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St. Alexius Parishioner Profile Brenda Miller: Serving God With A Heart Full Of Love
When a couple plans to get married at St. Alexius Parish, they can rest assured that they will be in the best of hands.
“I really enjoy meeting new couples and helping them prepare for their wedding,” says Brenda Miller, who serves as our parish Wedding Coordinator. “I look back on some of the weddings I have attended, and I think that if each couple had just had someone to help them coordinate their wedding, it would have gone smoother. This inspires me to help couples make their wedding day less stressful. I like to have everything ready for them, so all they need to do is just go to the rehearsal, show up, get married, and leave. I love to see their joy!”
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While Brenda is serving as the Wedding Coordinator for a particular wedding, she also fulfills the duties of an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and a sacristan, as needed.
“Being able to set everything up for Mass as a sacristan has taught me a lot about the Catholic faith,” she says. “I have learned what various things are and what they mean. I have learned a lot about the Catholic faith this way. I like serving in the background because I am good at taking care of details and I don’t like to be the center of attention.”
Furthermore, enabling couples to have a beautiful, peaceful wedding is not the only thing Brenda enjoys doing. She also enjoys helping make the Sausage Supper a true success. For the past few years, she has tended to various background details, such as entering orders into the computer, running pre-sales, and handling online orders.
Brenda Miller is grateful that her family loves being involved in and contributing to parish life.
“It is such a large undertaking that we need to work at it almost all year round,” Brenda says.
“It has been fun and interesting to see all of the workings that go into the Sausage Supper. We work as a team to collect the money on pick-up day, and I really enjoy this teamwork effort as well.”
Brenda has also enjoyed teaching Faith Formation and the opportunity it gives her to catechize her own children — Anita, 4; Travis, 6; and Caleb, 8 — as well as their friends.
“I had Caleb in my class last year, and I am looking forward to teaching Travis this fall,” she says. “I am excited to share that experience with him. Overall, it has been very eye-opening to teach my own children. I noticed that sometimes they would come back weeks later and say something about what we learned. I was very happy to see that they were actually paying attention!”
By being a faithful steward and helping out at our parish, Brenda Miller has been able to integrate herself into our faith family and feel right at home.
By being a faithful steward and helping out at our parish, Brenda has been able to integrate herself into our faith family and feel right at home.
“I have been able to work with many different people through all of the ministries I am involved in,” she says. “This means I get to hang out with parishioners I may not normally spend time with, and get to know them in a deeper way. It has been such a great way for me to meet new people and make acquaintances. I have also noticed that everyone at the parish pitches in and helps at parish events. Many hands do make light work!”
Brenda is grateful that her husband, Alex, and their children love our parish as well, and they love to contribute to it. Alex serves as the head of the Maintenance Committee, as well as on the Cemetery Committee and as an usher.
“It is very rewarding to be active in the parish as a family,” Brenda says. “It makes a great impact on our children. My husband, Alex, is a lifelong member, but I didn’t join the parish in 2013. I really like our parish because it has a mix of young families, as well as older people who are very welcoming and happy to stay and talk after Mass is over.”
