Dear Friends,

Thank you for visiting the Saint Francis Community Services Web Site.  As we enter into summer, I’m hoping that those of you parents who work out of the home have good solutions to the perennial question about how to provide good, safe, and fun-filled care for your children while you are at work.   Many communities have excellent resources, which help so much, and some of you will even be fortunate enough to have relatives or friends who enjoy giving your children good care during the times you are at work. 

Whatever your weekday summer arrangements are, however, there are still lots of wonderful daylight hours left in the evenings and on the weekends for you and your children to make memories.  Twenty-five years from now (or more; or less) you want your children to be able to look back and say (possibly to your grandchildren), “I remember the summer of 2010.  That was the year we…;” and you want whatever follows to be pleasant and positive.

I don’t think there is any downside to keeping in mind that someday we’ll look back on the present, especially where that amazingly rapidly vanishing time we have with our children is concerned.  It keeps us accountable to ourselves, which, along with our accountability to God, is the purest accountability there is.  When you think back over your own summers, what do you remember?

 I remember playing in the garden hose on hot summer days with my brother.  I remember gathering in the afternoons under a shade tree that had branches which hung almost to the ground to play board games on a blanket with neighbor children, and I remember that our mothers took turns bringing us Kool-aid to drink.  I remember some family trips to the mountains, and fireworks on the Fourth of July, swimming lessons, and Boy Scout activities.  I remember the joy of having extra time to read what I wanted to read and more frequent trips to the library.  I remember lying outside on a blanket on hot summer nights and looking at the stars and then going inside where my father was reading and discussing the possibility of life on other worlds and what that might mean for us on this one.

Most of those memories represent fairly simple and inexpensive activities, but I’m guessing they had much more to do with the person I am today than I could ever begin to comprehend.

When I think about last summer, I hope it holds memories that include my wife and I for all of our children (now adults), and this year, I think our two-year-old grandson just might be old enough that our time together could possibly end up yielding an early memory.  Now there’s a rather staggering and quite exciting thought!

So I encourage you to use your imaginations in regard to the children in your lives this summer, and I remind you that the foundation of all shared memories is time spent together.  If you spend time with the children God has placed in your life, their memories of summer 2010 will include you.  Is there a better legacy to be had?

May God bless you and all you love with a happy, safe, and memorable summer.

Fr. Ed+

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Ed+

President, CEO and Dean
of Saint Francis