We just put in some more sidewalk so parishioners can get to the chapel easily, without mud or water getting on their shoes, even in rainy weather.

As much as I wanted to upgrade the chapel's contents, this sidewalk seemed more necessary for now.

St. Dominic's Chapel is situated in the country, on rolling, open farmland. Between the parking area and the chapel is a "dry creek" of sorts, which flows with water whenever we get rain (1" or more). Spring 2015 was very wet, and we had so much water flowing -- including a couple of Sundays -- that the lumber we placed for people to walk on actually floated downstream from the force of the water! That's why I say "dry creek".

We used to have 2 sections of sidewalk, totaling 16 feet. Now it's 36 feet long. That 20 feet of sidewalk cost about $550 for two tons of concrete (4,000 lbs) and labor. My son and I volunteered to help with the whole thing, to speed things up and reduce labor costs. We hired 2 Traditional Catholics to do the labor, and I would say their rate was well below the market rate for such hard, backbreaking work (mixing concrete by hand, etc.) I would also note that the men we hired are from a poor, large Catholic family and they were most grateful for the work.

If anyone out there in CathInfo Land has funds they want to donate to God/the Church and wants a "good cause" to send it to, please feel free to donate to our chapel. If you need a receipt for tax purposes, PM me and I can give you the name of the organization to make the check out to. Fr. Zendejas has a nonprofit set up in CT. You can donate through him if you need a tax receipt.

I only ask for donations, because I know that we need a new air conditioner (our smallest one died -- 12,000 BTU) and it will cost $367 to replace it. We won't need it until early March, when the temps start going into the 80's (yes, this is Texas!) But this sidewalk project wiped out our chapel's meager funds.

St. Dominic's Chapel
367 Stagecoach Hill Dr
Seguin, TX 78155
(You can make checks payable to "St. Dominic's Chapel")

We have a Paypal account set up:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=LHMPZNHJB6J8Q

Any funds donated will be used for the building up of an independent chapel that will serve San Antonio/Austin area Traditional Catholics. We are committed to being Traditional Catholic, not schismatic or sectarian, along the lines of Archbishop Lefebvre and his very Catholic position. We are friendly to any other Traditional Catholic priests and chapels in the area.

We strongly believe the area needs a chapel for WHEN the SSPX falls the rest of the way. We can no longer count on the SSPX to be the bastion of Tradition. But other than that, we've "moved on" from the SSPX. We don't waste effort (nor does Fr. waste sermon time) bashing SSPX priests or the organization. He covers current events and doctrinal issues in his "Blue Papers", which supplement his sermons.

We're just busy being Traditional Catholics, and trying to serve Catholics in the area as well as we can.

In the picture below, you can see where the "river" runs whenever it rains and we have runoff. To get an idea of the land scale, sidewalk sections 3 and 4 total 20 feet. It's a lot of land! It looks like we have a ways to go, but at least we can use the paver bricks (which we replaced) to extend the sidewalk much closer to the parking area now.

The thing is that the sidewalk is much better than walking on paver bricks. The bricks eventually separate from each other and tilt in various directions (especially with the soil we have here), making it challenging for older people to navigate. So bricks are better than nothing, but actual sidewalk is much better than bricks.

The second picture is from Mass a couple weeks ago.

Have you have any progress with your fund raising? It can be difficult to raise funds for a mission site, that much is certain.

Yes, we received a couple donations, including a generous pledge for next month.

Plain, but something pioneering about it. Best of luck and prayers.

I can't wait until we get enough people and resources to build an altar, put up some interior walls, etc. and make the place look nicer. Eventually, long term, we'll buy some acreage nearby and build a larger metal building on it. (Metal buildings are a good starting point, being very "do-able" and the cheapest price per square foot.) You can always put a brick facade on the building, do up the inside to look like a normal chapel, etc. But all that can come later, as the resources become available.

So far we've been focused on functionality -- the basics. Equipment for High Mass, Benediction, and Low Mass. And keeping everyone cool enough in the summer, and able to get to the building (i.e., with a sidewalk outside).

Humble is fine (the stable at Bethlehem comes to mind) -- but at least we're trying and we're slowly improving. We've spent a lot of time and money getting the chapel as "nice" as it is now. Our chapel's treasure chest hovers around 0 -- as soon as donations come in, we spend them to improve the chapel.

That is in contrast with a certain SSPX chapel, which is overcrowded and has no room for new parishioners except for a folding chair in an adjacent parish hall, where they watch Mass on a large projection TV. *cough* San Antonio chapel *cough*. Oh, and the chapel in question has at least 1.5 million saved up. Time will tell if they EVER succeed in getting the bigger church they need. According to the head of the building committee, only one-third of the parishioners even want a bigger church or any kind of change. Another 1/3 is positively opposed to getting a new building. And the other 1/3 doesn't care either way. What has happened to the SSPX's zeal and apostolic spirit? The desire for growth to help as many souls as possible?

As the bumper sticker said, "Don't laugh -- it's paid for" meant to be stuck on the bumper of an older vehicle.

Likewise, this chapel is independently owned and operated, so we're not dependent on Rome, the SSPX, or any other group to "let us keep our chapel". Better to have a humble place that's YOURS than a Cathedral that's being lent to you by the Diocese (which you then have to "keep happy" in order to continue to use the building. In such a case, you can forget about criticizing Vatican II and the local bishop!)

When we put in new "sidewalks" around our side and back yard, which run west to east toward our back driveway which runs down the hill to the street, we did not put them in level. Instead, they slant slightly toward the curb we had placed on the south side of these sidewalks so that the water would run in what has become a small rain channel toward our back driveway.

As a result our once flooded backyard and sideyard are now able to drain into these new rain channels (our sidewalk) and down to the street. Yes, we must occasionally shovel some dirt out of this rain channel, but the higher portion of it remains dry and clean.

Latest picture of the sidewalk, now 60 feet long: