Beyond politics

 I'm part of a small group of women who meet biweekly to share about our lives and pray together. Of all these women, I've known Linda Shelly the longest. We grew up in the same church and taught Jr. High Girls Sunday School together when we were in college. Currently Linda works for Mennonite Mission Network, relating to Latin American Mennonite Churches, to North American workers who work alongside those churches, and with sister church relationships between churches in both continents.

Linda sometimes shares stories from those people she has met in that part of the world.  Last night was one of those times. The story she shared is also available through the Mennonite Mission Network website.

South and Central America have been hit hard with covid, as has the rest of the world. The enormous impact of that was overwhelmingly compounded by Hurrican Eta last week, especially in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Honduras. Many people lost everything to flooding and landslides. A link to the story is here: Mennonites Sing and Serve Despite Losses In Hurricane Eta.  Watch the video of the flooding, and listen to the video of the rescued church members who have lost everything, singing together. Their words are translated in the story, but I'll repeat them here: "My hope is in You. I have nothing, nothing more than you, nothing more than your promises..." 

You can see the pastor in the video, his clothes covered in mud from the rescue efforts. Those who were rescued went out to continue helping others. 

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This second bit is about health. It has also become political, but actually, it is still about health. The covid rates have risen around here to the point that in our county, if 10 people are together, the risk of one of those person having the virus is over 40%. It is 94% for a gathering of 50 people. We are being careful. Here is a link to the tool that calculates the risk for any area in the United States.

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Helping with the remote school for my grandchildren means I am daily re-evaluating how the learning went, what would make it go better, and how to speed it up enough that on nice days we can get outdoors while it is warm and sunny. The teachers are doing the same, and regular tweaks happen as we all work at this together. Some of the things that are being altered from the school side this week were pretty major for one of my grandchildren. In a sense, those changes felt like a confirmation. It has been very hard work, and the schools are offering more help to the students who are remote. 

As always, this is trial and error. I hope the results are good. Getting used to it will be a challenge, as always, but I can see possible positives in the new plan.