Share Your Heart - Eparchial Fundraising Appeal

thermometerTo the Faithful of the Eparchy of New Westminster

3 February 2016

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Dear Friends,

I wanted to write to you and let you know how our Eparchial Fund Raising Campaign “Share Your Heart” is coming along.  We launched this initiative just a little more than two months ago.  I have some wonderful news to share with you.   Through your generosity, we have passed $41,000 of dedication and love!  I want to thank those of you who have already contributed and I want to encourage our Faithful to make your donation as soon as possible.  Jesus taught us in several of his parables that sharing our time, talent and treasure are at the very core of being his disciples.

In my letter to you dated 25 November 2016 I appealed to you for your support to continue the pastoral care of our faithful and to reach out to those in our communities and let them know about the Good News that our Church proclaims – the news of Salvation through personal relationship with Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!  We set as our financial goal a sum of $500,000. I realize that that seems like a large amount.  In this letter to you, I want to highlight in this letter how we use our funds in the eparchy through three examples.

We need funds to continue to support our seminary, especially our own seminarian Mykhailo Ozorovych, whom many of you know.  I am very proud of his academic accomplishments since he became a seminarian in our Eparchy.  He has almost consistently achieved “A” in his academic grades at the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute at Saint Paul University in Ottawa.  His formators and professors have advised me many times how dedicated he is to preparing himself for ordained pastoral ministry in our Eparchy and Mykhailo has often expressed to me his profound gratitude for your prayers, love and support.   By our support of his formation today we are ensuring high quality pastoral care for years to come in our Eparchy.

Over the last year we have brought two wonderful priests into our Eparchy from Ukraine.  This is primarily because the young men of our Eparchy have not felt God’s call to serve our communities as priests.  This is not a criticism of our faithful, just a statement of the fact that there has not been an abundance of priestly vocations coming from Canada.

At the beginning of 2015 Fr. Iurii Tychenok and his wife Maria and their two sons arrived from Lviv and have been assigned to our parish in Prince George.  Fr. Iurii has been a priest for several years, serving in a large parish in the city of Lviv.  When he heard about our pastoral needs in our most Northern parish, he came out to visit us and see our Eparchy and discern with me if he had a vocation to serve in our Eparchy.  We spent several weeks together, in our Eparchy traveling to Prince George and meeting with our parishioners there and talking with our Eparchial clergy and their families both about the challenges and yes rewards of living in British Columbia.  Fr. Iurii went home to Lviv and soon afterwards I received word that his wife and two sons were eager to join our pastoral team.  On 1 January 2015 he was installed as our priest in Prince George.  I know that our faithful have been very enthusiastic about him and we have seen our little parish grow in the short time he has been there.

Our second priest that came to us last year, is Fr. Stepan Dovhoshyia.    In May of 2015, I met with Stepan and his wife Yulyia when I was in Ukraine for meetings and we talked about the pastoral needs in our Eparchy.  Stepan, who is from the city of Ternopil and had just completed his studies and formation for the priesthood at Holy Spirit Seminary in Lviv agreed to come to British Columbia for a few weeks in the summer and like Fr. Tychenok, discern with me if he had a vocation to serve as a priest in our Eparchy.  Stepan had an opportunity to meet many of our faithful and visit several of our parishes.  He worked with our seminarian Mykhailo with our children’s day camp in Surrey, our Altar server day camp at Holy Eucharist Cathedral and also participated in our summer Bible Study program for teens and young adults.  He was ordained a subdeacon at our parish in Richmond and a deacon in our Cathedral in New Westminster and at the end of July returned to Ternopil.  He and his wife with their little son Lucas began to prepare themselves to join us in Canada, and I was privileged to participate in that preparation when I ordained him to the priesthood on August 28th, in his home parish in Ternopil where his father is the pastor.  He and his family arrived just before Thanksgiving to New Westminster.  Fr. Stepan began a rather intense period of pastoral internship under the guidance of Fr. Yuriy Vyshnevskyy, Fr. Richard Soo, sj, and Fr. Chornenkyy to prepare him to become the parish priest at our Cathedral in mid January of this year after the transfer of Fr. Yuriy  to our parish in Victoria.

To ensure that we have good and holy qualified clergy to serve our Eparchy we need to support them, and when we recruit them from abroad we have to assist them with their travel and relocation costs.  I also believe that it is proper to reimburse some of their education costs since we are the beneficiaries of their seminary studies.  Our Eparchy is committed to providing effective and good pastoral care.

Please help me as your bishop through our clergy to evangelize and provide you with great pastoral care.  If you have already contributed, please consider adding to your donation again this year, if you have not yet donated, please be generous.

I look forward to writing to you soon with more good news about our Eparchial Fundraising Campaign.

With prayerful best wishes and assurance of my Episcopal blessings, I remain,

Sincerely yours in the Lord,

+Ken

Eparchial_Crest525 November, 2015

Dear Friends;

Anniversaries are generally a time of reflection on how a relationship has developed and what it holds for the future. The recent anniversary of my appointment as the Third Bishop of New Westminster was, similarly an occasion for me to reflect on the progress of the Eparchy during my time as your Bishop.

