 reach and really focus on ways that we're finding emerging needs, emerging ways to respond in our different contexts. This morning, we're going to focus on some of the stories of response in rural settings across our conference and we'll be able to have a time of conversation with some panelists here from those settings and then be able to talk and question and answer time about other ways that we're finding it helpful to connect, to kind of leverage our shared resources and ways that we might be able to work together. But at this time, I'd love for us to begin with prayer. This comes to us from Father Richard Rohr, who some of you are familiar with as a spiritual writer. Let's pray. Oh, great love. Thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other's burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our heart's longings for the healing of the world. Please add your own prayers at this time for those in your lives that are affected for ourselves as we navigate this time as we enter a moment of silence. Knowing that you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer all these prayers spoken in silence in all the holy names of God. Amen. Well, we'd love to, hi, Hedy. I guess Hedy is going to be joining us this morning. So this morning, I'd love to also plug the other calls that will be happening throughout this week. Some of you will be already familiar with the calls that were sent out by the conference office. Go ahead and post those on the chat feature so that to make sure you know the Zoom call, numbers, and all of that information, we want you to be able to take advantage of that this week as soon as I can find that. I will post that on our page. I'll find that as our presenters are talking. So this morning, we have the pleasure of being joined by Reverend Sylvia Wang, who is senior pastor at First UMC Archer City, and Reverend Ricky Harrison, who is the associate pastor of First UMC Decatur and Pecan Street Mission there in Decatur, and Reverend Chrissy Yoast, who is at Wesley UMC in Greenville. Welcome everyone. And I'd love, you know, beginning with Sylvia, if you could share with us just kind of a thumbnail sketch of the ways that you found needs emerging in your community and the ways that, both you as a church, but also just generally the community there in Archer City have responded. Sure. I'll start with an example, not this weekend, but the weekend before, there was a fire that caused a total loss of a home for an Archer City family. And I saw how quickly the community came together. I had two different text messages come in that Saturday night. And then soon after that, I learned about how the community had organized a meal train online, as well as somebody took the family in. So the family has a place to live in the community. And also there's a GoFundMe page set up. Also the Archer City Independent School District, the staff office, they have been receiving gift cards from the community. And that's just one simple example of how on top of the coronavirus crisis, this other crisis hit a family in the community came together. And don't know the person who organized the meal train, but I think she has connections to the Baptist Church here. And so this is just an example of how the existing relationships that cross the denominations in Archer City come together, even though there may be theological differences, but in the time emergencies, people overlook all that and just come together. Other examples I saw on Facebook that the Archer Service Center, it's a senior citizen center. They have programs for seniors as well as lunches on weekdays. And I think they also deliver meals to seniors. Right away, they put together a senior tree, which is similar to Angel Tree. Instructions where don't come to a dining room, but just come to the foyer, grab a card. There's a need listed on it and then bring it back with. I imagine whatever need is needed to be fulfilled for. And that's for the older residents in Archer City as well as the vulnerable. I also learned that a church member who loves to sew, told me that she was making and sewing masks for, for a medical personnel and without me having to ask her to do it, she saw on the news, local news here in Wichita Falls area. And he, she, she has been making the masks. The rural community does not, in my community, there's, we don't have a lot of resources, but people still do what they can to support the local restaurants. There's only three restaurants in Archer City and there's a lot more in Wichita Falls. People have been intentional to go support businesses in both locations. And my office manager owns the, one of the restaurants in Wichita Falls along with her husband. And I know church members have been going up there to do takeout and being very intentional about supporting local businesses and restaurants. The prayer network here in Archer City is deeply rooted with faith and community. We have been sending out prayer requests through, through the church email for that. Also I discovered that Facebook is a huge, it's a huge thing out in the rural district. People post everything all the time. And I found that is a, is a wonderful way for me as pastor to have presence on my church Facebook page and also to have it on my personal Facebook page, which have linked up to a lot of people in Archer City. And actually some people I've not met yet in Archer City or my Facebook friends. So we've been, we've been using that to, to stay in touch. And through that I've been finding out about, you know, to