Episcopal Campus Ministry (ECM) has continued to meet via zoom on Sundays at 5:30 p.m. Shannon, our president, sends out the Zoom link and reminders are issued over email and GroupMe. For our first and second meeting of the month, some of us met in person to celebrate the beginning of the semester and get some housekeeping done for Blue Hen Bounty (BHB). We pulled out all the expired food and set it aside to be taken to the Newark Empowerment Center. Everyone wore masks and all safety protocols were strictly followed including completing the contact tracing form. Virtual participation was made available to those who could not attend in person. Madeline collected the items and delivered them on our behalf the very next day to the Empowerment Center.
Blue Hen Bounty (BHB) has continued serving the community during the pandemic with spectacular support from Cana, Amy and Teresa. Patronage dipped for a few weeks but has begun to pick up—aligned with campus move-in and the start of the semester. We continue to see patrons among staff as well students.
Amy has submitted our accounting for the CARES grant that we received from New Castle County and it has been received with thanks for the work we continue to do to serve our community. We were asked to include testimonials about BHB, which we did. We remain truly grateful for the incredible support ECM and BHB receives from our parish.
Brian, the Dean of Students liaison, has put his offer to help us supply students in quarantine with snack bags on pause as UD deals with an “unprecedented” surge of Covid positives among the students. We remain really excited about this opportunity and look forward to working out the details so we can support dorm-bound quarantined students with food and snacks
We are planning another joint meeting with the St. Thomas’s CREW on March 27, 2021. C.R.E.W. stands for “Christians Ready, Equipped, and Willing” and welcomes youth in grades 7 through 12. The meeting will start with an ice breaker provided by ECM followed by a joint presentation of the options of local charities by Madeline Johnson to anchor our discussions about the Vestry appointed one thousand dollars for external ministry. The greater part of the meeting however will be spent in a joint Stations of the Cross experience which will be virtual and in person. Sue and Sally made sure that ECM members received Stations of the Cross kits to take home—which we really appreciated! Special thanks to Sally for the cookies!
Amy, St. Thomas’s Treasurer, has offered to present a session on stocks, bonds and the exciting world of finance to ECM. This suggestion was enthusiastically embraced and will need to be scheduled soon.
Our first Delmarva Blood Bank drive will take place on March 10, 2021! ECM has been spreading the word and we hope that the event will be really successful. Please do not forget to make your appointment and tell your friends! A fellow nursing classmate of an ECM member will be volunteering to take temperatures and assist with hydration.
Our focus on explicit spirituality has begun in earnest with the official start of the Beatitude Devotional by Father Howie. We started the conversation about being poor or rich in spirit. Included in the first devotional was a list of some of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We identified which gifts of the Spirit we saw and admired in others and which gifts we would like to cultivate in ourselves. After a robust discussion, we each chose a gift of spirit to focus on for the week—patience, understanding wisdom, piety etc. I look forward to next week when we will share how or if a greater awareness of this principle made a difference in our week as we continue to develop our relationships with God.
The University of Religious Leaders Organization (URLO) continues to meet roughly every two weeks.
With regards,
Denise Burgher
ECM Convening Graduate Advisor