An exciting time for St. Joseph’s parish family!
My dear brothers and sisters,
     Welcome to our construction newsletter. I will attempt to keep you updated on a regular basis as we move forward with our building project. Over the years several members of our parish family have put many, many hours into the planning of our new church and now it is becoming a reality.
     This truly is an exciting time for all of us. Last summer Bishop Hoeppner did a ceremonial ground blessing and ground breaking at the site of our new church on the celebration of our 100 ^th anniversary. A week ago we actually broke ground when Mark Berhow came with a large earthmover and scraped all of the topsoil from the site.
 
Site cleared for new church, now the fill! This past Thursday and Friday truckloads of fill were hauled to the site and firmly packed for our new building. 1,400 yards of engineered gravel have been hauled from Taylor’s pit. This has been packed and prepared for the concrete slab. Fertile Sand and Gravel did the hauling, and Aaron and Willard Swenby and crew spread the gravel and packed it with a large, vibrating packer. The next step will be setting the forms for the concrete slab, then placing all of the underground electrical conduits and plumbing. Once this is done Swenby’s will put 2” of Styrofoam, followed by tubing for in-floor heat, 6”- 8” of sand to form a ‘heat sink’ to retain the heat in the winter, and then the concrete slab.
 
John Revier hired to build new church. We are happy to announce that we are hiring John Revier Construction to build our new church and oversee our building project. John has been a parishioner of St. Joseph’s for the past few years and we are excited to have him as our builder.
     We have decided to hire Downs Mechanical to do our electrical, plumbing and heating. Brian Downs met with the Building Committee three times to work with us and brainstorm some ways to cut costs while maintaining the integrity of the buildings “inner workings”. He had some great ideas; Brian and crew are excited to begin.
 
Natural Gas coming to Fertile. With Natural Gas coming to town the Building Committee gave a lot of consideration as to the best way to heat our building. After much deliberation it was decided to go with Natural Gas for our heat, cooking and hot water. The crew that is laying the pipe in town will run piping to our new site, too.
     In addition to the NG for heat we will be putting in air source heat pumps that will be used during the heating season; whenever it will be most efficient. The heat pumps will also be used for our cooling during the summer.
 
Local materials to be used. In the next few weeks we will be placing the orders for the building materials. Both Crookston Building Center and Fertile Building Center have been very generous to our parish in our fundraising. We are happy to work with both of these businesses in purchasing our building materials.
 
Timeline. The timeline for our building project is as follows: April – prepare site, haul and pack fill [done]; end of April and early May – Swenby’s to set forms for slab and Downs’ to lay pipes for plumbing and conduit for electrical; end of May – Swenby’s to place Styrofoam, tubing for in-floor heat, sand, and pour concrete slab; June – John Revier to begin building. Our projected completion is targeted for April of 2017. We hope to be in our new church for Easter!
 
Visit the site. We encourage you to drive by the site from time to time to see how it is going. We do ask, for safety, to stay back from the work area of the site and to not allow little kids to run around. We don’t want anyone hurt.
 
Cost of building/Financing/Grants. We have got the cost of the building down from 1.7 million (the amount from the lowest bids that were given to us – all of which we rejected) to 1.25 million (working with our local businesses) – what we had projected 1½ years ago when we did our capital campaign.
     We are currently working with the Diocese of Crookston to take out a loan for our new church. The diocese will be able to give us a loan for 2.5% interest, possibly less, depending on rates at the time we take out our loan. We are anticipating a $500,000.00 to $600,000.00 loan to be paid off over 10 to 15 years. This will give us a monthly payment of between $3,333.95 ($500,000.00 for 15 years) to $5,656.19 ($600,000.00 for 10 years). I realize that this is a lot of money for monthly payments, but I am confident that we can manage it.
     How will we manage the loan? We have approximately $600,000.00 available to us through the parish-building fund and other funds that we can borrow internally – this will cover the first half of the project. We are working on getting grants to help with finishing the classroom section, social hall and a new sound system (these items are not in our projected costs as they are part of phase II and phase III of the project). We still have approximately $100,000.00 to collect on pledges made during our pledge drive. We will continue to have our annual Hoedown and other fundraisers. During our first capital campaign I told you that we will most likely need to do a second campaign to continue the sacrificial giving for the new church – this will need to take place as our first campaign winds down in 2017. We will need to raise $65,000.00 – $70,000.00/year to service the loan. Last year we raised $135,637.00, paid the architect $77,561.00, leaving us with $58,076.00. With that we would have been able to pay $4,839.00/month. So far this year we have already raised $21,000.00 – we are on track for another great year. It will require continued hard work and sacrifice by all.
 
What can you do?

• PRAY – we need every member of our parish family to pray for the success of our project, the safety of those working, and generous hearts of all parishioners. Consider praying consecutive novenas to St. Joseph.
• Volunteer – give of your time and talents to help make this dream a reality; volunteer at fundraisers, step forward with new ideas, volunteer at the building site when needed, etc.
• Be open – it is my sincere belief that the Holy Spirit has led us to where we are at today. A project of this size can only be accomplished with His guidance. Be open to the Holy Spirit in your life and let Him lead and guide us as we move forward.
• Be positive – have you ever seen the billboards that simply say “Be Positive”? Very appropriate. Remain positive. Speak positively of what we are accomplishing. In the body of Christ there is no room for gossip, put-downs, and negativism. Jesus calls us to love one another as he has loved us – we can only do this if we are positive.
• Give – if you have not given to the capital campaign, it is not too late. We need all of our members to be sacrificial givers for both the building project and the general operating fund of the parish. Please prayerfully consider making a sacrificial gift. We have 95 families in our parish. We could manage the 600K for 10 years if every family gave $60/month; the $600K for 15 years for $42/month; the $500K for 10 years for $50/month; or the $500K for 15 years for $35/month. We know that not all families come to church and not all families are able to give as much as others, so some would need to give more to make up the difference. But, when looked at this way, it will not be too difficult to manage – we can do it – we just need you to be on board (and these figures do not take into account any fundraising)!
• And finally – Pray, pray, pray – unceasingly!

 
A couple of pictures from this past week.
 
 
 
Thank you for your continued support! ~ Fr. Joe