Dear Friends,
This week, the COVID case numbers and hospitalizations hit record numbers. For the first time in eighteen months, we had a COVID case in our preschool forcing us to close it for at least one week. Yesterday, the Trustees decided to shut down our building for this Sunday. We have operated safely since last February but felt this was necessary, given the community spread and number of breakthrough cases. The Arkansas Conference recommends churches shut down when COVID cases reach 75 cases per 100,000 or the positivity rate exceeds 10.0%. At present, we are 221.8 cases per 100,000 and a 14.4% positivity rate. We will reevaluate every week and reopen after the omicron variant has peaked in our area.
You can talk with your Sunday School class about alternatives. Ellen's Lesson will be on YouTube as of 6:30pm Saturday night and on our podcast. You can find the Worship Service on YouTube or Facebook. The weekly sermon is also on our podcast channel. We still have the radio broadcast on FM97.1 although they seem to have issues occasionally with the tapes we provide. We remained open even as the cases rose due to our high vaccination rate. With this variant we have breakthrough cases and are especially vulnerable if we are not wearing the proper kind of mask in the right way. You know as well as I do that we have a difficult time getting everyone masked up properly so this is our safer course of action for now.
Our missions will continue continue with the safety protocols we have had from the beginning. Masks must be worn in the building at all times until we are past this crisis. Please let those who do not get this email know. We expect this to be very short term. Thank you for your cooperation.
Grace and peace,
Beth
