St. Anthony of Padua Fraternity Bulletin
Vol. 13 No. 6   June 2008

Notes from Buffalo - The regional council

Congratulations to Kim on her new regional position of Vice Minister!

The new council: Sis Hein - MN Area Councilor Linzy Martin - Iowa Area Councilor Ed Feiler - Minister Vickie Klick - presider from NAFRA Kim Pappas - Vice Minister Pat Hendrickson - Treasurer Betty Grenier - Secretary (Larry Reyneck - Nebraska Area Councilor was not present)

The regional fraternity council met this past weekend in Buffalo. This was my second year in attendance and I think the part that I most enjoy is really getting to meet other seculars on a deeper level and finding out about other fraternities. It doesn't hurt that all my meals are cooked for me either! Tom, Kim and Carol were all in attendance as well.

Elections took place this year and similar to our fraternity elections, there was not more than one candidate running for Minister, Treasurer, or the Iowa or Nebraska councilor positions. The Minnesota councilor position was between Sis Hein and Carol Wolney and needed several votes to determine that Sis would be our new Minnesota representative. In a region this large, we should have no trouble having at least two running for each position. Unfortunately, as Minister it does not work well to be asked on election day to be willing to have your name on the ballot since you cannot be Minister and have a regional council position at the same time. That would not be fair to our home fraternities if we were elected, because we would need to replace the Minister of our own fraternity immediately. Several who were nominated really didn't want to run again and ran unopposed. There were some recommendations made about future elections and I would encourage our fraternity to submit names of possible candidates prior to the next election. Our fraternity more than shares it talents with region and of that we can be proud.

We had some lovely prayer services including exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and all night adoration on Friday evening and a memorial service for those seculars who died within the past year.

We voted for a new council, on additional guidelines regarding Affiliates and on the next budget. We heard about FAN from Carol. Steve Pastick gave an ongoing presentation which will be coming to our fraternity soon – The Profession of Secular Franciscans and Their Sense of Belonging. We also saw a Sr. Karen Niedzielski do a one person one act play about St. Elizabeth of Hungary which was marvelous.

A presentation of $11,000 collected for the H20 project was made to the Franciscan Sisters in Iowa for the Sister Water Project. The sisters are actively raising resources to provice clean water to villages in Honduras and Tanzania, even sending hands on volunteers.

Regional council will meet again next year the last weekend in June and the following year the first weekend in June with the possibility of more than just the minister attending (because our group will be the only one staying at the retreat center). Several ideas were presented about future topics at the upcoming meetings. As well as praying for our fraternity council, we should be praying for our regional council.