June 11, 2015

June 11, 2015

Here’s the whole gang, still smiling even after several hours of hard work.

On April 18th Grand Knight Dean Moulis and five other Knights of Columbus from Council #6842, at Our Lady of the Valley Parish in Green Valley, came for a volunteer work day, along with District Deputy Doug Cook from Rio Rico. They were a great help to us with various outdoor jobs–mowing, weed whacking, tree trimming, and cleaning the garage.  Thank you, gentlemen, you were terrific!

That’s our Mother Victoria showing three of the Knights which trees to trim.

A Knight weed whacker at work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, there was a lot going on in our Altar Bread Bakery.

That’s Frederic in the foreground, searching for the tool he needs, and Philippe in the background, working on the cutter.

The special equipment which we use to make our whole wheat altar breads for use in parishes across the country is made in France by the Coremat Company.  It was time to upgrade the altar bread cutting computer and to do maintenance on the baking machine, so Coremat sent Philippe and Frederic to do the job from April 13 to 23.  Since none of us are fluent in French, we enlisted our friend Juanita Havill to act as translator.  Our local maintenance expert, Rich Moreno, was also on hand to assist Philippe and Frederic in whatever way they might need.  It was Rich who introduced us to Google Translate, which proved very handy when Juanita couldn’t be there.  Now we have a “new” computer cutting machine which can cut all of the altar bread sizes for us.  Previously, the computer cutter only cut two sizes for us, the peoples’ breads sizes 1-3/8″ and 1-1/2″.  The rebuilt machine can also do the 5-1/2″, 2-1/2″ and 1-1/8″ sizes.  Our Sister Pam has been the only one of us who knew how to operate the old manual cutter to cut those sizes.  She is very happy to let the computer do it all now! This week she starts training Sister Nettie in the use of the computer cutter.

 

Juanita and our Sister Rita pose for the camera.  Rita has been in charge of our bakery since 1998.

Front row: Sr. Esther, Lupita who is one of our lay employees, Srs. Nettie, Rita and Jacqui. Back row: Sr. Pam, Philippe, Frederic, Juanita, and Sr. Kate.