HCH photo by Anna Weaver
Pat Kaslausky, St Patrick Parish Outreach coordinator with an Advent card.
Island Catholics bring a little Christmas warmth to those left out or overlooked
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Whether it’s sewing blankets for the elderly, serving a Christmas Eve dinner to the homeless, or leaving holiday cards at the bedsides of hospital patients, Catholic groups and parishes throughout Hawaii are doing their part to bring the spirit of Christmas to those who might otherwise be left out of the year’s most joyous day.
Food and blankets
“We help people year round, but at Christmas we do some little, extra special things for them,” said Mike Prevost, outreach director of Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Honolulu, one of many island parishes that step up their charity during Advent.
Sts. Peter and Paul parishioners give Christmas candy bags to Palolo Elementary School students and buy and deliver Christmas gifts to individual families at the Kakaako Homeless Shelter and Kokua Kalihi Valley. The church has begun working with Our Lady of Keaau Retreat Center on the Waianae coast to serve regularly the homeless in the area and will be donating food and gifts for Christmas.
Parishioner Betty Rose has been leading a group of church seamstresses since 1997 in making blankets and bibs during the year that are distributed to eight elderly centers on Oahu in mid-December.
“We thought the patients would like to receive a gift at Christmas,” Rose said. Last year close to 300 blankets were given out. In the past Rose has taken other volunteers with her when she delivers the blankets and bibs because “I felt they should see whom they are helping.”
A Christmas feast
On Maui, St. Joseph Parish in Makawao has a group of volunteers that cooks food for the Ka Hale A Ke Ola Homeless Resource Center the first and fourth Sunday of each month. But last year they decided to create a special meal for the fourth Sunday of December since it falls on Christmas Eve.
“We thought it would be a good idea to spread the spirit,” said Arsie Anderson, one of the volunteers, who regularly makes and serves meals at the homeless shelter.
This year’s Christmas Eve dinner will probably be a ham or pot roast supper and will feed 40 to 50. “They really appreciate St. Joseph coming,” Anderson said. “You can tell by the way that they come back for more [food] and the way they are so thankful.”
Gift giving and receiving
Pat Kaslausky is busy year-round as the coordinator of the St. Patrick Parish Outreach center. But at Christmas things get even busier. “At Christmas it’s more a showing of reaching out,” Kaslausky said.
The Kaimuki parish participates in Toys for Tots, collects stuffed animals for the patients at Shriners Hospital for Children in Honolulu, and for nearly 15 years has sponsored a “penny sale” where children can buy for others two Christmas gifts for two cents.
“The idea was that the children would learn not only to receive gifts,” Kaslausky said. “They would learn that they have to give back too.”
The St. Patrick Outreach building in Palolo bustles during the holidays as presents, food, grocery store gift certificates, and even leftover fundraiser Christmas trees are given to those without.
St. Patrick also receives 500 names from Catholic Charities Hawaii of people who could use Christmas gifts. The church shares the names with Holy Trinity Parish in Kuliouou, St. Patrick School, and the faculty and staff of Sacred Hearts Academy next door.
Instead of the Angel Tree that many parishes hang gift name cards on, Kaslausky has her outreach volunteers color Advent candle cards and write the names and ages of the gift recipients on them. Two hundred cards went up on St. Patrick’s church bulletin board on Dec. 3. Three days later only 50 remained.
Holidays in the hospital
As a hospital ministry volunteer, Deacon Vincent Wozniak, visits the sick daily delivering Communion, prayers and support to patients. On Dec. 25, he will hold a special Christmas Communion service in the Queen’s Medical Center chapel at 2 p.m. that also will be shown on televisions throughout the hospital for those that can’t leave their rooms.
But he adds, “I think it’s important that the hospital ministers carry out there ministry every week of the year, not just during Christmas.”
The hospital ministry coordinator at St. Elizabeth Parish in Aiea, Shirley Motas, also says it’s important to do hospital work 365 days a year. But at Christmas, if a patient is asleep when she stops by his or her room, Motas leaves a Christmas card. She writes “Sorry we missed you” on it.
Remembering those gone
Despite the wet blustery weather, dozens of family members of hospice patients who died this past year attended a special holiday remembrance ceremony on Dec. 1 on the front lawn of the Sister Maureen Keleher Hospice Center in Nuuanu. They clutched umbrellas as several Christmas trees decorated with stars bearing the names of departed loved ones were doubly blessed by holy water and the Nuuanu rain.
St. Francis Hospice sponsors this “A Simple Christmas” gathering each year — including another ceremony at their Ewa Beach hospice center — in order to give families a little more closure during the often difficult holiday season. Families can take home their loved one’s star or leave it to adorn the remembrance trees during the holidays.
Donations for each star provide assistance to other hospice patients and families.
“My grandpa passed away,” said 6-year-old Taelyn Uyehara, who came to the blessing event with her grandmother, Naomi Nekonishi. She proudly held onto her grandfather Calvin S. Nekonishi’s star after it was taken down from a tree.
“You can put the star on your tree now,” grandmother told granddaughter as the two went inside the hospice center to listen to the West Oahu Calvary Chapel Choir sing carols. Taelyn grinned big and held the star tight.