people's needs. So the primary tools in terms of communications, we have gone back to phones, phone calls, more phone calls. Somebody suggested to me, you know, maybe we take the church directory and divide that up and have some church folks call each other. Well, I thought that'll be a wonderful project for the Golden Girls. So I may call Monday morning to, to the, the leader of the Golden Girls. And these are the older women's group of the church. And she said, yeah, sure, that'll be great. I'll, I'll ask the girls what divide up A to Z people in the church directory. And we don't have that many. And I was so, so touched because, you know, my name is in the W's. I got a phone call from the Golden Girl to see how I was doing. So it's, it's just really neat. So that phone calls is one thing. We do Facebook. We have done more emails in my community. People don't really like to do emails. But I've been able to get the key leadership with the worship team admin council and, and other church-wide emails. So people have gone more to do, more, more so to do emails, I think, just circumstances we need to. I don't think we're at a point to do Zoom calls within the church. But text message are, are a popular way. People respond very well to text messages. So I've set up text message groups with my admin council. And I only have nine, so it's manageable for that. And so just thinking of ways to stay connected. And I think there's still more that we could do. I'm just still thinking through it. I also want to add that I saw on the Archer City ISD Facebook page that the, the school, I think is, you know, the staff and the teachers, they have been delivering means to all their students in the community. And they deliver lunch and breakfast, well, I should say breakfast and lunch, Monday through Friday. And then people who, who are interested, they could email a principal at the school. So that's, that's something that when I read about it, I thought that was just, just really amazing that in a really small community of about 1,800, 1,900 people in Archer City, there's not that much wealth to go around, but people do what they can to help each other out with, you know, with food, with housing, with prayers. And even I'm getting checked up on by my Golden Girl, make sure I'm okay. So that's just some of the ways. And I'm thinking about more ways now that we, we do have a whole month of, of doing church very differently. So I'm open to more ideas on how I can initiate right now. I haven't had to really initiate very much with a missional response, except for getting my Golden Girls to call each other in church. But that's been great. Next. Oh, does that mean, sorry, Andrew, you're cutting out on my hand on per minute. So my name is Ricky. I serve out at First Decatur. Honestly, I kind of told Andrew, we're just honestly feeling some of the best ideas that I've seen from going on around the conference and trying to capitalize on those. So pretty early on, one of the things we saw Ashley Ann over at the Traffic Club, UMC, got a bunch of her youth together to do door stop drops for the older adults in their community that might not be able to go out and get groceries. And so we've got a really incredible class of young families that are really active and really engaged. And one of the young women stepped up and said, hey, like all the moms and dads in my Sunday school class are most of them are not working and are happy to go pick up groceries or medicines and get those to folks. So they've kind of coordinated the network of young families that are going out as we find needs of people in our congregation, whether it's pick up groceries or medicines at the pharmacy or whatever they might need to go out and drop it and leave it on their doorstep. One of the ways, Sylvia, I love divine up the church directory. We thought really early on too about like one of the major things is to create as many touch points with folks as possible in this season and particularly phone calls to our older folks who are in nursing homes specifically are widowed folks that are living on their own like folks that are particularly isolated in this time. And so Cassie Wade, who's our senior pastor has organized some basically dividing up the list of folks who we would normally see and we've reached out not only to our Sunday school leaders we've been getting them all on Zoom platforms so they can our Sunday school classes and Bible studies and small groups can still continue to meet together. But also one of the real key asks that we're asking of every single leader in the church whether they're part of our staff or one of our Sunday school leaders or the lady that coordinates going to visit the people in the nursing homes saying, hey, would you reach out with a phone call to everyone in your realm of ministry that 10, a dozen, 15 or 20 folks just so that we're getting continuous points of contact with folks during this time. And that's also worked really well to figure out what the needs are. So in some of these phone calls I make several every week, the first week I made a call to one of our older gentlemen who worships with us. He said, well, we're doing good but I'm worried about so-and-so who's been caring for his wife, Chuck and Sue have been having a hard time. I said, Randall, that'd be great. Would you reach out with a phone call to him and please extend the offer if they need groceries or medicines or anything like that. Oh, yeah, that would be great. I could definitely do that, right? So just kind of