Over the past 8 years, we have undergone a tremendous time of pastoral renewal. We have instituted the Generations of Faith program along with Vision 2020, “The Vibrant Parish” program as foundations for growth within our Eparchy.  We have nurtured the legacy of excellent pastoral care left to us by Bishop Jerome Chimy OSBM and Bishop Severian Yakymyshyn OSBM; regardless of whether the parish is a large urban community or a small rural family.

We have come to the time when we need to ask ourselves “Do we have the will to continue the support required for a growing and vibrant Eparchy? “.

The result of my reflection is, very simple.  I need your help.

During my tenure as Eparchial Bishop, I have resisted any discussion of an Eparchial fundraising campaign, however, the time has come when we must launch such a campaign, if our Eparchy is to continue to grow. Over the past 40 years, we have gained much ground. However, our Eparchy is still very much a missionary Eparchy. We have been using our financial resources to support some of our smaller parishes much like the way that you as parents supported your children and grandchildren as they grew and found their own footing. As parents and grandparents, you understand that ongoing support requires substantial resources. Some of those resources need to be financial.

Thus, I am appealing to you for your support to continue the work of the Eparchy. To ensure that we are able to continue the high level of pastoral care within the Eparchy in the short and medium term, I have set a financial goal of $500,000.

We need your urgent and immediate support to guarantee the viability of our Eparchy for future generations of your children and grandchildren. We want to ensure the survival of pastoral services including the celebration of the sacraments in the Ukrainian Catholic tradition, such as Divine Liturgies, Baptisms, Marriages, Funerals and the great Feasts, which mean so much to us.

This is why we need your financial assistance, today in order to continue the work of the new evangelization of our Ukrainian community and ensure we are bringing the Good News to those in our wider community.

Enclosed is an informational brochure as well as the reply card for you to use to make your contribution.  Should you wish, you may also make your cheque payable to your local Parish advising that your contribution is for the Eparchy Vibrant Parish Appeal.  Please be generous with your time, talents and treasures.

With assurance of my prayerful best wishes, I remain

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+Ken

Eparchy Vibrant Parish Appeal

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Reply Card

Eparchial_Crest525 листопада, 2015

Дорогі друзі,

Переважно ювілеї є нагодою, щоб осмислити розвиток стосунків і визначити очікування на майбутнє. Моя нещодавна річниця призначення третім Епархом Нью Вестмінстера була так само нагодою подумати над розвитком Єпархії у період мого єпископства.

За останні вісім років ми були свідками великої пасторальної віднови. Були засновані програми “Покоління Віри”, та “Жива Парафія”, які стали фундаментом духовного розвитку нашої Єпархії. Ми продовжили традицію відмінної духовної опіки, яку нам залишили Владика Єронім Химій, ЧСВВ та Владика Северіян Якимишин, ЧСВВ; незалежно від того, чи парафія знаходилась у великому місті, чи в малій сільській місцевості.

Зараз настав час запитати себе “Чи ми готові далі надавати ту підтримку, яка необхідна для життя і розвитку Єпархії? ”

Після своїх роздумів я дійшов до простого висновку: мені потрібна ваша допомога.

За час перебування єпархіальним єпископом, я утримувався від будь-якого натяку на потребу єпархіальної кампанії по збору коштів; однак зараз настав час, коли ми повинні провести таку збірку, якщо хочемо, щоб Єпархія продовжувала рости. За останні 40 років ми доволі зміцнилися, однак наша Єпархія є все ще місійною. Ми використовуємо наші фінасові ресурси, щоб підтримувати менші парафії, подібно до того, як ви, будучи батьками, підтримуєте своїх дітей та внуків, поки ті зростають до незалежності. Як батьки, дідусі та бабусі, ви розумієте, що тривала підтримка вимагає вагомих ресурсів, і деякі з цих ресурсів мусять бути фінансовими.

Тому, щоб продовжувати працю Єпархії, я звертаюся до вас за підтримкою. Для подальшого забезпечення якісної пасторальної опіки в нашій Єпархії у найближчому майбутньому, нам потрібно зібрати $500,000.

Ми потребуємо вашої негайної та безпосередньої підтримки, щоб гарантувати життєздатність нашої Єпархії для майбутніх поколінь ваших дітей та внуків. Ми хочемо запевнити, що будуть збережені наші пасторальні богослужіння, уділення Святих Тайн, таких як хрещення, шлюби та похорони, і вшанування великих свят за нашою українською католицькою традицією: все, що так багато для нас значить.

Саме тому сьогодні ми потребуємо вашої фінансової підтримки, щоб мати змогу продовжувати євангелізаційну працю в нашій українській громаді та нести Добру Новину до суспільства загалом.

У додатку до цього листа міститься інформаційна розгортка, а також платіжна картка для вашого внеску. Якщо ви бажаєте, то можете виписати чек на вашу місцеву парафію, зазначивши, що пожертва призначена для єпархіальної збірки «Жива парафія». Просимо бути щедрими у внесенні свого часу, талантів та матеріальних цінностей.

З найкращими побажаннями у молитві, залишаюсь

Щиро ваш у Христі,

+Кен

Eparchy Vibrant Parish Appeal

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Платіжна Картка