St. Lawrence Mission kicks off capital campaign

IC photo/Marie Mischel

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Fr. Rogelio Felix–Rosas, parochial vicar of St. Mary of the Assumption Parish, which ministers to St. Lawrence Mission, blesses the ground where the new St. Lawrence church and community center will be built.

HEBER — The community of St. Lawrence Mission gathers weekly for Mass in a 103-year-old building, where the worship space is so small that on special occasions people crowd the steps and into the basement. With 400 registered families and 250 children already in the religious education programs, the parish community is still expanding: Wasatch County is the fastest-growing county in the United States, and the population is expected to increase by 140 percent by 2040.

Because the existing church is no longer adequate for parish needs, the mission has begun a capital campaign for a new church and community center, which will be built on a six-acre site at 980 South and South Mill Road in Heber, adjacent to the existing rectory.

This will take sacrifice and generosity, “just as previous generations sacrificed for their church-building so they could hand it on to us,” said Renee Burkley, the mission council president and chair of the building committee, during the capital campaign kickoff event on Oct. 14.

“We are beyond excited, grateful and very blessed to have every single one of you here to share with us our hope faith and love as we talk about being Catholics here in the beautiful Heber Valley for 50 years, and to launch our capital campaign to build our new community center and church,” Burkley told those who gathered in a white tent on the building site for the kickoff event. “We’re going to build a beautiful building; we’re going to build something that we will all embrace and cherish as you drive by, and something that we’re all very proud of, that those 250 CCD kids and our youth can say, ‘Wow, Mom and Dad worked on building this!’”

The plans for the 15,000-square-foot community center include a commercial kitchen as well as classrooms for the catechist program and a large gathering space.

The center is needed because in the current church, “we don’t have room to do diddly-squat,” Burkley said as the audience laughed. “The youth need a place to go to feel welcome, and we can’t do youth ministry activities, we can’t put on wedding receptions, we can’t put on fundraisers.”

The new center will be large enough for such functions, she said. The parish has also committed the new center to host the annual St Lawrence Thrift Store ski sale “that is a huge, huge event for this valley,” Burkley said.

The community center will be built first so that the existing church can be rented or sold, with those funds then put toward construction of the new church, Burkley said. Plans for the new church call for it to be 10,000 square feet, which will accommodate 600 families.

Before blessing the site, Fr. Rogelio Felix-Rosas, parochial vicar of St. Mary of the Assumption Church, which ministers to St. Lawrence Mission, recalled that when he was young his parish built a new church, and his pastor taught him that a church is built by the community. The kickoff event was a small thing, he said, but in the long run it will have a great effect.

Among those at the kickoff were community members Sister Mary Ward and Elder Larry Ward, who came “to support our Catholic friends,” Mary Ward said, adding that she thinks the community center will enrich the entire area, especially because it will offer worthwhile activities to young people.

St. Lawrence parishioner Diana Torres also is excited about the community center, she said. “I think that’s going to be such an incredible thing, especially to have classes and do activities for the youth, which I think is such an important thing.”

The goal of the first phase of the capital campaign is to raise $350,000 of the $1.5 million total for both the community center and the church.

The hope is that the first phase of the capital campaign will be so successful that they will be able to break ground for the community center in the spring,  Burkley said.