married in September 1960… between the dinosaurs and the Beatles. (According to our grandkids, that means we are really old.)

On the day of our wedding we believed that part of our job as a couple was to pray, encourage, nag and/or drag  each other to heaven along with our children, family and anyone else in our lives.

We found that being married wasn’t easy. Outside influences, finances and health struggles, etc. took their toll. Sometimes we lost hope that we would make the long haul.
Along the way there have been some things that helped us stay on the true path. For instance, praying, worshiping together, setting aside time for sharing and discussing small and important things that come up have been beneficial in our growth. Retreats that we participated in have made a big impact for us. Marriage Encounter, Cursillo, Christ Renews His Parish, and many weekend and day retreats have helped us build our relationship. Being active in our parish and working with engaged couples preparing for their marriages have kept us on track in our own marriage.

We have found that when we keep Christ the center of our relationship, our love for each other bubbles up and overflows to our children, family, friends, and all those whose lives touch ours.

Don and I aren’t perfect … we still have differences of opinion and sometimes become discouraged. By keeping lines of communication open, we are able to work through those differences  with discussion and prayer … and come out the other side closer to each other and more committed than ever. We heard one time that …”Some days we will wake up in the morning being committed to our marriage because of the wonderful person we married. Other mornings we will wake up committed to the marriage because we have a pretty good thing going. Other mornings we will be committed to our marriage because we said we would be. Still other mornings we just feel like we should be committed!”

We believe God has called us to be the best couple we can be. We promised, almost 57 years ago, that we would work on our relationship as long as we are both on earth. 

We promised again last night that we will continue to build our relationship.  Who knows how much we can grow!

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Editor's Note:  The following is the story of Our Lady of Carter Lake's "Commandments" as told by Etta Strobel to Burton Rausch.

​Sylvester Ramón Lovell was known as “Red” Lovell.  The name Red came from his red hair. Red was born December 13, 1919,  in Sioux County, Nebraska. This also happened to be a Friday the 13th. Red was the 11th of 12 children born to James and Julia Lovell. Julia was Catholic; James converted on their wedding day. Seven of the kids graduated from high school, six of whom from a Catholic school. The high school was St. Agnes Academy in Alliance, Nebraska. One son died at the age of 14. Red's family called him "Uncle Rusty."  Red died on September 10, 2008.  His body was willed to the University of Nebraska.    

Red was in the Army in WWII.  After the service, Red could not join the VFW, “Veterans of Foreign Wars,” as he had not served overseas. So Red joined the American Legion, which was for those who served on American soil. Red ended up living in Carter Lake, Iowa, by rehabbing houses in the '70s and '80s.  Red also helped with the two additions on Our Lady of Carter Lake Church. Red's niece, Etta Strobel, made contact with Father Dan Kirby to have a memorial service for Red, and has since stayed.  Etta is proud to carry on Red's story about Jesus' Ten Commandments that are at Our Lady of Carter Lake Church in Carter Lake, Iowa.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  This is an adaptation from a  homily given by Deacon Bob. 

​Fr. Tom asked the deacons to speak about Sacrificial Giving this week as the Parish works on its budget and plans for the coming year.  Talking about money is not something they teach deacons in homily class.  Nobody wants to talk about money, but it is necessary in order for the parish to continue to minister.  

I am quite confident that you already see the needs of the parish and want to do your part.  I am no more able to tell you how much you should give, than I could to tell you how to invest in the stock market.   But what I can do is share about Peg’s and my journey of faith in this area. 

When we got married, we probably threw a few bucks into the basket when it came around -- whatever we had to spare. I don’t really recall, but I would guess that it was in 1’s rather than anything bigger.

After a couple years, we moved into a house, owned by Holy Family, which was right next door to the rectory.  So we became registered members along with being tenants.  Now we had envelopes and we started writing a check each week.  Finances were tight.  I don’t remember how much we gave, probably 5 bucks…most weeks.  But, hey, $5 was a lot of money 40 years ago.  At least it was to us.  Our giving was still from our leftovers, if there was any. We continued to struggle, but with the weekly envelopes we at least became more regular at giving. 

We were giving God the leftovers. God deserved better than that. Somewhere along the line, we realized that: If God was as important in our lives as we said He was, then doing our part to fund His work should be as important in our budget as the utilities or house payment.  So giving to the parish became a line item in the family budget.

I think the year was 1983. I remember at a Sunday mass a married couple came to Holy Family and talked about tithing.  They caught our ear.  They talked about giving a percentage to the Lord rather than a dollar amount.  They suggested 10%.   To us 10% seemed like an astronomical, unbelievable amount of money.  Peg and I had three daughters, house and car payments, tuition, medical expenses, and all the other bills a young family has.  We struggled to have enough each month.

That couple challenged us to make our giving a priority place in our lives:  Giving back to God first, because he gives us everything that we receive.   They suggested that it was appropriate to give 5% to the church and 5% to other charities from our gross income.  To us it seemed quite impossible.  Yet that couple convinced us that we could do it, because they had. 

The one hopeful thing they mentioned was that if you had children in Catholic School you could consider the tuition as part of the “other charities.” That helped.  Our tuition bill was nearly 5% already.   

We looked at our annual gross income and saw that we were giving close to 2%.  So we decided that we would trust God and give 3%, and take that 3% off the top.  It was a matter of trust.  How we give really is a reflection of our trust in God’s abundant love for us.   That next year went by and we never missed a meal.  And, really, we never missed a penny of that money.  So the following year we upped it to 4%.  Same result.  It came off the top and we always seemed to have what we needed.  So the next year we committed 5% to the parish. 

As time went by, we decided that tuition wasn’t really a charity.  We were receiving something for that money--education for our kids.  So we began to edge that “other charities” fund up a little at a time. 

This type of giving has brought more blessings than I can count.  It helped to stop thinking about giving in dollars and start using a percent.  When you give in dollars, you are always thinking about what that money could buy.  With a percent, you make the commitment, and give it to God.  All that we are and all that we have belongs to God anyway, not just a tenth. We are merely the manager of His resources. 
​
Another benefit of using a percentage is when the income goes down.  A couple times in my career and recently when I retired, our income when down.  No problem; the percentage stays the same.

​More recently, we started to make use of “Automatic Withdrawal” of our offering.  We are going to give that amount anyway, so it saves writing the check each week.  Whether I get paid twice a month or once a month, that is when our parish offering gets transferred. And the consistency helps the parish budgeting as well. If I am on vacation or when I was in deacon training every other weekend, the parish still received my offering automatically.

A few years ago, Fr. Joel suggested 5-1-4 giving.  This made good sense to me: 5% to Corpus Christi, 1% to the Des Moines Diocese (we use the Annual Diocesan Appeal), and 4% to other charities. The parish and the diocese do so much for us, and would do even more it we all could get to at least 5-1-4 giving.  That is not the ceiling; some of us are able to give more than 10%.

I like to think of the “Other Charities 4%” as “God’s Money.”  It goes into a separate fund each pay period and it is such a blessing and a joy to have it available.  It is set aside in our bank account.  It is God’s money, but we get the joy of deciding where it will go.

God’s Money gets used for various local charities: Micah House, Birthright, Gabriel’s Corner.  It also goes to international charity institutions, like Mary’s Meals, Food for the Poor, and Cross Catholic Outreach.  It gets used for KVSS and Catholic Answers. We are able to support a family in Peru with those funds.  And those extra collections that happen every now and then for victims of natural disasters, we can help them from God’s Money.