mobilizing, inviting people into that. I think people want to help during this time. They're just not always sure exactly how to do it or what to do. And so that kind of more direct invitation has been really helpful. We've had like some of our young people that are off in college or grad school that have reached out and said, hey, I'm not here but I feel like I could write letters during this time. If you would just send me a list of, may some of our people that could use an extra point of encouragement or contact. I'd love to write some short notes and letters to them and send even though I'm not physically there. So just kind of mobilizing folks to reach out, connect with each other to do the work of the church. One of the early things, I continue to be most concerned about folks that are already on the financial edge during this time. One of the really incredible things that occurs in Decatur is there's this community-wide coalition that includes not only folks from different churches but people from the school district and some of the businesses of the town. And about 10 years ago, they started a group and they called it Decatur Cares and they're mainly putting food into the hands of our families who are walking through food insecurities. And so one of the things that we do in that is hosting a mobile food pantry on the first Saturday of every month. So Ternary Food Bank sends us an 18-wheeler full of fresh produce, milk, eggs, frozen meats, good stuff that you can't often get in the food pantry because it's perishable. And we serve 100, 120 families on a regular month. And so we're really concerned about folks that are now six to eight weeks without a paycheck. So we're shifting to a drive-through only model in this and working this coming Saturday. And that same group of young families who stepped up and said, hey, we've got some extra free time and could help go around groceries or pick up meds at the pharmacy have also said, yeah, we can step up during this time because we realized that a lot of the normal volunteers who are there every first Saturday of the month are retired folks into their active years or even some are older adults who really shouldn't be out of their homes during this time. And so they've stepped up to help make that happen, which has been a really great gift. One other way we've thought really particularly about how do we leverage the gift of our finances? So I think lots of churches have some kind of benevolence fund where they're able to help folks that are coming in and need help with a utility bill or gasoline voucher to put gas in their car to get to work. We have one of those that are ongoing. We see folks during the week and we thought how do we leverage that during this time to be even more available, not only to members in the church, but people in the community who might even need like help with rent payments during this time. Whatever the thing is, it helps just get them to the next month and that's in between seasons. And so we invite our congregation into that. One of the first emails I had in my inbox like the Tuesday after the first Sunday we all shut down was a congregation member that said, Rikki, we'd like to make a gift to this. Will you help us figure out how to direct it? And in a normal year, we typically take in and give out about $12,000 into that benevolence fund. And in the last three weeks, we've taken in $12,000 into that benevolence fund, which is just an incredible testimony to the, we've tried to say again and again in our written communication, when we talk about offering in the context of worship online, to say we understand there are some people that during this time, it's all you can do to keep food on the table for your family and make ends meet and pay the rent. For other visits of us, we're in a place where we can not only continue to give to the church, but even maybe take a step up during this time. And the response to that has just been incredible, the generosity that folks have seen in that. So we've tried to just expand our reach with that out to the community. Our school district is doing some of the same kind of incredible work, Sylvia, that Archer City is doing there. They started out just opening up the middle school campus for any students to come and pick up a breakfast, the lunch every day of the week. And then this week, they started sending out their bus drivers. Their bus drivers said, hey, there's a lot of the more rural parts of the district that the kids can't make it in. We could go deliver meals to them. And so this week, they started deploying the bus drivers who are delivering meals out to some of those families, which is really cool. And then another community effort that's been really neat. We have a Lions Club, which is like a rotary club. It's kind of a community service organization that we're part of at the church. And so we haven't been meeting while everything's been shut down. We have lunch together, have a program. We do service projects in the community. But one of the things the club decided to do last week, they said, you know, we usually meet for lunch and we like to do chicken fried steaks together on the first week of the month. But we can't do that. And so there's a handful of us. We're gonna still pay our caterer. She's gonna come and prepare her 60 chicken fried steak meals. And then we're gonna come box them up and take them over to the hospital for our medical staff who are working during this time. So just small things like that to support the community. I think, you