Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic in New York City — Richard Schwartz & Dr. Hans Burkholder

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with two guests this time, Richard and Hans, both from New York City. Um, and met them remotely, obviously now in these times with the global pandemic, but really a privilege to bring them in on a video call like this and discuss some relevant issues for our day. Um, so if you could, if y'all could introduce yourselves, Richard, let's start with you and then go to Hans.

Yes, so my name is Richard Schwartz, married to Sandy. We have six children, ages 6 to 20. We live in the Bronx, so I'm a pastor of Believers in Jesus Church. It's a church plant approximately one and a half years in existence. And I've been a pastor for approximately what, 15 years? It used to be Brooklyn, now it's the Bronx. And I'm also an insurance adjuster.

And that is possible to be an insurance adjuster and a pastor at the same time. Okay, so my name is Hans Burkholder, and I also live in New York City. I live in Brooklyn and work as a surgeon here in Brooklyn and have a wife and two children. And we've lived in New York since 2014. Yeah, interesting. So you're in two different parts of New York City. And right now, which, you know, just to just to put this in context, this is happening on April 13th. So some of the things we say, you know, things do change. But right now, April 13th, New York City is not doing so well on the global scene as far as the coronavirus outbreak.

I'm sure both of you are seeing those effects, Richard, you as a pastor, and then Hans, you know, your work as a doctor. Can you all just explain what are you seeing? How is it affecting you? What is life like now in New York City?

And what are some things we can learn from that, you know, for those of us who aren't actually there? So yeah, Hans, like what is it like, especially you as a doctor? Well, it's really unusual. You know, it's been over 100 years since we had a pandemic that affected our country like this. So it's not something I've ever seen in my lifetime.

And most of what I do are elective surgeries, meaning they're things that are only done if that they're not emergency surgeries. So those have all been canceled. So you have a lot of hospital operating rooms. And so I actually have a lot more free time than what I normally do. So I think for a lot of us, we're dealing with how do we live our lives when we're not as busy as we're used to being. And so I think for a lot of us in New York, that's actually one of the challenges.

Now, in terms of day-to-day life, you can drive places a lot faster than you used to be able to. I think for some people, hearing the constant sirens is actually starting to cause some level of stress. You know, when you're just sitting in your home or your office, you can usually hear a siren going somewhere. And it's a little unsettling.

I think the biggest thing on a day-to-day basis is just people's routines and the habits they're used to having have been completely disrupted. And we're trying to figure out, you know, who are we when the things that we usually use to define ourselves in terms of work and how we fill our days are gone. Yeah. And then for you, Richard, you know, as a pastor, you've probably seen a slightly different angle to all this. How has it affected your life and your work, especially with the church there? Well, so some of the things that have shown up in the last, say, three to four weeks are probably happening kind of across the US. You know, within we have a smaller church.

It's maybe an average of 30 people. And some of the brothers, one of the brothers hasn't had any work now for about three weeks. Another brother's maybe 60% less from what he used to do. So that's definitely impacting the financial needs within the church. As a church here, we've taken the stance that, well, at least the brothers have said we need to pray more. We have been trying to meet a couple of times a week to pray before this, but we're trying to meet every day, either a social distanced prayer meeting, essential services, as I call it, or a Zoom prayer meeting, because it just seems like the needs within the congregation and within our communities are heightened.

I've noticed I silenced my notifications on the Citizens app. There's an app that I have that shows basically crime within, you know, a mile of your area. It'll show all these different things. So if I hear a gunshot, within a minute, it'll show up on the Citizens app. About a week into this whole thing, I started noticing domestic assault two blocks away, domestic assault, a woman assaulted, man assaulted. I started thinking, wow, in the middle of the day, they're supposed to be inside. What are they doing outside? And I realized it's actually domestic violence. So I've read reports in our community and I've talked to some people. The stresses of people living at home in kind of tighter quarters, they don't maybe have as many backyard options or park options.

