Many of our SWC churches serve Family Promise on a regular basis. Even though families are not being housed at our churches during this time, the service continues. Church of the Beatitudes provided a week of meals and met other needs last week for 4 families staying at the Family Promise center.
Packer teams from First Congregational Church in Prescott volunteered their time to bag groceries at Prescott Community Cupboard which serves the needy members of their community. Each person with previous experience bagging at PCC was eager to assist during this difficult time and to adapt to the new procedure required to maintain their safety during the distribution.
Matt Rinaldi from Oro Valley UCC joined thousands of other trumpeters throughout the United States of America who, on Memorial Day at 3:00 PM local time in their State, played “Taps.” Matt recorded his rendition in the Oro Valley United Church of Christ Prayer Garden.
Many of us have read more books in the past three months than in the past year. Here are a couple suggestions from United Church of Santa Fe:
-Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer -
Drawing on her spiritual tradition of the Potawatomi people and her scientific background as a botanist, Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and important lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices.
-No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg
A collection of 11 speeches on climate change by climate activist Greta Thun- berg, including “Our House Is on Fire.” Her book is a rallying cry to wake up and protect the planet, no matter how powerless we may feel.
The Church of the Palms has been hosting I-HELP twice a week for more than six months, and have seen 12 guests acquire housing. Since the lockdown, seven guests are being served in the program. Each new guest is tested for COVID-19, and there is an extensive protocol of taking temperatures, social distancing, wearing masks, hand washing and wiping down all surfaces before and after hosting.
Black Mountain UCC is starting a weekly Zoom game night. Folks need a computer and a smart phone to play. There is an app that folks will need to download, but Pastor Jayne says it's easy enough for even her to participate. Scottsdale UCC is trying out an interactive game night as well.
First Church Phoenix passes along the following item:
ASU Project Humanities invites you to participate in the discussion of the film, Eating Up Easter, on June 2, 2020 at 6pm. Please join a panel of experts for an engaging 1.5-hour conversation centered around environmental sustainability, cultural conservation, sustainable tourism, and globalization. This event is in partnership with PBS Independent Lens.
Due to copyright restrictions, the film will not be streamed over Zoom; however, it can be watched on the website for PBS Independent Lens starting on May 26 HERE.
More about the film: More than just a picture-perfect postcard of iconic stone statues, Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is a microcosm of a planet in flux. Directed by native Rapa Nui filmmaker Sergio Mata’u Rapu, Eating Up Easter explores the challenges his people are facing, and the intergenerational fight to preserve their culture and a beloved environment against a backdrop of a modernizing society and a booming tourism trade.
See the Trailer HERE
RSVP HERE
For any further questions, please contact ProjectHumanities@asu.edu.
From Teresa Borton, the Health Care Center's Director of Nursing:
What follows is so creative, so caring, so inspiring---so indicative of the spirit of community at our Beatitudes Campus, that I wanted to share it with you.
The Nursing Staff at the our Health Care Center have noticed that the residents are a little sad these days, they cannot see their families, they do not know when this is all going to end, so many unknowns. So Felicia one of our CNAs and our Unit Coordinator Denise decided to do a window decoration. Not just any window decoration. They put up the message, cut out multiple colors of butterflies, taped it all to the window, told the residents that starting today they will ask them their fears and concerns and they will write them on the butterflies and then they will watch them fly away by moving the butterfly away from the window and down the hall…..