Weekly Announcements from Pastor Valerie Brown-Greenly, Senior Pastor
Dear Friends,
It was such a blessing to see so many of you on Palm Sunday morning! The morning was “Minnesota Crisp” outdoors. We had a wonderful time in our palm processional, in worship, and were blessed by the great music!
I hope you are planning on joining us on Easter morning at 10:00am. We will celebrate the Risen Lord in our parking lot worship, and after, we will enjoy the Easter Bunny Experience. There will be some treat bags for the children and some wrapped treats for adults. Please bring a beverage with you if you desire.
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday worship are at 6:30pm. Maundy Thursday will be live streamed and Good Friday will be uploaded to the website. Many of you have been turning in your Lenten offering boxes. Please bring those with you to Easter worship if that is convenient for you. Thank you for your generous giving and gifting to Peace Lutheran, and thank you so much to those of you who are making special Easter gifts. Your ongoing generosity is amazing!
Thank you so much for making the Holiday Baskets a success for our Peace families, families in our community and our school families! A special thank you to staff, to Dana McIntyre and to our volunteers for all your help! Another special thank you to Ethel Holmes who put Easter treat bags together for every family. Altogether we distributed approximately 3,800 pounds of food. Thank you so much for all of your donations, and for making sure our Food Shelf remains stocked and ready to serve our community.
Most of you have received the plans for partial re-opening beginning on Sunday, April 25. On Tuesday, April 20, you will be able to use sign-up genius (on the website) to reserve a spot in worship. The numbers we are allowing will be on the sign-up page. These numbers will change from week to week. As it stands now, the April 25 worship will probably be limited to 40 or 50 people.
In May and throughout the summer these numbers will be increased according to Covid numbers, the variants, and the ability of our worshippers to follow directions. The directions are simple: sign up to reserve a spot in worship (on the website). Do not enter the building until 9:45am; your name will be checked as worshipping that morning; you will use hand sanitizer and be masked correctly at all times. You will be able to social distance yourself in the Sanctuary, given the opportunity to drop off your offering, and given a bag containing a bulletin and a communion pod. When worship concludes, you will exit the building. Visiting and conversation can happen out in the parking lot following worship. In these first weeks, there will be no congregational singing; this will change as we move forward.
When we completely open to all numbers, then we will celebrate being back together. The late April and May worships are the beginnings of our partial re-openings. This is an opportunity for us to begin returning to Sanctuary worship and to experiment with numbers, space, masking and worship. I certainly appreciate your help and patience as we travel through these next few weeks. As more and more of us are vaccinated, it does help with our future plans. Patience is the key. Being vaccinated is a relief for many of our members. Even so, remember that not everyone has had the opportunity to be vaccinated. Again, patience is the key and one of the important virtues we are being asked to put into practice.
The church office will be closed on Monday and Thursday after Easter. Please use Tuesday and Wednesday mornings between 8:30am and Noon to drop off donations and pick up items. There won’t be an email the week after Easter.
On Sunday, April 11, the Minneapolis Area Synod will be providing worship at 10:00am. The following Sunday, April 18, worship will be live streamed.
Have a wonderful week and a Blessed Easter!
Take care…Be safe…
Pastor Valerie
Cell: 612-280-6493 Email: [email protected]
Church: 763-757-4459 Email: vbrown-greenly@