And the, you know, they took down all the basketball hoops at all the courts. So if you want to play basketball, you're kind of out of luck. So those are some of the things that I think of that are facing us. And some of that is really not necessarily unique to New York City. I think probably what's a little bit more unique here than other places in the US is many of us have friends or relatives who have either been sick or died.

Within one of the brothers' churches, they have maybe 200 people in that church and two people have died and there's 10 people who are sick with COVID. So a serious, serious concern for that church. You know, my wife and I, we found out on Saturday morning that the father of two former students died. He was on the ventilator for about a week and he passed away on Saturday.

So that was really tough, you know. So it kind of brings it a lot closer to home and it makes it less theoretical and just real, you know. One of the things, you know, transitions really nicely with the next question I had. And that is, you know, specifically you, Hans, with your medical experience, for most of us that aren't there or aren't in major cities affected, this feels very theoretical. We don't know anybody who's had the disease. You know, I'm from rural Tennessee, you know, so it hasn't vastly affected my life at this point.

You know, when you look at this, what are you seeing? Do you see this as a serious medical concern? And what are some lessons we can learn from this? Because honestly, there's a lot of people who don't really think it's a big deal.

But yeah, Hans, I'm assuming you have some thoughts on that, you know, with your experience. And you would know a lot more about this than the rest of us. Yeah, I think, you know, it's hard to feel the emotional impact of this until it's affected people that you know, like Brother Rich mentioned.

So, you know, when we first started hearing about this breaking out in China, it's something that's happening way over there somewhere. And it didn't seem as real to me then as what it does now. And in terms of how my experience with it, my experience has been, there's several dimensions to it. One is I've lost patients, like so there's people I know, like Brother Rich mentioned, people that I've treated for several years who had cancers. I got them through their cancers with surgery. They did chemotherapy. But they're older people who are frail. And I had, I think, three phone calls last week from family members just wanting to let me know that their parent had died.

So I've been losing long-term patients of mine. So that's one aspect. The other aspect has been the two hospitals where I work at, you know, life is completely different at those places. You go in, everybody, even the people walking around in the corridors is wearing face masks and maybe gowns and face shields. So people don't usually walk around like that in a hospital. So the physical characteristics of the internal part of the hospital have changed just in terms of how you interact with people. And then both hospitals have these refrigerated trucks parked outside. And, you know, they're loading bodies onto those trucks. If you are at a place where you can look out a window and see what's happening, they're loading corpses onto those trucks.

And that's because their morgues are full. The one hospital I work at ran out of body bags a week ago and, you know, had to put an emergency order in for more. And I think they got more, but they had so many deaths that they ran out of body bags and were using something else.

Surgeons like me have been reassigned. So last week, it was my turn to work on a ward that was comprised almost completely of patients who have the coronavirus. So I was providing direct care to coronavirus patients last week. And that's not, that's usually something medical doctors do and not surgeons. But they had one medical doctor who died after contracting the virus. And they have some who've been out sick. And then there's just a lot more patients in the hospital than there usually are. And so they're trying to get anybody who they can to come in and provide care to these people, which is what I did. So I've seen it firsthand. And I can say the experience in New York for the hospitals has been that it's completely overwhelmed the healthcare system.

And you have facilities and doctors and nurses who are doing the best they can in conditions where their facilities are fairly overwhelmed. Yeah. And I think maybe some of this, perhaps maybe proximity, because again, I know a lot of people personally who are saying this isn't a problem.

Now, to be honest, they're not medical staff that are saying that, but they say, well, people die all the time. Would either of you all have insight on where that perception is coming from? The thought that, well, people die all the time, it's just maybe an aggressive clue. You know, it's not that big a deal. Just kind of let's just ride it out. It'll be fine.

Where do you feel that that perception is coming from? And in what ways should we be responding to that in a loving way? And especially when it comes to caring for our neighbors, etc.? I think part of that comes from people in lower risk age categories looking at the statistics and saying, you know, I'm not 70 years old. And so if I get this, you know, I'm probably going to be okay. I may feel crummy for a period of time, or I may not, because some people are asymptomatic, which is kind of a selfish way of looking at it.

