cover-19

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I Flew For The First Time In Five Months

It’s been five months since I’ve been up in the air, but I finally flew the other day. Last year I flew right through the winter, but it’s more difficult to fly now. 

I flew for the first time in five months

… Oh no, I’m not talking about COVID-19 restrictions; I’m talking about flying my drone. 

A year ago I could take my drone up with few restrictions on the airspace I could fly in. Not this year. The restrictions are plenty, so choosing a place to fly my drone is difficult and requires going a good distance out of the city.

Along with all the restrictions, there are weather factors to consider in winter. The temperature can’t be too cold or the battery might freeze and my drone might fall out of the sky … not to mention my fingers might freeze off while holding the controller. 

I have experience with freezing fingers … playing pond hockey way past the time hypothermia starts to kick in. 

… Or being in the thick of a snowball fight, when the snow is really wet and your gloves have soaked through. You can’t stop or you will get pelted, but in those temperatures your hands become one with the snowball – frozen! 

But earlier this week I finally managed to take my drone out. It was perfect for a flight – well, somewhat. 

It had been a great day on the Saturday, but I wasn’t able to get out. Then Sunday it rained all day. The forecast for Monday was the same but turned out to be nice. So late in the day I decided to get out there. 

What I didn’t know was they had lifted the ban on using trails and walking paths. When I got to the spot I had planned for my flight, the parking lot was full of cars. 

The spot was an old railway line that has been converted into a walking, jogging, hiking, biking trail. I’ve been there before with maybe a car or two. Not this day. There were more cars than the parking area could hold.

I tried another spot farther up the trail. Same thing. It was like everyone decided, “Let’s go walking and biking today.” 

I did eventually find a place to park and I got my drone in the air. 

I wasn’t really interested in filming anything, and believe me there wasn’t much that was interesting to film at this spot. 

Everything is still brown; there is no colour. Other than evergreen trees, there aren’t even leaves on the trees.

I just wanted to get flying again, and practise some techniques so that when I get a chance to film something interesting I will be able to pull off the shot in a cool way only drones can capture.

Five months off of flying is a long time but, much like riding a bike, you don’t forget how to do it. 

I hope now that spring has sprung, it won’t be so long in between flights.

Here’s the thing: When was the last time you spent time with God or spent more than two minutes reading your Bible? How long has it been since you’ve been to church? Well, all it takes is some desire and inspiration to do it. Plan a time to meet with God; pick up your Bible and read; stream a church service … I know of a good one (Kingston Alliance Church on YouTube.com).

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: You have more free time right now – what are you doing with it? Leave your comments and questions below. 

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I knew It Would Come To This

Last Monday I knew that we would have to cancel our church service. Even before the NBA announced it was postponing their season, I knew it would come down to this. 

I Knew It would comer to this

I just didn’t think it would happen as fast as it did.

This week has been a whirlwind of landmark announcements, precautions, instructions and down right fear. 

For the fear part we don’t have to look any further than the hoarding of toilet paper that happened this past week. If people contract COVID-19 they will get a high fever, cough and respiratory symptoms … and with all that toilet paper, they may also get a clogged bathroom throne! 

As the week progressed, I thought it might be good for me to think of a way to stream our church service to our congregation. As I said, I knew it would come to that eventually, but I thought I had a couple of weeks to work out the details. 

On Wednesday I signed up for streaming services on YouTube. I already had a YouTube channel to which I post drone videos that I make. All I had to do was click on the request and in twenty-four hours I was able to livestream through my account. 

… But I was just doing that because at some point – maybe in a week or two – I thought it would be necessary. 

I was wrong. As the weekend approached, there were more and more health suggestions and warnings. 

By Friday afternoon, I knew that we didn’t have a week to prepare – we now had one day!

Along with securing a livestream platform on YouTube, I also had downloaded a piece of streaming software, which I hadn’t yet installed on my computer. I wasn’t even sure what it did. 

Now I knew I was going to have to find out more about this software and actually use it. But maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself … 

It was clear that no one was going to force us to close our doors on Sunday. There were, however, recommendations on the size of gatherings organizations should limit themselves to. 

I couldn’t help but think of all the people out shopping in stores, stripping the shelves bare of essentials and non-essentials, purchasing what they “needed” while putting themselves at greater risk of catching or passing on the virus to other shoppers. 

People who were shopping this week were probably in closer contact with others than if they were attending a church service.

Though our church was under the size limit recommendations laid out by the health officials, I knew that there would be many people who, just to feel safe, would not want to come to church.

There were also a good number of seniors in the church who probably needed to avoid being in contact with people.

What went through my thoughts was to hold our service but offer a livestream for those who would stay home. 

That ended up being the plan we executed. How we put the livestream together, I’ll share with you in my next post.

Here’s the thing: Big changes can happen quickly, quicker than you expect or anticipate. If a face-to-face meeting with Christ comes quicker than you expect or anticipate, you will really want to be prepared for that meeting. The preparation is straight forward: place your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and make Him the boss of your life. That’s what you need to do to be ready for the unexpected. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What unexpected decisions did you have to make this last week? Leave your comments and questions below.