This is Tuesday. I really need to remind myself that this is Tuesday, not Monday. Ya’ see, that’s what a holiday on a Monday, quasi-retirement, and a COVID-19 two and a half month stay home order does to you. Time just seems to cease to exist. It’s either daylight or it’s dark. Not much else matters because you ain’t going anywhere anyway.

But, all of that being said, we had a nice, no, actually wonderful Memorial Day weekend because Julie and the pups came over on Friday and stayed until yesterday afternoon. It was the first time we have seen her since all of this stuff started. Jim stayed home. I think he was mowing yard and stuff. He still is allowed to go to work every day and in fact they are putting in a lot of extra time to keep up with production. He’s one of the “essentials” of the American workforce. In, fact every one of my kids and their family are working through all of this. And, so am I but I normally work from home most of the time anyway. The biggest difference is that I still can’t do any visitation to my parishioners that are in nursing homes or hospitals. Nor, am I conducting two worship services on a Sunday morning. But, Ms. Kate and I do go to the church one afternoon a week and do the taping of the virtual service for a Sunday release on Facebook.

This past week we taped the service at my home church in their outdoor sanctuary and it went wonderfully. The drone footage that they shot was stunning. The weather was perfect for the shooting and the drone operator did a marvelous job as did Jacob when he put it all together. I’m not sure which day we are going to tape this week. But —- the good news is that we are going back to “in-person” services on the first Sunday of June. I think we have the church “safety ready” with all of the proper precautions of self-distancing and masks, and sanitizers. The big question now is how we ill open on June 7th. If the weather is predicted to be great, I plan to do an out-door service under a tent with a combined church service. I had hoped to do this once earlier and it got shot down, and that probably was the right decision. But that was weeks ago and the guidelines have loosened way up by now. If the weather forecast is for rain, I’ll simply do a standard church service at each church. Well, I don’t know how “standard”  it will be. I’ve never done a church service where we couldn’t sing and make a joyful noise to the Lord. So that is going to take a lot of thought. In the meantime, the churches are both being sanitized and prepped.

Ms. Kate’s gout episode seems to have subsided although the side effects are evident. Prednisone messes with her blood thinners so now she looks like she went three rounds with somebody. All it takes is a bump and she gets an ugly bruise. Even resting her arm on the table while making her cards gave her a bruise. But — she is feeling so much better and for that I give God praise.

Time to go down to my office and get some work done. Have a blessed day. Stay always in prayer. Peace.