I think we have to look at it through the lens of how do we care for the elderly people in our lives, whether it's our grandparents or the older people at church. And for those people, it may not be just a bad flu.

The statistics pretty clearly show you're much more likely to die from this than you are if you contract the flu. But I think this really gets we're pro-life. You know, we believe in the value of the unborn lives, but we also really value the lives of the elderly. And I think this is who this virus really preys on. Yeah. I think the reality is we are pro-life. And I've heard somebody say, well, it's not accurate or it's not, what would be the term? It's not consistent of those who say we have to care for the elderly when they may be pro-choice and they are promoting the death of hundreds of thousands of babies.

So yeah, that probably isn't consistent. But just because that's not consistent, in my opinion, doesn't give Christians the freedom to say, well, we don't really, we're not really going to care about the elderly among us. I've also had friends say, yeah, but in these states, say in the middle US, we're not really having that many cases.

So can't we just have the nursing homes kind of do their little quarantine or the elderly stay inside?

And possibly, maybe, I think if you take what's happening in New York City, I just did a little number crunching this morning. And it looks like we have about, what, 6,500 deaths in eight and a half million people. So if you take those numbers across the US and everything just stops now, that's 260,000 people that have died if we take it directly across. Thankfully, it hasn't been nearly this bad in other places.

So some of it probably is worry because people are losing their jobs. And maybe some of it is people who are resisting the controls, are skeptical of government, skeptical of experts, skeptical of news. They've got government experts and news, and they're all sort of, you know, open to debate. It's those three entities, I think, that you've got government and you've got experts and you have journalists.

And depending on where you were at in your approach to government, experts, and journalists prior to this, it seems like if you had a skepticism of all three entities, then it's a perfect storm if you have now proven that they're all wrong. And so, and you feel compelled to tell everybody about it. If you had some desire to respect government, some desire to say, hey, let's just, let me just hope that the experts are right. And I guess you have maybe a little bit more open view of the news and just try to sort it all as it comes, then you're maybe going to just not be as skeptical of this or call it a potential hoax.

So I think the concern I have is that it's almost escalating to the point of labeling each other as enemies when we're really not enemies. You know, we're not the enemy, even if we have differing views on this.

That's the concern I see within my network of friends and relatives. I think you were asking, you know, is this not just a bad flu? How do we know it's not just a bad flu? And, you know, I can testify firsthand that I saw patients last week when I was on that floor that I would normally, if they had a flu in the condition they were in and with the way they were the first day I saw them, some of them really deteriorated much more quickly than I would have ever expected somebody to deteriorate who had a flu. It just, it's clearly a different disease process. And there were patients that died last week that I just wouldn't have expected to see die if I was taking care of them with the flu.

It's, you know, it's a new virus that we haven't treated before. And I think we're still learning as physicians how to take care of it. But it's, from what I saw, it's clearly I'd much rather have the flu than this thing. So basically a lot more aggressive.

Is that a fair way of saying it? Yeah. I mean, just the respiratory effects for some people are much more likely to make it so they can't breathe and even get them to the point where we can't support them with ventilators and other medical technology and they die. Aggressive is a good term. It's not as, the flu just is not as aggressive in terms of how people react to it. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So maybe some of what's contributing to the, I mean, I'm just going to call it as misinformation that we see, we all see it on both sides. People saying, oh my goodness, it's the end of the world.

They're running around with their hair on fire. And the other side is saying, oh, it's a big hoax that this is not a problem. Everyone can go back with your normal lives. Could some of it be we just don't have firsthand experience? You know, we don't all live in New York City. You know, we can theorize all day long, but it's just not the same as actually seeing it. Is that maybe a lot of what's contributing to all the misinformation? I think that plays a role. You know, the emotional impact changes things. But I think there's also the first, you know, things go on lockdown. And so people have that first reaction of being afraid of it.

