[03/18/2020] The Coronavirus (aka COVID-19) had been in the international news, but I don't think anybody expected it to slam so hard into the United States. And I know that nobody anticipated it would shut down our entire country. And our church. But that is exactly what happened.
I was still pretty new in my job. I had started the implementation of the new CMS (Church Management Software) at the First Baptist Church at the end of January. It was a steep learning curve, but things were progressing. About 45 days later, however, the whole project took a turn. The Brazos County Health Department issued a COVID-19 Alert and mandated mask wearing, social distancing, and ordered that people avoid meeting in groups. Restaurants, movie theatres, bowling alleys, schools, sports arenas, and churches (among other places) were all shut down. For just a few weeks we thought. But it turned out to be much longer. Much, much longer.
During the first month (or so) of the shutdown, I snuck into the church office to work. It was great production time because no one else was in the building. It gave me time to experiment with the accounting module and to get the Chart of Accounts set up exactly right. When the Municipal Order was extended, I worked on the Budgeting Module. Then the Payroll Module. And so on. The church scrambled to put Sunday School classes and Sunday Services on ZOOM and Google Meetings, and that is the way that the church met for the next 90+ days. Most days, I was usually the only person in the building -- it was a great time to learn a new software package.
By the middle of May, I had all of the CMS modules pretty much figured out. Unfortunately, the community (and the world) was remained shut down. Ocean-to-ocean, people were losing their jobs and many businesses were forced into bankruptcy. Malls and stores were shuttered. Bars went dark. Even Hollywood was quiet. It was not a good economic time for Texas or for our country.
By mid-June, Brazos County began to relax its ordinances and modified its order to allow limited assemblies of people, so long as individuals maintained a six-foot distance from other people and wore a safety mask. There was never any strong evidence that any of these measures prevented the spread of the Coronavirus, but it didn't matter too much as most people elected to stay quarantined in their homes. Grocery stores (deemed an "Essential Function") and highways (if you did go out) were pretty empty. Especially the toilet paper aisle. For some reason, there was a panic on toilet paper and everybody felt they needed to buy 100 or more rolls; it was a bit humorous to witness.
Travel between states was restricted by state. Airlines, passenger railroads, and cruise ships remained shut down. If you couldn't work-from-home or conduct your business by ZOOM or Google Meetings, you struggled to keep your job. In the meantime, the drama unfolded on the nightly news as they presented the daily numbers of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Even in our little community, the numbers were staggering. Across the country it was much worse -- the forecast was as high as 750 million deaths.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
About nine months into the scare, the rules began to relax even more. Mask-wearing was recommended, but not required. Word of new vaccines began to circulate; eventually there were two vaccines that people could get in order to prevent catching the virus. At first, the lines were long and you had to apply to get a vaccine -- if you met the requirements (senior citizens and the medically challenged were the highest priority). Feeling confident, [only] the drive-through lanes in fast food restaurants slowly started to re-open. Restaurants and bars could serve food, as long as it was carry-out. Churches in Texas were allowed to begin meeting on Sunday again. (Other states had different restrictions and different timetables.)
Unbelievably, the pandemic ebbed and flowed for more than a year. Restrictions came and went -- it was a "mask-or-not" roller coaster. Throughout it all, Deb and I stayed hunkered down in Faith as much as possible. We made frequent trips to various city parks in order to walk Gadget and get fresh air (as long as the parks were not over-crowded with other dog walkers). And we made the occasional trip back to BaseCamp to do laundry and to mow the grass. Livingston is in a different county -- we were surprised to see that there were different masking and social distancing requirements in Polk County than there were in Brazos County!
There were not a lot of pictures taken of me while at FBCCS. In every shot, however, I found it humorous that my extensive "To Do List" (which I kept on a large whiteboard in my office at the church) was also in the shot. There was a lot to do while I was in College Station -- I kept very busy (I much prefer being busy to the alternative).
I am happy to report that we escaped catching the COVID-19 bug, except for one minor case that Deb got. She quarantined herself at BaseCamp while she recovered; I stayed at FaithCamp.
I am happy to report that we escaped catching the COVID-19 bug, except for one minor case that Deb got. She quarantined herself at BaseCamp while she recovered; I stayed at FaithCamp.