know, out in the rural area, we've got our first two confirmed cases of coronavirus this week that have finally hit. So we're a little bit behind the intensity of the Dallas timeline, but I've been really inspired by just seeing the significant ways that the community have stepped up to do any little thing to help serve folks. Well, thanks, Ricky. I mean, this is a recurring theme of communities really stepping up to the plate to care for one another. Chris, tell us about what's going on in your neck of the woods. Thanks, Andrew. I'm not gonna repeat the wonderful ministries that Sylvia and Ricky have already mentioned because that's redundant. But I do wanna offer a few things. What we're calling our program to help shut in folks, get groceries, we call it faith, hope and love. And what we've set up is at the church phone number where any person who get the hold of the church phone number can call and simply say faith, hope and love, Chrisios, and then give their phone number. And then our volunteers actually call in twice a day to check that. And then the coordinator volunteer actually makes that connection and puts them together with a volunteer. So that's one efficiency that may be helpful. The location of Wesley is right on Highway 69, which is a major thoroughfare. So we put up just a real nice kind of sign and it just says the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. And we put those up just as a reminder to the community that Christ is at work in the midst of all of this. Couple of things that we're doing daily devotionals that go out from Facebook and through email. You can go through one idea. I did it for the first couple of days where I'm like, oh man, I can't keep this up. You can record a couple of days at a time if you do something like that. Don't be afraid. The videos, I guess it was probably by the third day, I'm literally peeing in the office with four different shirts and I'd mess my hair up in between videos. So it looked different, but just don't kill yourself trying to do really good for folks. Find some efficiencies and don't be afraid of them. One of the things that was unique for us here in Greenville and Vienna knows, in Greenville we have juice. It's a local, Greenville has its own utility network. And I contacted the mayor and requested that they consider doing a deferral on shutoffs on utility turnoffs. And they did decide to go ahead and take that up now for obvious reasons. They've not publicized that. But so that was a way that we were able to speak into the poverty cycle there locally. We have several medical doctors and professionals in the church. And so I've recorded a blessing just for the medical community, kind of on that voice memo app and then send that out to them. That's another thing we can do. Let's see. One interesting thing. So at Wesley, we have, it's called Just Older Youth, it's our joy group, what we call it, kind of a not sitting in a rocking chair retirees. It's a good way to describe that. But they've gone through and started doing virtual scavenger hunts, which is kind of just a fun thing they do. Not for me, but they love it. So that's just an idea to keep people happy. Along the lines of getting Zoom community set up with Sunday School, one of the other things that we're doing is actually sending instructional YouTube links so that people who have never used Zoom can just watch a video on it. So that's a little next step there. Otherwise everything else has been stated so I don't want to rehash that kind of stuff. Oh, one last little thought. So we have a Hunt Regional Medical Center here. One of our church members' sons is in medical sales. He contacted the dad, the dad contacted me and I contacted the hospital, but they couldn't get tests. And whenever there were half a million tests that came through this guy's supplier, well, we went through and short circuited and I texted the administrator out here who the church member said, hey, here's a person's phone number. If you need tests, call this person. So there's some of those just off the cuff things that you and I may be able to do by virtue of our relationship in the community. And I'll tell you one last little thing before I mute myself back. I've had so many people who said like if we've messed up, Sunday, our live stream is absolutely like a train wreck, man, there were cars everywhere, horrible, horrible day, right? And I had so many people said, don't sweat it. Thanks for doing everything you're doing, keep going. And I just want to encourage y'all. I think our people are deeply moved by every effort you're making right now. And I'm making, we're all making. They just need to know that Christ, the church, and you as their pastor, me as our pastor, or their pastor, it means the world to them. And so I just want to encourage y'all, keep it up. Just keep trying, don't give up. Whatever you try, just do it the best you can and move on if you mess up. So anyway, thanks for this opportunity, Andrew. God bless y'all. One of the things that as I'm looking at the, our pictures here and realize that there are a number of us that are, that are pastoring in rural settings, would love to give us time for some, some Q and A, and also for those that are also in rural settings to be able to lift up what they're seeing. So if you could type into the chat box, if you've got a question, that way I can just kind of curate us to keep us from all speaking at once, or if you have something that you want to lift up. Before we get to you, Sam, Samantha, let's talk