And, you know, I got to do this. And then two weeks later, not much has changed. And their hospitals aren't overwhelmed. And there's really not a lot of cases in their community. And they're saying, well, why did I just spend two weeks at home when, you know, clearly nothing is happening? And this is all, there must be some other motivation going on to keep me from doing what I usually like to do. And then we, people, you know, we can fool ourselves into thinking all kinds of things. And so I think denial is another part of it. We all want to get back to our normal lives. We want to get back to doing the things we like to do.

And so, you know, our capacity for self-deception is fairly good, I think. I think that's a good way of saying it. Yeah. Well, and okay, so that actually transitions really well with the next thing I had, because one of the reports I keep seeing or people keep bringing up is this idea of, well, the empty hospitals. Hospitals aren't being overrun. You know, there's lots of empty beds in hospitals, particularly in New York. So what's the big deal? Because we keep hearing all these overworked hospital staff. And yet people, you know, there's some of these people go out, film out of hospital and say, there's, there's, it's not a problem.

What's wrong with that perception? Like, what are we missing there? Those two, you can't have it both ways, empty hospitals and overworked medical staff. So what's going on? I'm not aware of any empty hospitals in New York. Our hospital is a 400-bed hospital. And last week, when I was on the coronavirus ward taking care of patients, they had over 120 patients in the emergency room who were waiting for a bed. And that set a record for our hospital for the number of people waiting for a bed. So I'd be skeptical of anybody posting a video of a hospital in New York saying that they had empty hospital beds, because every hospital in Brooklyn was in the same situation our hospital was in.

Now, I think if you're a hospital in, you know, Virginia or Pennsylvania that hasn't had a lot of coronavirus patients yet, and they've kind of shut the hospital down to people who don't have conditions that require urgent admission, I think you can walk into one of those hospitals and you'll probably find, you know, a whole bunch of empty rooms. And praise God that that's the case in those places. I hope it stays that way. That's interesting. Interesting. So basically, if you would, I mean, yeah, I would know people and have interacted with a number of different people that have said that, oh, well, what's the big deal? New York City has plenty of hospitals that are empty.

You would really, I mean, you would 100% say that is not the case at this point. Correct. The places that are not at capacity would be the Comfort Ship that the federal government sent in and the Javits Center, where they've taken this big convention center and made temporary hospital beds there. Those places are not, those two places have lots of room. I tried to send patients over there last week, and their list of requirements of conditions that the patients can't have are so stringent that I had a hard time getting patients into those sort of temporary facilities. So if you're reading reports saying the Comfort Ship has empty beds, that's correct. If you're reading reports saying the Javits Center, which is not a hospital, but it's a temporary hospital center that's been set up, those two places do have empty beds.

But the regular hospitals that are here all the time, they're full. Jacoby Medical Center is about two miles from us. It's one of the bigger hospitals in the Bronx. There's also Montefiore, the Moses Center up on Benton Hill Road. And both of them, I've been in touch with different people in those hospitals, and they've never experienced anything like this and have indicated to me that they've had almost capacity or maybe above capacity.

But been there several times in the last week and a half to drop off food for the healthcare workers. If you want to do a citizens report, you can prove anything you want to. So I could find an empty corridor, I'm sure, because they're big hospitals. And I could probably find a tent out front that doesn't look like it's filled to capacity. So I think that's part of the conundrum here is if you have a particular point you want to prove, you can create, you can find six citizen journalists and you can prove your point, unfortunately.

Well, and to echo what you're saying, Rich, if I went into the hospital where I work, all the elective surgeries have been canceled. So I could take my phone and video the empty holding area beds where we normally would have patients waiting to have surgery. You know, and so I could post that online and say there's empty beds at my hospital. But it's actually they're empty because there's a problem. And some of those spaces are repurposing into inpatient units. But I could probably find some empty beds somewhere in the hospital that are empty because they've put these restrictions on us due to coronavirus.

