Dear friends in Christ,
I hope all of you are doing well. I have a few things going in the life of the church to highlight:
Outdoor Worship
In addition to our online worship at 10am each Sunday (www.youtube.com/c/middleburycongregationalchurch), we are having outdoor worship at 11:30 with Sunday school and nursery care. Wear a mask, bring a chair, and please register ahead by contacting the church office or filling out the online form: 5/16 registration https://forms.gle/okAhsdimgzvavEnw7
We’ve updated the online form to hopefully make it quicker for everyone to fill out, and it’s now set to send you an email confirming you’ve submitted the form. We’re hoping this will alieviate some logistical snafus that have come up.
Indoor Reopening Progress
Cases have been falling each week in Middlebury for the past couple weeks, and it looks like our town should be out of the red public health department classification very soon. We are actively preparing for resuming indoor worship, and you can expect good news on this front in the very near future.
Association Transfer Update
As some of you may remember, at our January Annual Meeting we voted to transfer our church’s UCC association membership from the Naugatuck Valley Association to the Litchfield South Association. The Litchfield South Association Spring meeting is this coming Tuesday 5/18, and during that meeting, we’ll be officially welcomed into our new association.
General Comments
For those of you who were unable to attend our outdoor service, we had a baptism then! I’ve attached a couple pictures.
For those of you who didn’t attend the online service, we had a lovely offering from our handbell quartet, and you can watch that here:
I’ve also attached a few pictures of Magnet, our MCC snow mascot, visiting some places in our building that have gotten spruced up and renovated during the pandemic.
This week, we’re highlighting that the chairs in the sanctuary have been reupholstered, the narthex and stairwell leading down to the social hall have been repainted, and all the radiator covers in the sanctuary have been sanded down and repainted. Thank you Bill M and Bob W!
There are still more places in the building for Magnet to visit as we prepare to return to the building. While the pandemic has be really difficult, it has enabled us to update nearly everything in the building that needed to be updated in much less time than it would have were we regularly using all parts of the building.
Stay tuned, and once we’re back indoors be sure to check out how good everything looks in person.
Peace,
Katrina