Dear Friends,
Welcome to the February edition of The Chronicle. It’s been a busy month! Our Annual Meeting was January 31, and we elected new members of the Vestry and delegates to Diocesan Convention (and you can read more about them below). We also observed Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, and moved worship out of the church, so a team could come and remove the asbestos in the sanctuary in anticipation of this summer’s renovations.

It’s been a busy month, and it’s about to get even busier. We hope to move back into the Sanctuary in the first half of March once the asbestos work is done; we’ll announce that timeline in The Messenger once we know exactly when. And once we’ve moved back into the Sanctuary, we have another milestone to look forward to: the possibility of resuming in-person worship. Thankfully, the number of new cases of Covid-19 have been dropping in Thurston County, and unless there’s a spike in cases in the next few weeks, we will be planning on having Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter back in our sanctuary with a congregation in the pews.

To be clear, it won’t look exactly like it did on March 8, 2020, which was the last time we had in-person worship at St. John’s | San Juan. Congregational hymn-singing isn’t allowed under the current rules, for instance, and we won’t be able to do fellowship together following the services. Reservations will be required for each service, so we know exactly how many people are planning on attending and can ensure their proper social distancing. And we will continue to stream the services in all the same places we currently do, so anyone who isn’t comfortable coming back to church yet will be able to continue worshiping in the safety of their home. It’ll be a big step toward life returning to normal, after this season of social distancing and isolation.

We’ll have weekly updates in The Messenger as we continue to plan, and we will have more information on resuming worship in next month’s edition of The Chronicle. In the meantime, thank you for being part of this community, and we look forward to seeing you online this Sunday, and (hopefully) in person sooner than later.

Faithfully,
R.C.+