Since the social distancing guideline prevents our normal fellowship, today will be the start an "online" fellowship. So, if you would like to respond to this email with any news or acts of service you want to share, I will publish them in the bulletin each week. Please let me know by 10 am each Wednesday.
In this crisis we all can reflect on what is important in our lives:
Our Faith
Our Families
Our Friends
Our Country
and who would have thought...toilet paper.
The picture above is in from my front window. The hearts are in reference to Amy's message above and were made by my wife, Kristi, and daughter, Kamryn. As many of you may already know, the Richie Eye Clinic is seeing only emergency patients for the next month. We are rotating doctors with minimal staff every few days to minimize exposure to us and our patients.
Since we have been together, my new granddaughter, Adelaide Frances Marie Hanson, came into the world on March 12th and was baptized last Friday before the lock down went into affect. We have been going for walks every day and continuing to work a few home projects which included detailing our vehicles (So clean and nowhere to go!) We have been doing a little binge watching of the TV series "Suits" with Megan Markle on Amazon Prime. All three of us have birthdays in the next week and unfortunately all those plans were cancelled. Kamryn is able to continue her Graduate Assistant position with online advising and the use of Zoom for meetings. School continues online for her.
I hope you are all doing well my friends and I look forward to our time together again.
Murray
From Anne Marie Leland:
I miss you and the whole Rotary crew! We have been busy creating a childcare program for emergency workers from the ground up with not much planning time. We have about 20 students attending at this point from a variety of schools throughout our community. The families are all emergency workers that are being depended on even more intensely throughout this crisis!
The FPS staff that are providing childcare are going above and beyond and are making positive connections with kids through a difficult time! I went on a Caribou run for them yesterday and got them all their favorite coffee drinks. It brightened an already sparkly mood that both the staff and students were in.
We aren't charging any families for childcare and would like to encourage Rotary members to consider donating some funding to provide snacks and bottled water for the kids and maybe something extra special for the staff.
Thank you and hope you are binging on something good on Netflix!
Best,
~AMLFrom Dick Huston:
Thank you to Amy for her steady, thoughtful leadership and to you, Murray for keeping on keeping on your very important work in providing service above self.
From Eric Craig:
I hope you and your family are doing well and staying safe and healthy!
I look forward to getting back to service above self hopefully sooner than later although I’m not sure that will be the case.
Take care!
Eric
From Natalie Ginter:
Allina Health is hard at work caring for the health and safety of our workforce and communities while preparing for an increase in the spread of COVID-19.
We began a #Caring4Caregivers campaign two weeks ago which includes a community donation drive for masks and other forms of personal protective equipment (PPE). Since March 22nd we have collected over 100,000 pieces of PPE across Allina Health. Locally, we are shifting our priority for donations of masks to protective eye wear including safety goggles, glasses and face shields which are essential in protecting health care workers from respiratory droplets.
Anyone with an interest in donating PPE or making a financial contribution, can contact Natalie Ginter for follow-up – natalie.ginter@allina.com. Thank you!
