Back Together

Last March, as a pandemic swept the earth, the church curtailed all public meetings and we truly became a "home centered, church supported" church.  Church meetings stopped, temples closed, missionaries came home; in many ways it was almost a complete shut down of all public church work.  Since then, each week, Brombeere and I, along with whoever else was here and wanted, have been having the sacrament and a brief service in our home.  Most of the time, the brief service was actually more a gospel centered discussion, more a Sunday School than a Sacrament Meeting.  There have been some nice things about it and we've enjoyed it.  Then, in May, the First Presidency announced the plans to resume meetings.  Each Area Presidency,  working with the Quorum of the Twelve and local Stake Presidencies, was to work out the resumption of meetings in a phased approach, phase one being just a short sacrament meeting for those comfortable with attending.  Wards and branches were to work with their stake leaders to make a plan, get it approved, and pick a date to resume.  Our stake president is a doctor, which I personally found reassuring, so our ward did not rush into resuming meetings.  Our Ward Council discussed it extensively and the Bishopric finally submitted their plan to the stake.  And the stake approved it.

So, with approval, all kinds of preparations took place; additional cleaning supplies was acquired, furniture was rearranged, and a "dry run" sacrament meeting was held with just the families of those on the Ward Council, to try our plan out.  A few little tweaks were made and information was sent out to ward members, and today was the first "regular" sacrament meeting our ward has held since March. 

It was a phase one meeting so it was shorter than the full hour.  There were lots of little things that were different to try to make it as safe as possible, given what we know about Covid-19 at present.  But it went well, attendance was about 60-70% of what it normally was before all the craziness.  It was nice to meet together again, nice to see a little bit of normalcy creeping back into life.  As so much of life has become so warped and distorted by this pandemic, it was nice to get back to something that we used to take for granted.  Slowly and cautiously, I'm looking forward to when things are more normal, even if that takes a few more months.