Category: Newsletter

Update your Zoom Client

Zoom has announced that their latest update is required (presumably because it contains significant security updates). You will not be able to login in unless your Zoom client is updated to a version great than 5.0 by May 30.

The easiest way to assure that you can sign in to a meeting or to worship now is simply to go to your zoom app, click on your profile picture in the upper right corner (it may simply be your initials or the name of your computer). About 3/4 of the way down the menu that opens is an option, “check for updates.” It will determine what version you have and download and install an appropriate update for you.

Et viola!

Summer Lunch Distribution

Since the Covid-19 shutdown, all children in our school district have been offered free breakfast and lunch for every day of the week.  This has been provided by the Harwood Food Service.  That program will be ending on June 12 and the baton passed to us and the Barre School District Food Service.  

We will be coordinating volunteers to pick up the meals (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) at the Berlin Park n’ Ride and to pass them out at the church during pick up hours (9 – 10 am).

There are several other churches in Waterbury who have agreed to provide help and we will be utilizing a SignUpGenius Form to coordinate all of this.  If you can spare an hour and a half, please consider helping.  It’s a big responsibility for just a few people to bear.  Even if you can only help once, it will make this project manageable for those of us who must fill in the gaps.

Here are the details:
1) Drivers:  There are two slots for drivers.  Please only fill in the Waterbury slot.  Waitsfield has it’s own team and will be doing distribution differently in the Valley.  You must have a large vehicle to signup for this.  A pickup truck or SUV would be ideal.  A large car with fold-down back seats should work.  You will be picking up approximately 600 meals.   

The driver volunteer will stop at church to pick up the empty coolers, which will be locked together under the church’s drive-under, drive to the Park ‘n Ride and return by 9 am.

2) Servers:  We need two servers at the church.  (You can be a server and a driver if you desire). We will set up in the drive-under so that even in the event of rain, curbside pickup is still possible and efficient.  One person will hand out the bags of foods through the car window.  The other will keep the tally.  Servers will arrive 15 minutes or so before 9 to set up and be ready for the food when it arrives.  The drive-thru will end at 10 am and the servers will then clean up and be done for the day.

All servers will be required to wear masks and gloves and keep the recommended 6 feet or more distance between other individuals.

Gloves and disinfectant will be provided.

Here’s the link again to the SignUpGenius. You may sign up as far ahead as you’d like.

The Backup Plan

Worship last week, as most of you know, had to be cancelled because I did not think through a backup plan in the event that the teleconference service we use, Zoom, stopped working, which it did.

Starting this week, I will publish a backup link along with our Zoom link. I will publish that in the Newsletter, in our bulletin, and in our church calendar. You can join a zoom meeting using the church calendar simply by clicking on the event you want to join and then clicking on the “Join Zoom Meeting” button.

The backup option will utilize Google’s new teleconferencing platform called Google Meet. The advantage to using Google Meet as a back up is that it is immediate. You do not need to have a google account, nor do you need to download anything. The worship service, and all of us, would appear in tiles in your browser window. The disadvantages are several in my opinion and so will remain only a backup option for worship.

You would join the backup meeting by clicking on the link for the backup option in the bulletin or the church calendar. I will not publish it in the newsletter.

Summer 2020 fundraisers

At last week’s Board of Finance meeting, we definitively decided to cancel all fundraisers until September at the earliest. We will reassess later in the summer whether holding an outdoor fundraiser (ie., a tag sale, or apple pie sale) in September of October is possible or advisable.