Finally home!

Dear friends,

We are finally home! What was meant to be a two-month trip and a great blessing ended up being a rather mixed bag of five months spent in twenty-three different places we laid our heads at night.  We are grateful to have found our way back to Canada because there was a time there, where we thought we might not make it back at all.

Thank you for your extended patience, kindness, and prayers for us. They carried us through the last two months which were difficult. Thank you too for the great welcome back, including a cavalcade of cars driving past our apartment with placards of welcome, hooting and making a generally celebratory Vineyard type noise!

There is much work ahead of us…

A group of really dedicated people have worked extremely hard at improving our in-person and online worship services and the décor, lighting, sound, and general look of our place of worship.   Thank you to them. I was thinking yesterday how far our online presence has come since this all started way back in March 2020.

Despite the progress, and the encouraging reality that YKVC has continued to ‘be the Church’ in our absence, we need to be real that our time away, combined with COVID fatigue, sensitivity to inperson gathering and the reality that we cannot worship musically in person as we desire to, has cost us much momentum.

We continue to function within the guidelines and parameters given us by NWT Health and we continue to respect the position of those who are sensitive or fearful around in-person gathering.  For people who have sensitivities or underlying conditions that make it hard to join us in person, the online option is available to you every Sunday. Please do join us via that platform.

Having said that, I would like to encourage all those who do not have sensitivities or vulnerability around in-person gathering to join us on Sundays and in our smaller group gatherings. We are approved to 65 people and are currently seldom more than thirty-five people. As a general principle, Christians gather.

They gathered during the plague in the Middle Ages, and they gathered under persecution in Rome in the Catacombs. They still do so today in various places in the world where the Church has had to retreat underground.  Whilst fully respecting all perspectives, we will continue to gather in small groups and on Sundays, in- person, to the full extent that the Government of the NWT allows us to. I will, in time, share around how we intend to move ahead with small groups and prayer groups. For now, please do sign up online to join us in-person on Sundays.

This week I will still be preaching from home, but from Sunday, 13 June, we will be with you in person on the second floor of the Discovery Inn.

Grace & peace to you all 

Melt