Dear Friends,
As I sit to write this, I am excited that this coming weekend we will be celebrating my girls’ birthdays with a family adventure. Weeks ago, I made a hotel reservation for us and today I am working on making a reservation for a special family dinner on Saturday night to celebrate. There will be nine of us and being a Saturday night, reservations would be helpful. Finally, as annual passholders for Knott’s Berry Farm, I was excited to see that they have opened for limited numbers of passholders to enter the park and ride the rides, so I once again made us a reservation to stop at Knott’s on our way home from the hotel. It helps to know that the hotel, restaurant, and theme park all have Covid protocols in place (yes, I have looked them up and read them through), to know that my family will be as safe as possible for our celebration weekend. Thinking through the extra details these days often seems like an inconvenience, but all the extra steps are worth being out of the house, having a sense of normalcy and enjoying time as a family in some of our favorite places.
Church is also one of our favorite places, especially Sunday mornings in worship. To know that we will be back in person at the end of this month is even more exciting than a hotel water slide or a theme park rollercoaster. And like the hotel, restaurant and theme park, our routines and steps will be a little different for a little while to follow the protocols given to us and to keep our beloved church family safe. We will need to RSVP through an online form each week. We will need to have our temperatures taken at the door. We will need to sit socially distanced and avoid hugs and handshakes. We will need to keep our masks on, whether we are vaccinated or not. And we will need to refrain from singing in the pews, despite our soul’s desire to sing at the top of our lungs.
Be watching your mailbox and email inbox for more detailed information about reserving your seat and being prepared for worship, but also know that not everyone is ready to come back. For some, waiting a little longer is the best decision for themselves and their family. We respect the decision of those who wish to wait, and we promise to continue our live-streamed worship on Facebook and YouTube as we work to continue to provide worship in the Sanctuary and everywhere that family and friends are logging on to be in worship with us.
Blessings, Pastor Stacy