A week ago we had just gotten word that we would need to cancel all in-person gatherings for the Parish. In that week a lot has happened. I rewrote Sunday morning worship for an online format and frantically tried to email and call everyone so folks would know of the change in plans. Caley our music director at Trinity, Jayde, my daughter Paige, and I met at the Trinity building on Sunday to broadcast worship on Facebook live.
Jayde spent the bulk of the week working to get grocery gift cards in the hands of families in need in our area, coordinating a donation from our backpack fund and driving cards to various schools in our area. In all our Parish helped 56 families! She also planned and wrote the worship reflection for Facebook live this week.
On Wednesday some of our leadership held a meeting in the Trinity sanctuary, staying 6 feet apart, to plan ways we can stay connected, care for each other, and care for others. In addition to live steaming a worship reflection each Sunday morning we are holding 4 zoom gatherings each where folks can call in or video chat with each other. The links to these are at the bottom of this blog. We also asked our Children’s Time leader David to record and post a video of him reading a story every Thursday for our children. He began right away with Maya Angelou’s Life Doesn’t Frighten Me. You can watch him here
To help us care for each other we created a private Facebook group where folks can offer assistance or ask for help. People are also posting ideas on how to get through quarantine and encouraging others. Jayde shared a great resource she had already sent to our families from Illustrated Ministry. You can access it here.
I also created what I’m calling Corona Clusters, taking all of our active folks and placing them into groups of about 8-10 people. I emailed each group, calling folks who don’t email to let them know who all was in their group and asking that they check in on each other during this time. I am still getting included on lots of the cluster emails and it’s great to see the way that our parish is stepping up to care for each other.
One of our leaders, Megan, has a gift for encouragement and had already agreed to regularly send cards to people. She was willing to increase her work during this time, so I created a card matrix covering 4 weeks. Each week day she will write a few cards and send them out, meaning everyone in the Parish, including many of our folks in care homes, will get a card.
This has been a crazy week, with a lot changing and it’s likely there is more to come. We might have to stop going to Trinity to stream Sunday mornings. We’re working on plans to celebrate Easter virtually. And yet in the midst of the huge amount of work this week has been, I am so thankful for this community, for the leaders and people who step up to care for one another and our neighbors.
Blessings,
Eilidh
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