Desert Notes

11/3/2022

December/January closure and plans for Sundays
This is a reminder that we will not have services on Sunday Dec. 25 or Sunday January 1 and our buildings will be closed during this time. Work on the sanctuary will begin during this time, and will continue until it’s complete.  While we hope this won’t take too long, we are planning some ways to stay connected while the sanctuary is being transformed. Jan 8, 2023 will be a multigenerational service held on the education side of campus and will include a donuts (fundraiser for Faith Formation) and some other fun activities TBA!  Although we will have to move to some pre-recorded elements for services while the sanctuary is closed, we plan to create some fun ways to gather on the other side of campus while still maintaining connection with our online participants.  Faith formation classes will continue starting January 15.  Stay tuned for more information.

What about Christmas???

We will have a Christmas Pageant on Dec 18 with the youth. (Sunday service)

Christmas Eve: We need some information from you so we can plan! Please fill this out to let us know what you prefer in regards to Christmas Eve services, (including whether you want to participate in or attend these).

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11-3-2022

Last week I shared some notes on theology, this week I would like to share some notes with you about technology!

Back to the Future @VUU: Part I
Remember phone lines?  And phones that were mostly just phones? Like….in the 90’s??? You know, before you decided your cell phone was the only phone you needed?

Well, the VUU offices have these kinds of phones.

And,,,they’re really not working well these days.  Sometimes we can’t tell if we have voicemail.  It’s hard to maneuver their settings.  They have terrible audio.  It’s impossible to transfer calls to each other. They’re just kinda…outdated.  

So…we’re getting a whole new set up.  It will look like we have phones in our VUU offices (and we will get new equipment!), but with voice over IP, we can take our “office calls” on any device (cell phones, tablets, computers), in any place that we are located (home, across campus, out of town), and easily read voicemail messages, see which staff members are on a line, and transfer calls.  It’s the best of both worlds and it costs THE SAME basically.  

It’s a retro-fitted Delorian.   Kinda.  We can’t time travel with these, but we can do pretty much everything else.  If you’ve had a hard time reaching one of us, we apologize.  And we hope that will all change really soon!  Luckily, we don’t need lightning to strike to get these going.  

In other aspects of our campus, we have noticed that VUU often has technology from more than one decade trying to work in tandem.  It’s no wonder we have so many problems with our current A/V system–our components weren’t all made to communicate with each other and don’t often “speak the same language.”  Sometimes it’s hard to say which decade we’re actually in!  As the Sanctuary Transformation Team works to get our decades aligned, we are grateful for your patience as we try to get back to the future…um, that is the present, 21st century technology.