Yeah. Okay. So those are really good points there, though, where we could, if we wanted to prove, quote, prove whatever point we wanted to make. But by doing so, we would be taking a tiny little slice that would happen to fit the worldview that we like, but really is not true or factually correct of the actual situation.

You know, I mean, I've seen some people saying online, well, they've caught doctors working on mannequins. They're not actually real patients to help complete this hoax. You know, and things like that. And oh, they have pictures to prove it. You know, and well, I don't know. I don't know all the details. But I think one of the things was they were practicing some of the techniques on mannequins to help train people. And then they borrowed some footage from a long time ago and, you know, trumped it to be this certain thing.

All that to say, it feels like it's easy to find stuff that we like to fit our worldview. You know, because I think it comes down to this whole, it's a big conspiracy to hype it up, you know, and sell on newspapers so there's doctors in on this conspiracy to try to, I mean, Hans, I don't know you that well, but you don't strike me as a kind of guy to be part of a conspiracy.

Maybe I'm duped into believing the falsehood, right? But I haven't heard the mannequin thing. But, you know, I think behind false beliefs, there's oftentimes some level of truth. And the level of truth with the conspiracy theory is kind of what you just alluded to. Newspapers make money when they sell things that are sensational. And so they're going to go to the hospitals in the city and try to find stories that are heart-wrenching. And so they're going to put that kind of stuff out there. So, you know, for a lot of us in New York, our lives have actually slowed down. But if you're an emergency room doctor, you're feeling pretty overwhelmed. And so these reports coming out of the New York hospitals are true.

But, you know, it's also the news media does want to sell ad time. And they're going to try to find whatever detail it is that they think will do that. But it is a crisis. And the hospitals are seeing, they're overwhelmed. And they're seeing more patients than, you know, they ever have in the same time periods. So we're setting records at my hospital for people who are waiting for hospital beds, you know, people who are requiring ventilators and ICU beds. And those things are true.

But yeah, the media is going to try to go into these places and find the details that they think are the most scandalous to try to sell ads. So maybe what a good alternative would be to try to find sources of information that instead of pulling little slices, little specific things to try to get our attention and grab us and, like you're saying, sell that ad space, is there places we can go that give us a better big picture that don't get us sucked into this feeling of, oh, it's horrible or the other side, which is, oh, there's nothing happening at all. What are some good places to go for information on this? The truth is this is a major crisis.

And all these stories that are tragedies are sensational. The place I've gone to try to follow this, even before it came to North America when it was limited to China, was, I don't know if you've seen the Johns Hopkins corona map. You know, that's data. And I found that to be very objective. There's no agenda there that I can detect. And I found that to be a good source of data regarding what the cases are doing across the world and across this country. New York City, we've got the New York City Department of Health gives a daily kind of update that you can go and you can check the bars on hospitalizations and bars on deaths and cases.

They update it supposedly daily, but sometimes it changes two or three days retroactively. So that's, I find that helpful. In terms of news sources, I think any news source you have to view with some degree of, you know, let me listen to this or let me read this and try to weigh it.

The New York Post had an article two weeks ago when it was a particularly bad day at the outset of this. And they said that the headline was, "New Yorkers die every 9.5 seconds on Friday." Wow. So I read the article and the numbers showed it was actually every 9.5 minutes. But they didn't change the headline, you know. So that was a problem.

And it seems like the New York Post probably has three or four hundred people. I'm sure they have copy editors. So why did they let that 9.5 seconds stay on? I think to read any news article with some degree of, you know, okay, let me evaluate this. And I think that's what I'm finding so helpful with this. You all are there. You know, you don't have, you don't really have an agenda to try to spin a type of story. You know, one of you's a pastor, one of you's a doctor.

And I would say that that puts you pretty close to what's happening. I would think you would have a finger on the pulse in ways that, you know, people like myself or those outside the city never will. So maybe going to people like you all is a helpful source of information.

Is there ways people can do that where they can connect directly with medical professionals and actually understand what it's like? I think it's hard to. You know, if you have friends who work in the city, if you're Facebook friends with them, you know, you can hit them up on social media. But I think probably most people listening to your podcast don't have those kinds of firsthand relationships.

