St Mary is blessed to be located in a great spot here in the College Heights neighborhood in downtown Fredericksburg.  Being located in a neighborhood gives us special obligations to be good neighbors to the residents who live around the church.  One way we can contribute to being good neighbors is by how we park for Mass.  As you all know, we have a parking lot that is often too small for our church, often necessitating parking in the neighborhood to attend Mass. St Mary wishes to encourage our parishioners as much as possible to be mindful of the neighbors in front of whose houses we park, and one way of doing that is to first try and park on the new parking spots added on William Street in the past year.  This street parking provides direct access to the parish property with little to no inconvenience to our neighbors.  We encourage anyone coming from downtown up William Street to use those spots first before attempting to park anywhere else.  One other way to make the parking situation better is to park in a way that will allow a maximum number of cars to fit on the street.  On Sunday mornings, some of our neighbors have to park 2 or 3 blocks from their house because of our overflow onto the neighborhood streets.  Please park considerately.  And lastly, when exiting the parking lot on the Stafford Avenue Exit, please be cautious and mindful of the fact that we are exiting into a neighborhood.  These small considerate steps can help to alleviate a great stress on our neighbors, and make Sunday Mass a little more prayerful and a little less hectic once we leave the church for the chaos of the world.