about the Carter blood drive. Dale, could you share about how that's getting set up, especially to try to keep social distancing and all that? We had scheduled a blood drive in conjunction with another event that we had to cancel. On May 9th, and I suspect we're gonna, continue to be in the situation at that time, but what Carter asked is if they could bring, they were gonna bring the mobile unit anyway. So that kind of limits the number of staff and it limits the number of persons who can be donating at any one time to under the limit. And so our plan is to open the church entrance that's closest to the restroom facilities, which is that's what they need restroom facilities because they're not available on the mobile unit. And so we're able to restrict access to those spaces and then we're gonna rely on Carter. I mean, they're running the blood drive. So we're gonna rely on Carter to enforce the social distancing and the congregating. I suspect what will happen is they'll ask people to stay in their cars until they're able to access the blood mobile. And if they have walk-ups, they're gonna need to figure out a way to sequester folks. But I don't, in our part of town, I'm not sure we're gonna get a lot of walk-ups. I don't know if this works for everybody, but it was one of the things we were thinking about to try to use the building asset in a thoughtful way. And so that's gonna happen on May 9th. So we'll see how it goes. I suspect it's gonna wrap. I mean, when we've done Carter blood, we've done blood drives before in the church, but they've always been on Sunday morning and the idea is to get congregants to do that while they're at church on Sunday. We're gonna do this one on Saturday. And I suspect we're gonna do a little more reaching out in the immediate neighborhood so people can take advantage of the blood drive in that way. So that's our thought. It's our thinking about how do we use the building asset kind of maintain some semblance of safety? I mean, there's a modest risk. We're gonna have people going inside to go use the bathroom and we'll control access. I'm gonna be there to do that. And then our staff will do the deep clean after that's over with. Great. And Dale, you're at Stonebridge, UMC and McKinney, right? Okay. So if you wanna be in touch with how to do this, find Dale. Yep. And Samantha Parson, you've got a question about ministry with grants. So today is the last day for the spring grant cycle for ministry with grants. But there's also an October 1st deadline, which may help you for next fall if you're looking for a greenhouse. Please, if you could email me at Pfizer at NTCUMC.org. F-I-S-E-R. I've got some other connections to National Resource Conservation Service that may help you with what you're doing. Estina, could you lift up the Hamilton Park work? So Hamilton Park is in a community right off of 75 in Forest Lane. And there are many people that are in need of food and other kinds of things. So that congregation has done as much as they could to social distance themselves, but they have from a distance packed up food. And they're just having signs outside that if people are hungry, they can just drive up and the volunteers are having gloves and they're just handing it to the persons on the passenger side for the most part. And they don't have to be a member of the church. They don't have to live in the community. If they are hungry, then they just come by and get food. So by word of mouth, this is going on. And they have put it on Facebook and just wanted to put that out there, that that's going on in that church. It's not in the rural area of course, but even in that Dallas area where there are lots of resources, we have a lot of people that are hungry. So thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Estina. Andy, would you share about input from a couple of our UM related nonprofits? You bet. So this week I've connected with a handful of our nonprofit partners. There's a couple that I'll lift up right now. Well, me actually say this one thing that we've probably heard that just like our local churches are having to pivot and work a double time in order to keep our churches financially stable and that kind of thing. You and nonprofits are in the same boat. And so if you have nonprofits that you partner with in your local communities, you might reach out to them and see how they're doing and see how they're feeling about their outlook, their financial outlook. But I connected with a couple that I'll lift up. One is Texas Impact. And of course they've been networking with and in dialogue with a number of churches and judicatories all over the state. And a few things that came out of that call. One is that those folks who are involved in food distribution ministries, you might be mindful of the possibility that in a month or two, when folks who work hourly no longer are able to receive unemployment benefits or perhaps extra benefits that are coming to them through the federal stimulus package begin to run out that the various food pantries in our communities could become overrun in a couple of months with folks who are not needing to go there yet, but in a couple of months will need the benefit of those services. And so having a conversation with the social service agencies in your communities could be valuable along that line. Another thing that Texas Impact lifted up is that COVID situation is certainly impacting the border in some pretty significant ways. The border shut down. Obviously people who have migrated to the United States