So I think it's hard. You know, people aren't going to go by what the media is saying and want to go by firsthand accounts from somebody they know. That's pretty hard to find. So it feels like we've laid the groundwork for what you all are experiencing there. Talked about some ways for our people to think about these things well. Use discernment, not just swallow anything you read on the internet, but to think through what's actually happening in these hospitals, talk to you all that are actually experiencing that. Is it a realistic thing to say what you are experiencing in New York, or New York City specifically, is a probable future for other cities across the country and also some of the communities that a lot of our in the Baptist people would be a part of?

Because at this point, it hasn't impacted our communities that much. But is this a probable future that we're all heading towards? What do you say to that? I wouldn't say that it is, that our experience here is a probable experience for everybody else. If you look at countries that have had outbreaks, like China, you know, most of China's cases were in one province.

And you can credit that perhaps to the way that they're a one-party state that doesn't have individual liberty, and they were locking people in their homes. And so maybe that's what confined it to that one province. But in China, it didn't turn into something where the experience of Wuhan, the province where this was centered, that wasn't what happened across the rest of the country. Same thing in Italy. You know, northern Italy had it much worse than southern Italy. So I think there's factors in New York that make us, as a population, more susceptible to it. You have subway cars that are just crammed with people. And so you have one person on a subway car like that, and all of a sudden, there's that many more people.

So I think in New York, the virus accelerated through the population a lot faster than it will in other places, which leads to a much quicker peaking of cases and probably a more quickly overwhelmed healthcare system. Because if you have all your cases compressed in a short period of time, then you have more people in the hospital all at once. I think you're going to see cases across the country and in communities where there's Anabaptist people. But I think it's, I think the outbreak is going to be different in terms of how it's experienced based on where you live and the social characteristics of the community that you're part of. Well, I was thinking I probably would, I would state it as it will possibly be like this across the U.S. But my guess is it's probably going to be more likely in the larger cities like New Orleans and Detroit and Chicago and some of those places.

My prayer has been that it doesn't sweep all through the country. You know, we also had a lot of travel back and forth here in December, January, February. I forget when they started shutting down the travel. And New York is kind of an international hub. So, you know, I'm not ready to say that probably all that we're facing is going to sweep across the country. I think I could say possibly. And I would say I hope it doesn't. I think there's also ways in which the Mennonite community is more vulnerable to a virus like this. So what I said, I don't want people to be complacent. I've seen an article circulating on Facebook about how there was a Mennonite study of Mennonites during the Spanish flu in the early 1900s that showed a higher mortality rate among Mennonites compared to the broader population.

And the reason they attributed that to was the social networks tended to be a little more active among the Mennonites. And they didn't do as good a job of social distancing. So I think we have risk factors as an Anabaptist community that could potentially work against us in terms of virus, this virus spreading in our community. So it's not a reason to be complacent. But I think New York kind of has some unique characteristics that have allowed things to really be much more severe more quickly here.

Yeah, just a quick note on that one too. So a brother in our church is a CRNA working at Westchester Medical Center, which is the county just north of the Bronx. And just about a week and a half ago, he was repurposed from the anesthesiology department to work as a nurse in the COVID special ICU unit.

And their cases had gone from 30 to eight days later, 180. And over half of them are Hasidic Jews from Rockland County. And they had been having weddings, funerals, you know, coming over to houses. They weren't doing any social distancing because they don't need to, I guess. So it reminds me very much of the plain Anabaptist community.

They also don't do vaccinations. And they've gotten in trouble with New York State on that. So it just, it gave me a little pause when I heard that little anecdote. Interesting. Yeah, this is really helpful to hear y'all's perspective that says, okay, it is bad in New York City. You know, this is tragic that people are dying and these things are happening. But that doesn't necessarily mean it has to happen across the rest of the country.

That's good news to hear. Because I think a lot of people, some of the reaction that's happening is they don't like to hear that. They, they're, you know, they want to think that their lives are going to be okay.

