From the Parish House

This week has marked the end of the year for many aspects of parish life.   Each of our three schools has finished for the year and our Year 6 students have graduated with ceremonies thanking God for their primary school years and celebrating friendships, learnings and lifelong memories.   I would like to congratulate all the young people who have graduated this year and wish them a restful summer break as they prepare for secondary school in 2021.

I am grateful also to our three school principals, Jennifer Gray, Annie Engellenner and Frank Dame for their incredible leadership during the course of this most extraordinary year.  This week we bid farewell to Jennifer Gray who has completed her time with us at Our Lady of Good Counsel School. Jennifer is returning to Queensland and we are grateful for the ten years of dedicated services that she gave us.  There is a tribute to her in this newsletter in which we are able to sing her praises!

This will be our last Friday weekly newsletter for the year and I would like to thank parishioners and friends of the parish for their feedback over the year. We have been encouraged by the positive feedback to our newsletter this year.  We have been delighted as you have engaged with various stories and used our websites to comment and have your say around various of our news items.  We hope to build on our newsletter in 2021 and welcome your feedback, your contributions and your engagement with stories around parish life and beyond.  While we will not be sending a weekly newsletter during January, we will continue to add stories to our news section and blog on our website.  So you can stay in touch via our website during the summer.    

Thank you to all who have booked your Christmas Mass for this year.   Bookings will close on Monday 21 December in order to give us time to allocate seats and ensure that we can accommodate as many people as possible.  We will also have an online Christmas Mass and be livestreaming Mass on Christmas Eve at 5:00 pm and Christmas Day at 10:30 am.  
While we have celebrated the end of much of parish life, Christmas will mark a new beginning for us.