and are in detention are at great risk beyond prayer and advocacy calls. There's not a lot we can do about that, but there are a couple of groups in particular who are still able to shuttle food and resources across the border to the camps that are on the Mexico side of the border. And so if immigration has been a concern for you and your church, you can still connect with Team Brownsville or Angry Tias or other groups. And if you're interested in this, connect with me and I can help you to support them. But just know that the situation on the border is certainly being affected by this. The other organization I talked with was Westie Rankin. They've pivoted and are doing some amazing things, just like so many of you are in your churches. One thing I'd lift up from them is that they are working with the North Texas Food Bank to provide a mobile food pantry. And from the point of view of the nonprofit or the church, they, because they're able to guarantee about, I think 200 families who had come to that mobile food pantry in a given week, North Texas Food Bank is willing to bring all of the food stuffs they provide, package them together and let Westie Rankin be a pickup site. So depending on your church and the kind of reach you have, you could be a mobile food pantry site with the North Texas Food Bank as well, or your local food bank. So that might be something worth exploring. And the other thing I would lift up is so Westie Rankin has a really vibrant ministry with senior adults. And of course, the senior adults, many of them are isolated as a rule. The ability to connect at Westie Rankin is a huge gift to them. They're not able to do that in quite the same way. But they have organized volunteers to deliver food to seniors. If you're in Dallas County and want to participate in that, they would welcome more volunteers. But something any of us can do is to create, you know, just homemade videos and messages that can be sent through Westie Rankin to those seniors and reach them in their homes. They're doing a lot of connection points with those seniors using Facebook Live and other simple platforms. But, you know, Shelly Ross, their executive director is receiving, you know, videos of kids playing the violin and then they send that to their senior group. And so again, remotely, that's something that any of us, regardless of our location, can do. Again, for seniors through Westie Rankin or seniors in your community. So I thought that was a helpful, creative idea. I think that's it. I guess again, let me just end by again, saying that the nonprofits in your community are likely, again, feeling the pinch, just like many of our local churches. And so be mindful of the partners that are in your community as well and how you can support them. Thanks. Thanks, Andy. And Jessica, before we get to your two posts that would like to get back to Estayanna, she wanted to add something to her piece. Thanks, Andrew. I just wanted to add a caution and as all of us are having different groups or meeting with, that was with the group that involved some people from the medical field. We talked about the different ways people are giving out food. And she said, just be aware that all the precautions you're taking, you know, with the protective gear and all of that. When you give out food, you can become vulnerable because someone gets sick. They will say, well, I got food from this location. So, you know, just wanna lift that up to just take every precaution that you can from handing the boxes out with glove foods to the preparation to staying away so that you can document that you've done everything to protect the food that you're giving out. So she lifted that up and I wanted to be sure and include that when we talk about the work from Hamilton Park and other groups like that. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. Jessica, could you talk about your two posts? They really just were like points of information. I had been the president of our Allen Ministerial Alliance for a couple of years and as many of you may have experienced in your own communities, those groups sometimes have a lot less participation than you'd hope because some people just won't play in other people's sandboxes. That just happens. But I reached out to a lot of those same contacts and first I reached out to our helping agency, Allen Community Outreach and said, faith leaders would really like to hear what you need because we have congregations full of people who are guessing, but they wanna be helpful in the most effective ways possible. So I set that up with the director there first and then called together faith leaders and said, we're gonna come listen to what our helping agency needs so that we can provide effective help because a lot of groups have sprung up on Facebook and other places trying to connect people who need with helpers, that's fantastic. But I think functioning through some of the existing organizations can be more effective and doesn't put people at risk. And there are a lot of just kind of risky behaviors I'm seeing people engage in out there. And I forget what else I said, was it about the toilet paper? Yeah, I mean, hand out toilet paper with everything, not physically handed out, it could be a basket and it could be like we have some of those like Avery labels, you know, that you can send through the printer. So they don't have to be fancy, but it could just be like, we've got your back, whatever United Methodist Church, right? I mean, it could be really funny and it could have your