ST. ALEXIUS - OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS - ST. PAUL’S
CELEBRATES A YEAR OF NEW BEGINNINGS
O
ur Lady of the Angels is pleased to welcome Danielle Ritter as our new bookkeeper. Danielle joined us at the beginning of the summer and thoroughly enjoyed her first months here, getting to know the “ins and outs” of the parish and her new position before going on maternity leave following the adoption of her first child. It has certainly been an exciting year of new beginnings for Danielle, and she has seen the hand of God in all of it! Danielle has a deep personal connection to our community — she was baptized and grew up in Our Lady of the Angels Parish and attended Holy Family School. When she and her husband, Tyler, moved to Albany, they began going to Mass at a church there. About a year ago, Danielle found that she missed the strong sense of community in the churches of Sauk Centre, and the couple decided to return to Our Lady of the Angels. The Ritters’ decision to return to Danielle’s home parish proved truly providential. Danielle had recently left a career in the culinary field to pursue a degree in accounting. She had finished her accounting degree in 2019 and began working for a tax firm downtown. When the pandemic hit, the firm no longer had any work for her. “Tyler and I had been praying to St. Joseph, a 30-day novena for a job for me,” Danielle says. “We always included in our prayers that it would be whatever was pleasing to the Lord. Then I opened the
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Danielle Ritter with her husband, Tyler, and their son, Phinehas
bulletin one day and said, ‘I think God is talking to us.’ We had just come back to Our Lady of the Angels a few months before we saw this in the bulletin, so there is no doubt in my mind it was very providential. God had His hand in this.” Each day in the office is a little different for a parish bookkeeper. Mondays are for counting the weekend offertory and making deposits, and the rest of the week is filled with bill paying, handling deposits for memorials and Mass intentions, reconciling accounts, and keeping the QuickBooks software up to date. Danielle also pitches in to help answer phones or assist parishioners who come to the office. Danielle finds the bookkeeping work enjoyable, and she is especially thankful for the warm work atmosphere at Our Lady of the Angels.
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