7th Annual Quad Parish Picnic
By Caye Caswick

How about an outdoor Divine Liturgy followed by a Quad-Parish church picnic? What a perfect way to keep our faith strong when so many other summer activities are pulling us away from our faith. We recently did just that along with three other churches in the area: Sts. Peter and Paul, Archangel Michael and St. Panteleimon. Matter of fact, even with the threat of a cicada infestation looming large, we broke records and had the highest attendance ever, this, our 7th year.

During our planning meetings, the Quad-Parish Picnic Committee, headed by Luba Johnson, discussed everything from venue, organization, assignment of duties, food, logistics, raffles, Chili Cook-Off, children's activities and the proper permitting to the 17-year cicada infestation. Luckily food was an easy decision, as we all enjoyed last year's caterer, Palonia.

The Divine Liturgy was beautiful. Archbishop Job's homily was meaningful, as his message always is. The choir, directed by John Sutko, sounded beautiful - and was amazingly not in competition with the cicadas (do you suppose they held respect?), although at one point after the Liturgy, Archbishop Job did give them credit for singing at the top of their lungs.

For a while there it appeared as if we would be receiving quite a storm. Amazingly, that passed over with little interruption. The children's games were quite entertaining and the piñatas lasted a very long time. The Chili Cook-Off must have been a difficult decision for the judges as they seemed to deliberate for a long while. In the end, Luba Johnson was the winner of Category 1 (hard to believe, big surprise there!) and Christine Zubenko won Category 2 and took the Chef Hat. It had been rumored that Archbishop Job would be in the Chili competition; however, he did say he'd compete in the 2008 picnic. Congratulations to our winners and thanks to those who entered the competition.

A huge thank you to all of those who helped load and unload equipment before and after the event. Summer might be in full swing and we might be drawn in many different directions, but I personally think the Quad-Parish Picnic helped to keep us focused on our faith as well as entertain our souls.

The Committee will meet one more time in July to wrap up everything from our 2007 picnic and to select a date for the 2008 picnic and first Committee meeting date for next year.