Denver, Colorado … For most of us, this is an entirely new situation. The closest I ever personally experienced was a round of flu that hit Indiana Academy my freshman year, resulting in soup lines in the dormitory to accommodate all those who were down, including myself.

But here I am, apparently healthy, but taking precautions to stay that way. Almost certainly the same ones you are taking, so there really isn’t any point in reciting them. The interruptions are a nuisance, but I am grateful that so far, my family and I are healthy.

The Planned Giving and Trust Services Department is also taking precautions. Until further notice we will not be doing in home visits. If your documents are ready to sign, you will be contacted about how to go forward signing them yourself. Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that the place you would normally find a notary will be open, and we are not encouraging anyone to seek out witnesses for their signatures, so in all likelihood most of you will choose to just wait.

We understand that waiting can be a risk. If you have more than minor changes to make, or if you don’t have any plan in place at all, by all means call us. I check my phone messages, as do all of our staff, so we can respond and figure out a plan forward that will suit your needs.

Mostly our department is working remotely, and we are staggering our necessary trips to the office to have as little face to face contact as possible. Thankfully we have technology that allows us to work in this manner, but efficiency is definitely affected. So we want to thank you for your patience.

Every day I get informational emails about the COVID-19 virus from my insurance agent, my bank, my internet provider, my dentist, to list a few. I follow the news closely enough that none of them are going to tell me something I don’t already know about how to protect myself. My response is usually along the lines of, “All I want from you is cell phone service, so stop trying to play my doctor!” But I hope that this information about how we are going to be operating through this outbreak will actually be useful to you in knowing what to expect and how to plan.

We will keep you in our prayers.

—Doug Inglish for The Planned Giving and Trust Services Department Team; photo by Unsplash photo