Dear members and friends of Calvary,

sisters and brothers in Christ,

Warmest greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus who protects and watches us from harm. This note comes to give us some updates and information regarding our Church in relation to the current Pandemic on the Corona Virus.

1. As of this writing, Saturday, March 21 at 3:23pm, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy just issued an Executive Order “requiring nearly all residents to stay at home. All non-essential retail stores must close by 9 p.m. ALL gatherings are canceled.

The Governor said: “I take personal responsibility for the public health and safety of New Jersey,” he tweeted. “If you are unhappy about our aggressive social distancing measures, I’m sorry. But your safety is my highest priority.”

2. In view of this very specific New Jersey state order and also from other Federal and local authorities, we are cancelling our in-person Sunday Worship Services until further notice.

3. Last night, Friday, March 20, I had a phone conference with Church Trustee's Ethan Medley and David Merkooloff and Church Deacon Chairman Dragan Mladenovic. We talked about alternatives to in-person worship such as broadcasting via Youtube or Facebook in place of our usual Sunday Worship Service. I will start with a printed sermon for tomorrow and hopefully improve from there to have something online. Please visit and bookmark the church website www.CalvaryofClifton.org for updates.

4. I am constantly checking the CDC - Center for Disease Control and Prevention website for updates and our denomination's regional (ABCNJ.NET) and national (ABC-USA) websites for guidance.

5. Let us continue to maintain communication with our respective family and loved ones to counsel, advise and pray for one another. Let us also extend our communication and prayers to church members and friends and others we know need reaching out to. Let us also keep in our thoughts and prayers the doctors, nurses and other frontline medical workers across the country and other parts of the world who are confronting a shortage of masks, surgical gowns and eye gear. Let us pray for hospitals and medical centers who are short of ventilators and other medical equipment. Let us pray to God for his guidance grace and protection and for an eventual end of this pandemic soon.

6. In the spirit of the Lenten season and the current pandemic, let us pray and meditate upon Scriptural passages and seek for the Lord's messages to us. The Lord tells us not to fear, to hold on to our faith, that together we do have a social responsibility to be of help to others in a responsible way we can, and the Scriptures tell us of plagues in the and how God’s people were guided and protected from harm, and we are to continually PRAY.

Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you;

hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. Isaiah 26:20

7. Our Trustees encourages us to continue sending our tithes and offerings to the church by mail or via the donation page on the church website for the period of time that we cannot gather physically as we continue doing our Church Ministries, Operations and Mission work.

Affectionately yours in Christ,

Pastor Manuel de la Fuente

P.S. You are all in my thoughts and prayers. We are one in this together. Stay safe.