Author: cooleen

Hello, it’s been a real encouragement to see the 14 day incident rate of infections significantly reducing in Donegal over this last week, we are very thankful for this and we pray that this trend will continue.

I would just want to confirm that in both Ramelton and Leiter we are holding worship services this coming Sunday morning, in Leiter at 10.30am and in Ramelton at 12 noon…… Ensuring that we are able to meet safely is a priority for us. The government restrictions that we are working under are effectively the same as they were in December and we would ask everyone attending to carefully adhere to these restrictions. Maintain a social distance of 2 metres, wear your face mask at all times, make sure your hands are well sanitised and please follow the steward’s directions at all times. Under the regulations we are not permitted to congregate outside church. Also we are still not allowed to sing in worship so we will be using recorded music which we can listen to and reflect worshipfully on the words. In Leiter we are limited to 50 in the church and in Ramelton we are limiting the numbers to 50 in the church and 50 in the hall, we would ask that (in Ramelton) young people and families go to the hall and that older folks go to the main church building.

We hope that we will be able to accommodate everyone who arrives for either service but we do apologise if you arrive and we have reached our limit, we unfortunately won’t be able to admit you, we trust that you will understand that we simply need to do all we can to keep people safe. The service in Ramelton will be recorded and will be available online from around 6pm on Sunday, so if you are unable to get into either service you can at least watch this recording later on. Thank you for your understanding in all these things.

While we would love to be having more people into both services and we would love to be singing we are encouraged by this first positive step back to worship and we do look forward, sometime in the coming weeks, to restrictions being eased further and being able to sing and not have to sit a distance from one another. We trust that those days are closer than ever now. Thank you.  

We were very pleased last week to hear the government’s announcement easing some of the restrictions relating to COVID 19, we were particularly pleased to hear that we are now allowed to open the churches for Sunday worship, and it is our plan in both Leiter and Ramelton is to hold services of worships next Sunday the 16^th May at the usual times. We have greatly missed worshiping together.

We are however acutely aware of the high number of cases of COVID in Donegal and particularly around Milford, Ramelton and Letterkenny, we will continue to closely monitor these numbers over the next week and if the numbers do significantly increase the Kirk Sessions in both congregations will be reviewing the decision to open for Sunday worship. Also, in returning to worship, we need to ensure that every precaution in taken to ensure that any potential infection does not spread. That means wearing our facemasks before, during and after worship, maintaining social distancing of 2 metres, sanitising and following the steward’s directions. If we could ask you to also keep your masks on outside church as well, we are keen just to take every precaution at the moment. Indeed, if I could encourage people in general terms, day to day, to continue to keep to the government regulations, these regulations are unfortunately still necessary and collectively keeping them will result in infections levels decreasing over these next days and weeks. The end does seem to be in sight, with more and more people getting vaccinated and the picture nationally being more encouraging and we give thanks for this.

On Sunday in Ramelton, we do not envisage any problems accommodating those who come out to worship, we will again have the service relayed into the church hall. In Leiter, if we are not able to accommodate anyone, we will give you preference the following Sunday. The service in Ramelton will be recorded each week and available to view online later on Sunday afternoon. God willing we look forward to seeing you next Sunday.

Thank You.

Richard Tregaskis