United Church of God

COVID-19 RESPONSE NOTIFICATION

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A United Church of God Feast of Tabernacles site

COVID-19 RESPONSE NOTIFICATION

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Greetings fellow registrants of the Feast of Tabernacles site in Osoyoos Lake.

As the first real news address to this feast site we had hoped to be sharing in the anticipation of rejoicing together and announcing all of the exciting activities upcoming this year. Though, as I’m sure you’re expecting, that’s not what’s coming. As new cases of the Coronavirus are surging in various places around the world and at home it has become very evident the Feast of Tabernacles will be quite different from anything we have known. Challenges face feast locations everywhere. Some are even having to be cancelled. Osoyoos is fortunate not to be in that situation, but barely.

British Columbia Health Services has issued a Mass-Gatherings restriction of 50 persons per event. But the rule is even more strict for us as a multi-day event. Even though rigid measures would be taken to ensure distancing and sanitizing and other regulations are complied with during worship services, we would be unable to ensure the intermixing of people outside of services would not happen. And that is the circumstance they are most concerned about. As such the BC Interior Health Authority has deemed the whole registry, all 250, are, in essence, a “gathering” and thus too large to proceed as planned.

So this year we have no choice but reset Osoyoos Lake as a regional feast site. And so it is now only available to BC residents. We are very saddened to have to do this. But it is in the effort to submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake. ( 1 Pet. 2:13 )

We may be setting up a satellite site or two in other BC communities to make more spots available. This would be primarily to ensure all BC residents can attend. However, if that happens, once all BC residents have registered, some non-BC residents would be allowed to stay, but preference would be given to those already with assignments and in the order they appeared on the current registry.

To those who wish to continue to Tabernacle with us, even though you cannot be registered nor attend services, we strongly ask that you do not. For us to comply with the spirit of the government order we must make every effort to ensure intermixing does not happen outside of the 50 registered to the site. 

To our American friends, you should be aware anyway that the border is currently closed to non-essential entry and it is highly unlikely it will reopen by feast time. There is talk it may remain closed until early next year. We are very sorry we will not get to rejoice and fellowship with you this year. We hope you will consider us again next year.

For those now not eligible for Osoyoos please re-register at another site. If you go to the Osoyoos feast home page and sign in you will see a button saying “Change Feast Sites”. Simply click and follow the instructions.

For BC residents, we would like your answers to a few questions to help us determine how many will still attend given the additional restrictions that need to be in place…

• Will you attend services if social distancing is required?
• Will you attend services if wearing masks is mandatory?
• Will you attend if we cannot provide any activities?  (i.e. meet and greet, family day, seniors brunch)
• Will you attend if we cannot sing hymns?

Please send your answers to wayne_ward@ucg.org

Thank you for understanding. It is our intention to make every reasonable effort to keep the feast. But we also do not want to tempt God by unnecessarily putting people in harms way. 

God be with you all. And please stay safe.

David Palmer, 
Feast Coordinator

Wayne Ward,
Assistant Coordinator 

Osoyoos Lake
British Columbia, Canada