So there's the complacency here, I think, is the point we need to focus on. Would that be maybe fair? Like what I'm thinking for our audience, when they hear that, they're like, well, that's good. That's not going to hit our communities, hopefully. But what are some things we can do to everybody do their part to help slow the spread, to serve their communities, whatever? What are some things that, you know, lessons learned that you all saw up there that we can be doing in our communities across the country? If people go about their lives like they normally do, it probably is going to get into their communities. And they will have people they know in their church or their families who are going to get this.

And, you know, especially elderly people or people with pre-existing medical conditions that they know may die from it. So I think what people have to do is limit activities out of their homes. When you do go to places outside of your homes, you know, practice social distancing, maintaining six feet away from other people. Be careful not to touch your face. You know, clean your hands more often.

And, you know, if you're going to have people over for dinner, it's probably isn't the time to do that. You know, this is time for you to do stuff with your family and not to congregate in groups. Because the virus is out there. And I think just because our experience in New York isn't going to be replicated precisely across the country, you know, the virus is out there. And I think people in our communities across the country are going to have friends and acquaintances who die from it if no preventative behavioral actions are taken. And Richard, specifically for you as a pastor in your church, what are ways, creative ways that y'all have found to serve your communities in a time like this?

That first week, we were not allowed to kind of fellowship together. I was, I spent like every morning praying and saying, God, I think there's got to be some opportunities. But how in the world do you help? It's very different than 9/11. You know, you have kind of everybody softened in a way. And yet you're not supposed to get close to them.

So how do you actually kind of speak into the anxiety and the fear? Well, you know, we did have, it's kind of neat. On a Saturday night, I had a barbecue out back, which seemed to be legal. And two neighbors came by and we stood in the back alleyway, six feet, and had about an hour conversation that had never happened to particular neighbors.

So then the next week, we realized we have some opportunity to just bless some healthcare workers by giving meals. So our church sent, got some subway and a few other things and just dropped them off. And out of that, some other very motivated, interested individuals started sending up packages of food, like 40-pound boxes of food from Blessings of Hope in Pennsylvania. It's part of the Anabaptist COVID-19 response group. So what's been pretty amazing about that in the last week or two is we've had a chance to bless neighbors that we didn't know and friends that we had. Sandy met a Muslim woman in the park three weeks, maybe a month ago, named Hafsa. And she wanted 10 boxes after she got one.

So a couple of days ago, we had to take out the ham. No, it was salad with bacon in it. And we had to take the pork rinds. You know, we thought it was chips. It was actually pork rinds.

But she sent a text the next morning saying, wow, thank you, thank you, thank you. All my friends, thank you for that. So those are just a couple of examples of good things that God has allowed us to do during this time. We still miss each other. It's hard not to, you know, congregate. That's a tough part. I think maybe a real lesson for us here is to see what's been happening up there and then come up with creative ways that our people all across the country can serve. You know, these are some really neat ideas that you have, you know, and respect guidelines, but also reach out and love our neighbors in whatever way is possible.

So are you seeing a lot more open doors as a result of this crisis? Yeah, I think so. You know, it remains to be seen will the doors remain open after hopefully this kind of settles down. In my experience, New Yorkers try to kind of push their way through and say, we're going to be stronger and better.

And so my prayer is that the softening and the openness that happens now could translate into that, you know, moving forward within our church community and even within the neighbors and acquaintances we have outside of that. So that remains to be seen. Yeah, maybe these are things people can be preparing and getting ready for ways to serve, you know, when potentially an outbreak would hit their communities.

And in a way, you know, in times like this, it does bring people together in a very unique fashion. I find that very intriguing. I think what you're saying is important because the natural person's response to something like this is to say, how can I protect myself? How can I protect my family and basically look after my own interests? Whereas I think we as Christians need to look at it and say, how can I serve those around me? What are the opportunities to give and be there to help other people? And that's where I think we need God's Spirit to show us the ways we can do that wherever we are, whether it's in our local communities or reaching out to other places.

