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Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Ephesians 1:3

Imagine my surprise when out my front window I saw a rainbow balloon at rooftop level! This caused lots of excitement in the neighborhood! We usually see this balloon way up high in the sky, but it was a blessing for it to come down among us.

The blessings of Christ come upon us in the same surprising way. Even in the midst of these unimaginably difficult times, there are many blessings to be embraced. Desert Cross is a blessing of Christ bringing hope, peace, and love in many surprising ways to me and the world. Even if we can’t gather in person, we can still accomplish the mission of Christ to love, share, and serve in new ways.

It’s still not safe to gather in person. Once again, here are the parameters we follow from AZDHS. The 3 zones of “Number of Cases, Percent Positivity, and Hospitalizations” must be in the Yellow/Moderate to Green/Minimal Transmission Zones for 2 weeks before we can gather with social distancing. Today we are in the Red/Substantial Zone in all 3 zones. Here is a screen shot of the dashboard we follow:



The good news and blessing we see is a downward trend. And I have more good news! Desert Cross is moving forward and doing more new things!

Our Desert Cross LIVESTREAM worship services from the Tempe sanctuary begin the first Sunday of Lent, February 21st at 9am!

The services will be livestreamed and posted on our “Desert Cross Lutheran Church” YouTube channel every Sunday at 9am thereafter. We will celebrate Holy Communion on the first Sunday of each month and individual communion kits will be available for pick up at both campuses – details forthcoming on all of this!  

I hope you share in my excitement and embrace this new blessing that allows us to move forward and increase our connection with you while we worship together at home. It is different and will change the way we’ve been worshipping, so we all need to be open to change knowing that this is all temporary. In the meantime, we can celebrate the blessings in the hardships together. The good news is we are accomplishing our Renew Mission plans to share the gospel in new, virtual ways which enables us to reach many new people with God’s grace. Now that’s good news!

Thanks be to God!
Pastor Andrea