Project 11.2.8
A Parking Lot for the Church of OLAP
A Birthday Gift to Mama Mary
A Thanksgiving Offering to Our Lady

Dear Friends,

First of all, I wish to thank you for the generous support you have given OLAP from its inception 20 years ago onwards, and which I have witnessed personally during these four years of my pastoral ministry with you. I thank you especially for supporting Project 848 which we initiated last year and which enabled us to raise 9.2M, truly beyond all our expectations, and so helped us to quickly complete the building of our new Parish Pastoral Center integral to the Church.

Now, this Center is fully operational, servicing the needs of our parishioners, making available to different parish groups adequate facilities for various meetings, formation programs and fellowships, providing more space for several parish social outreach and services like free dental, medical, and even livelihood assistance. With an impressive belfry on top, a new and more accessible Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the middle level, a fully renovated columbary and ossuary beneath the Church, the completion of the building and full operation of the new pastoral center should have been enough, enough for us to take things easy and to rest a while.

However, rest we cannot simply because of an urgent and even more pressing need: a parking space that will ease the existing heavy traffic along Mindanao Avenue which OLAP very much contributes especially on Sundays. It has grown even worse recently with the opening of NLEX through Mindanao Avenue – staring us in the face and calling for an immediate, responsible and resolute answer from us. And so I come again to you and appeal for your generous help to enable us to acquire a parking lot for our beloved Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation.

A lot adjacent to our Church building and measuring 1,100 square meters is now up for sale. To buy it, we need 11 Million Pesos. With your kind indulgence, I, with the support of the Parish Pastoral Council, am launching Project 11.2.8. As the name goes, the project aims to raise 11M in funds within the next 2 Months of July and August leading to September 8 which is the Birthday of Mama Mary.

Last year we gifted Our Lady with 9.2M in cash gifts and cheques for the completion of a new Pastoral Center. Raising more than the originally targeted 8M in funds, I truly felt the loving presence of Our Lady and the working of God Almighty. It was a miracle! This time I know that the amount we wish to raise is even far bigger and with time far shorter. I believe and hope to see yet another miracle unfold before us, a miracle which is but the fruit of the love of God for us and ours for Him and for one another, proof of the special affection and love we have for Our Lady the Mother of the Lord, and that of hers for us.

As I thank you for your generous support for last year’s successful Project 848, so I thank you even now and in advance, for your untiring and most generous support for this year’s OLAP Project 11.2.8 in honor of Our Lady.

I entrust to her this special project for the good of our parish community. Project 11.2.8 is another way of reiterating the Archangel Gabriel’s initial greeting to Our Lady at the annunciation of the birth of the Lord, “Do not be afraid, for you have won God’s favor…” It is also another way for us to see and believe that even today, miracles do happen especially for those who have faith and are ready to obey. As the Archangel Gabriel also said in his parting words to Our Lady “For with God nothing is impossible”.

May you be our partner – God’s partner – in realizing a project so big and yet so possible too even in so little time.

God bless you. Mama Mary loves you.

Yours ever,
Msgr. J. Romulo Rañada
Pastor