What an insane few weeks! In addition to helping to lead our Cru Queens campus team, Ed also has another role in the city: crisis director. Mostly, this role has involved developing a protocol of what to do in a crisis, doing trial runs, and getting trained on how to handle crises while learning from the US Crisis Team. It is mostly a few hours a week job, but as you can imagine, it has blown up by epic proportions over the last week.

Close to 3 weeks ago, some really good friends of ours came back from spending 3 weeks overseas visiting her family in South Korea. They self-quarantined themselves upon returning because Covid had come to their city in S. Korea in the last 48 hours they were there, and we joked about their quarantine. At the same time, Ed got put on the National Crisis sub-team and instructed to send in regular reports about how Covid was spreading in a number of countries including S. Korea and Japan. So way before it hit the US, he was watching it closely.

But then, about a week ago, the first confirmed case was found in NYC. It honestly wasn’t a shock as I had been saying for a week that I felt the virus was here and people were either not being tested because of lack of insurance or because they were undocumented or because they weren’t being given the test (YES! we heard of this happening!). But we couldn’t have imagined how it would spread. NYC has close to or over 200 cases now, including taxi drivers, bus drivers, EMT, lawyers, and a 7 year old girl. Whether people are freaking out over nothing is beside the point, but when we were joking with our friends 3 weeks ago about their quarantine, we would have no idea how it would affect our lives.

• We had to cancel two weeks of Spring Break trips that were coming into our city from around the country. Not only does this result in lost evangelistic momentum and months and months of planning, but it results in a HUGE financial hit to our teams here in the city. Hotels don’t let you out of contracts just because of Covid.
• Several NYC universities have closed and moved their classes online, including St. John’s University. The resulting effect is a sucker punch to the community and momentum of our movements.
• Kinsley’s 4th grade classes have been learning ballroom dancing in class and were supposed to have a competition this week (this picture is them performing for the parents). They canceled this because of the virus.
• The saddest thing for me so far is the canceling of the NYC Half Marathon. On a whim, I entered the lottery back in the fall for the half marathon (along with Ed and Erin, a friend and teammate – but I was the only one picked) and I started training back in the fall. Many cold, cold mornings, long runs, painful foot injuries, sore muscles, and so much more have been a part of training. I even have pushed through getting diagnosed and suffering through bronchitis two weeks ago. We found out today that they canceled the race because of the amount of people that would have been gathering and the potential for it to spread. I am so, so, so sad and disappointed and while I was not as prepared as I wanted because of the bronchitis, I was still looking forward to checking off a bucket list item and never doing it again…haha.

Will you please pray for us? For his protection for our family and friends, for our ministry as we manage the changes that have already begun in what we do, for Ed as he deals with the majorly increased workload, and for our city in general.