worship times or your live stream or whatever might be helpful because it's just something that not everyone can find because I don't know why everyone bought all that up real quick. But yeah, the local helping agencies really appreciate being asked what they need. And I thought doing it in a way that is time effective for them as well rather than getting 50 calls because there are over 100 churches in Allen somehow, plus the mosque, plus the temples. So having one moment where their director can share needs with us rather than getting kind of nickel and dime for her time. So. Thank you, Jessica. Those are really great ideas. And Holly has shared on our chat box the Dallas Bethlehem Center Food Distribution South Dallas Fair Park that's going on on Thursdays. Holly, do you have any other information to add about Dallas Bethlehem Center? No, they just contacted me yesterday and are in need of some volunteers. Some of their volunteers are older and now are I'm staying at home at all times and so needing some other volunteers. I know this is kind of, I'm finding that this is kind of a crazy ask for people right now, but I do think if there are volunteers who are well who can shuffle some boxes and pack some food, they expect to serve maybe double what they have been serving on their Thursdays. They are connected with the North Texas Food Bank and so already have those kind of good protocols in place. So anyone who wants to share it would, that would be really helpful. And if you're listening and cannot see the chat box or access that if you will email me at Pfizer at NTCUMC.org, I can share that with you or call and I'll put my number in the chat box. So Andy, you were able to listen in on a call with some of our Latinx churches and Owen may be on the call as well. Could you share a little bit about the situation involving some of our undocumented friends and those that may not be able to benefit from the CARES Act? Yeah, so in the meeting that we had last week with them, there was real deep concern about the immigrant population for two reasons. One is there are many of them are working in food services. They're hourly wage earners and not salaried. And so they are finding themselves without income, without food and then also not being able to benefit from federal benefits, be they food stamps or the CARES Act. So they will not be getting that relief that those people who have status here will be receiving. I know that the schools are assisting with offering some food. And as well as I talked to Kenneth Walburton yesterday and they're doing the fast packs Frisco and trying to reach out to them. So I do wanna encourage churches to be mindful of the immigrant population that is around them because they're especially suffering at this time. And coronavirus is affecting them as well. I found out two nights ago that one of the founding members of Christ Foundry tested positive. And so I want you to encourage all of you to keep the immigrant population mindful in this season. Thank you, Owen. And Dale, you are also lifting up that there's a community lifeline center with a food pantry there in McKinney. Okay. Anything else to add for them? Oh, there's their website. If you need access to their website information, let me know as well. Okay. From y'all's perspective, and this is kind of open to, but Jessica, could you share that about the counselors? Because I think that's before we get to the next thing that's important. Aw, thanks. Sorry, my household also has a practicing musician. So enjoy. So for Title I schools, one of the things that's usually funded is a staff position. They're called care counselors in Allen ISD. And they stay connected with those students who access their services beyond the elementary schools because we don't have a Title I middle or high school. But poverty is present in every school. So they often have a good touch on families who may need service, who are reluctant to access the community resources that are usually out there because of fear around sharing their information. Y'all probably are aware we had a huge ICE raid in the last year. So there are a lot of our community members, particularly in the Latinx community who just don't access those services. So we've been in touch with those care counselors to make sure that we're aware of those needs because they know things. They are trusted people. And so that's how we've tried to be helpful to that community. All right. Well, thank you, Jessica. So from where each of you is sitting, realizing the things that are going on in your communities, the things that your church is doing, I'd like to know if there are ways that you can see us being able to collaborate to help you where you are or for you to be able to help others because we want to be able to help facilitate and connect us in our various local contexts so we can make an even bigger impact if possible for the kingdom. I don't have any really long-term ideas, but I think having short conference calls like what we have, maybe have another one, maybe in about two, three weeks, let's just check in how our souls are. It's pretty lonely out in the rural districts and resources are hard to come by. And so just, I guess, maybe calling to call a call and then also sharing more ideas and joys and concerns, maybe something like that might be helpful. I know it'll be helpful to me. Because right now I'm having just even a hard time of making sure our finances are met within the church. Okay, Andrew, I haven't asked. I would have been trying to put together a