And I commend Rich's church for some of the ways they found to creatively do that. Yeah, because I've been following some of what you all have been doing up there. And I found it very encouraging. It's inspired my church to come up with creative ways. You know, what can we do to serve people in my area? You know, it hasn't affected us much down in Tennessee at this point. There's a high likelihood it will.

Unfortunately, you know, we're between two cities that each have outbreaks. So it's only a matter of time probably. And it makes us stop and think things through in a different way. And then that's not all bad either. And one of the things through all that, one of the, someone when I was telling them about this interview I was going to do, they said, ask them, how do you stay rooted through this process, through this really unique and challenging time? How do you stay rooted first off in God and your communities, but then also, you know, what's real? What's happening around you? Staying engaged with your community and really being the hands and feet of Jesus, being Jesus through all of this and not getting sucked into all the Facebook discussions on whether it's a hoax or not.

Yeah, how do you all stay rooted in this time? I think you have to spend time in the Word because where you put your thoughts and your time is where your brain is going to go. So you have to spend time in the Word and prayer. But our church has, I think, done a good job of maintaining community. We have the message prerecorded. And then we have these Zoom teleconferences afterwards where people get together and give their testimonies and react and share. We did an online talent show recently. And it provides a sense of community, even though it's virtual. Using the virtual tools we have to stay connected with brothers and sisters helps. And, you know, I've called people a lot more than I usually do just to chat and say, hey, how are you doing?

How can I pray for you? So you have to be purposeful about that. And then I think just limiting social media time. You know, I find myself having more free time than I usually do and gravitating towards, let's check the news again or let's see what somebody's saying on Facebook. And that kind of leads you into a kind of social media cycle that I think is usually more anxiety-inducing than productive. The other thing is, you know, in terms of people who believe it's a hoax and trying to convince them otherwise on social media, they're going to believe what they're going to believe. And I think there's always going to be people like Thomas in the Bible who say, unless I see it and I put my fingers in, you know, the nail prints and all that, I'm not going to believe it.

And you had that back in Jesus' time. You have people now who, unless it happens in their community to people they know, they're just not going to believe it. And I'm not going to spend a lot of energy getting into, you know, very circular arguments with people like that. I think Hans is a better man than me with that one.

On April 3rd, I had a good, good day. I think we had a day of prayer and fasting as a church. I think that might have been April 3rd. Really good day. And I think somewhere out of that, I said, you know what, I got to take a fast, a one-week fast from social media, from Facebook. That's my only social media, I think.

That was really good. And I came back on Saturday, what was that, two days ago. And my wife said, I'm acting like these Ramadan people, you know, where they don't eat, but they eat all night.

So I might have to take another fast.

Yeah. And I think, I think there's just maybe more emotion involved with some of this stuff than I want to really get, I want to allow to. There are good opportunities to be emotionally engaged with my family, my church, and my neighbors that sometimes trying to combat what I perceive as misinformation takes too much emotional energy for me to involve myself in. So the Word, prayer, the community of faith. And I go running because I eat too much. These last four weeks, I've snacked more than the previous four months, I think.

So those are some things. Yeah, that's good. And, you know, in one of the thoughts I've had, you know, and you kind of alluded to this, what if we would take all the energy we spend on Facebook, particularly spouting conspiracy theories or a bunch of just opinions, ideas, thoughts? What if we take that energy and actually poured into loving our neighbors and caring about the people around us? What would change?

It's a hypothetical question, but I wonder sometimes. I think it's a good question. And I think the challenge now is how do you do that? You know, we thought about dropping things off in people's mailboxes, saying, if you need us to do a grocery run, we're happy to help you. But that's not really following the social distancing rules. Because if I touch something and put it in their mailbox, you know, I could be spreading the virus to them if I have it and don't know it. So, you know, it creates knowing how to love your neighbors well is a little, it's going to require creativity during these times. Well, that is the last question I had written down.