Church of St. Anthony, Mandaree, North Dakota
The Black & Indian Grant has helped the Church of St. Anthony in Mandaree to provided many different opportunities for our students.
One opportunity that we provided was St. Anthony CLC (Christian Life Camp) which took place this year from July 8 – 12; July15 -22. Week I is put on with our own people from the Diocese of Bismarck, Week II is sponsored with a group of adults and students from the states of MN and Wisconsin. This is an overnight camp. This camp provided students with the opportunity for daily Mass, Adoration, Confession and learning daily about the Catholic faith. This was entwined throughout the day with plays, skits and recreational activities. Breakfast, lunch, supper and snacks are provided throughout day. We are now in the process of looking for help with our camp. We need donations for food, carnival prizes, toiletries. Our grant money will help us to fill in the gaps where we don’t have enough donations. We did not have camp this year due to Covid 19.
The Church of St. Anthony also provides Faith Formation classes on Wednesday evenings. We began in October and go through May. We need to provide teacher and student workbooks, Biblical Movies, prayer incentives and we also provide a small snack for our students in attendance. The grant monies have helped to support these items as the teachers volunteer their time. Our Faith Formation classes ended on May 10th and we celebrated with a picnic/BBQ. We were able to use funds for food and purchasing of games for the students to play. We began on September 18 with our fall Faith Formation Classes and go every Wednesday. We purchase food to feed the students along with supplies such as religious craft projects, materials to print etc. Attached are pictures from the Faith Formation Classes that Fr. Roger teaches on Wednesday afternoon. We bought Lenten teaching materials and put them in Lenten bags and passed them out on Ash Wednesday. The students watch videos of Saints and do activities related to that saint. We buy food for every Wednesday class. Most everything else has stayed the same. We had to stop classes in March due to Covid 19 but will start up in the fall.
We have not yet opened up the Atrium for faith formation classes of Catechist’s of the Good Shepherd. We needed to buy supplies for the Level I of Catechist’s of the Good Shepherd and have purchased them. This has not changed this quarter but we continue to look for teachers and will use these funds to pay for tuition. We are still looking for people to send to this upcoming training and get this started in full swing in the near future.
We continue to prepare adults and children as well for the Sacraments. In order to do so we also have to buy materials and supplies and have used these grant monies for this. We have prepared children for Baptism, First Holy Communion, Sacrament of Reconciliation, and Confirmation. Fr. Roger continues to do Marriage preparation and other classes as well. We are always looking for different materials and ways to teach these Sacraments and continue to build our curriculum of materials to use. This summer I will be preparing students for receiving the sacraments at the camp. One child was prepared for First Holy Communion and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I am currently working on a list of children to prepare in the spring. We have not had any Sacramental prep due to Covid 19 but I am beginning to reach out to people and see if I could do individual classes with them.