group to help teachers, parents, kids in the schools, and we don't have access to the schools, we don't have access to kids. And so I noticed that WFAA has a weather theme that they put on Facebook Live every day at one o'clock. So that gave me an idea. And so what I'm trying to do is put together a committee that would be willing to volunteer maybe an hour a week to either help with a math problem, listen to kids read or read. So we want to just, I want to get together a committee to see how we can be of service because parents didn't sign up to be teachers. They didn't sign up for homeschooling. And so now that they're there, for those of us that love that kind of thing, if we can do something to help those parents, even if it's just doing a Facebook Live on a general topic and letting people know that's going on, we're wanting to do that. So I have a couple of persons that have already said, sign me up, I want to be a part of that, I will be pulling that group together. So if you're on this call and you know someone that would like to be a part of helping with educational kind of stuff, then email me at mastersntcumc.org and include your contact information and we will be getting back with you to see what we can do as a group to help. Ultimately, it's going to help the child. If you help the child, then it's going to help the parents. If the kids are doing better, then when they come back to school, they won't have lost all that they have learned over this time. So it's a win-win, even if you can just do a little bit. So mastersntcumc.org, I would love to hear from you and we'll put our thoughts together and come up with a plan to roll this out. Thanks. Thank you, Estayana. Let's be sure to get in touch with Jerita Williams-Louie about some connections that might be helpful with that as well. I did, we have talked. Okay, good. Thanks. Okay, Chris. One thing I know, even today, I'm not as skilled with a lot of the grief counseling that's about to be required or might already be needed. And if there were certainly, like when I was in Bogota and Henrietta, it would have been a huge help right now to have either a Zoom resource call where there was even a grief group. That kind of specialization certainly didn't exist for my office. And still today, I can't provide that at the level that's going to be needed. And so Andrew, if there was a way that the conference can set up, either a resourcing for us in ministry or somewhere we can refer people and say, hey, our annual conference has happened to Zoom grief group, maybe even a refresher course for the rest of us just to say, hey, don't forget, here's how you can help a person manage through their grief process. Because I mean, it's going to get some tough stuff happening around us. So anyway, just a thought. Andy is mentioning that the Center for Leadership Development is planning a couple of past world care focused calls for next week. So I'm imagining, okay. I'm imagining we'll get information about that Friday or so, Andy, is that right? Okay. Deanna, I will try to edit this chat with our summary and at least get all of the information and links put onto a summary of this call. And a recording of this call will be placed on our Center for Mission and Outreach website. There'll be a special coronavirus response page. And right below it'll be a summary. Any other questions, ideas, ways that we can collectively be helpful. I want to thank you for your leadership, both in terms of your congregational leadership and also your public leadership in your communities throughout this time. We want to be thankful for you and your congregations work as you all stepped up to the plate to not only care for one another missionally, but our neighbors throughout the conference. And we will do some work on thinking about ways. I know we're already doing that with the Center for Leadership Development about being able to share our joys and concerns and have some face-to-face time in the middle of so much isolation. I know that's hard on many of us, all of us. And talk about, Estayana, the needs of tutoring and see what we can do around that. And then this grief counseling work and continue to get that information out. Andy, would you be able to lead us in prayer? As we close out today. You bet. Thanks, Andrew. Let's pray. Well, good and gracious God, as we move through this unfamiliar time, God, we trust and believe that you walk with us, that you are moving out ahead of us, that you are our rear guard, that you are the ground beneath our feet and that, however isolated even we may feel at times, we know that you are with us. God, as we continue to seek to care for and lead the people of our flocks, our congregations, may we also be ever mindful of the people in our wider community and the new kinds of needs that are emerging all around us. God, may we follow your lead and hear their cry and respond to their need with boldness and creativity. God, thank you for this opportunity to lean on one another and learn from one another. God, thank you for the opportunity to be witnesses to your great love and compassion in these days. And God, we do pray that as people observe the good works of the people in our churches that they will be pointed to our God in heaven. God, walk with these, your pastors and leaders, strengthen them, shepherd them, fill them with all that they need and cover us in your grace. God, we are thankful for this time to be together. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you all. Good to see everybody. God bless.