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South Dakota Pastor's #ChurchOnTheGo Makes COVID Christmas Festive for Native
Americans

Cecily Hilleary

   WASHINGTON - In a normal year, Christmas is a joyful time for
   Episcopalians on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home of the
   Sicangu Lakota Oyate (The Burnt Thigh Nation), which has seen as many
   as 30 new coronavirus cases in a day.

   The year 2020 has been anything but normal.

   "We've had to change everything," said Mother Lauren Stanley, the
   presbyter (priest-in-charge) for the west half of the Rosebud Episcopal
   Mission.

   Normally, Stanley offers services at the Church of Jesus, a small white
   clapboard building dating to 1875, and in three other churches under
   her supervision.

   "We shut down all in-person worship in March and immediately created
   something called 'Love in the Time of Coronavirus,' hashtag
   ChurchOnTheGo, where people can do drive-up Communion," she said.

   "Folks drive up in their cars and come to their window and say, 'So,
   what would you like to pray for?' And if there's a whole family, then I
   ask them each individually, starting with grandparents, then the
   parents, and then the children. And I'll put that all in one prayer.
   And then we'll do the Lord's Prayer together."

   After that, she will hand them Communion.

   Normally, the sacrament consists of bread in the form of small,
   unleavened wafers, and wine sipped from a communal cup.
   [1]Episcopalians believethe two contain the "real presence" of the body
   and blood of Jesus Christ.

References

   1. https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/eucharistic-elements

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