St. Thomas School Parent Letter
January 23, 2017
No particular reason for the picture of the sun other than I hope we see more of it soon! Saturday
and Sunday were such beautiful days and I know many of us were in gyms somewhere watching
volleyball or basketball. Maybe we will at least get some sunshine, even if it isn’t 70 degrees outside
again for a while.
Monday: 7th grade BB – 2nd round of Regionals 7:15 @ Sigel vs. Stew-Stras, VB practice 5-7
Tuesday: VB @ Albion 6:30, 5/6 BB Tourn. @ Clay City 7:45
Wednesday: 6-8 Class Mass, Amazing Animals Assembly 1:00, BB 3:15-5:15
Thursday: BB 3:15-5:15, VB 5:30-7:00
Friday: All-School Mass, BB 3:15-5:15
Saturday: 5/6 Tourn. BB tourn. @ Clay City 10:45, 7th grade St. Thomas VB tournament 9:00, St.
Thomas Wine Tasting @ KC Hall 6:30
Attached/In Packet: Church contribution statements, Soup supper information and sign up,
Catholic School’s Week information
 Congratulations to our 7th grade basketball team for defeating Windsor Saturday in the
first round of regional play. They are back in action tonight! Go Saints!
 We had two of our students place in the Newton Women’s Club Youth Art Contest. Kaitlyn
Ochs (7th) placed first in her age division and Kye Bergbower (5th) placed third in his.
Congratulations and thanks to Shelah for submitting the art work for our kids.
 I wanted to thank all of the kids who attended Stang Arts last week. We had two new
teachers and both bragged on our kids on not only their behavior, but also their abilities.
Shelah does a great job teaching our kids!
 Next week is Catholic School’s Week. There is a tentative schedule of events in the packet
today. We will be headed to Effingham Wednesday of next week and everyone will need to
bring their lunch. We are going to wear church pants and a St. Thomas shirt that day. A tshirt will work for this mass only.
 Monday, January 30th, the Booster Club will be providing a staff appreciation luncheon in
the parish center meeting room. We need a couple of extra moms or dads in addition to our
lunch duty moms to help watch the students so that the staff can all eat together. Let me
know if you can help out from 11:30-12:30 or even part of that time.
 I wanted to say thanks to our volleyball parents and our Bingo workers from Friday
night. We transitioned from volleyball game with net to Bingo with tables and chairs in
approximately 15 minutes. If there were a record for this, I think we would have broken it.
 Thanks to everyone who had a hand in the 8th grade volleyball tournament Saturday. It
went so well that we are going to do another one this Saturday, only for 7th grade teams. A
huge thanks to Dennis and Debbie Einhorn who run our concessions (and made pretzels),
Maddi and Connie Hemrich who run the clock and keep book, our parents who volunteer
and/or bring food for the hospitality room, Linda Hemrich, the officials, our players and our
coaches, Sarah, Anna and Ali. It is a long day, with hundreds of people coming in and out,
and it always runs smoothly.
 We recently received a generous donation from the Madonna Goeckner family. Both Nikki
Earnest and Mrs. Kreke are Madonna’s granddaughters. They held a silent auction at their
family Christmas in December and chose 3 organizations to benefit from their generosity.
We are lucky enough to be one of those. With some of that money, we plan to pay for our
Catholic School’s Week activities and the staff is discussing ideas for the rest. What a
wonderful example of stewardship for our kids!
 The pop tab war has begun, but this year we are a united front! The entire school will be
working together to earn a variety of goals. Mrs. Meinhart, Mr. Stork and Mr. Hahn have
created a tower to collect our tabs, which provides a view of what is in there. For every
(approx.) 5 gallons, there will be a small reward and after 15, a larger one. If we reach our
final goal of 40 gallons, the students will play Bingo and watch a movie for an afternoon. So,
start bringing in those tabs!!
 Special prayers for the students heading to Washington D.C. this week for the March for
Life. Those attending from St. Thomas and St. Marie are: Cynthia Griffith, Will Ochs, Erica
Johnson, Ali Bierman, Ashley Keller, Haley Ochs, Hanna Zuber, Claudia Zuber and Maddi
Hemrich. Mrs. Meinhart’s daughter, Josie, is going as well from Island Grove! We thank
them for their willingness to evangelize and wish them a safe and rewarding trip.
 If you need more Soup Supper tickets, please let us know and we can send some home.
 If you didn’t pick up your church contribution statements this week, they will be in your
packets.
 Our publicity committee has not met this school year and I would like to get together soon.
I am proposing Wednesday, Feb. 8th at 5:30 in the school library. The meeting should not
take too long – I have one idea to talk about and hopefully get started. If you would be able
to attend, please email me so I know the date works.
 This year, the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) will be holding their
convention in St. Louis. The diocese would like as many of our teachers and school staff to
attend as possible. The diocese is giving our school money to help pay for those who go. So,
I am adding a day off to the calendar. The public schools will attend, but St. Thomas
students will off Wednesday, April 19th. We will have to make this time up so that we are in
session the required time. So, we are scheduled to get out at 12:20 on Feb. 3rd, but we will
be staying all day. Parent pick up will be required that day since the buses will be running
earlier. We may need to make-up a little more time. When I know, I will let you know. I
know that NCEA will be a great time for St. Thomas staff to be together and find ways to
make us better as catechists and I hope that this isn’t too much of an inconvenience for all of
you. Just a recap: No school April 19th, but full day on Feb. 3rd.
 If you received the Catholic Times, take a minute to look at the insert for Catholic School’s
Week. St. Thomas is featured with an article and a picture.
After the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Friday, I wanted to offer a prayer for
him and for our government as a whole. No matter who we voted for, the office of president
is one that should be respected and we should always, like we do in the petitions in church,
pray for all world leaders, especially our own. If you watch any news station this weekend,
you will see the streets of Washington packed with marchers and it will continue this
weekend as the March for Life gets underway-an example of our freedom at work. Our
country is definitely struggling to unify, so I thought a prayer would be something we could
do to help. I found this short prayer to share with you:
I pray, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, for our president, the vice president, all the Cabinet and the
chief justice and associate justices of the Supreme Court to receive the wisdom of God, to act in
obedience to that wisdom and for the power of God to flow in their lives.
I pray for the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to find Your peace and
direction, and for these men and women to act and lead according to Your Word. A house divided
against itself cannot stand, therefore, I pray for them to be unified in righteousness for the sake of
the nation.
Amen
http://www.kcm.org/real-help/prayer/pray/a-prayer-our-government#sthash.op5SjBEW.dpuf