Dear Friends of Pitt County and Eastern North Carolina,

We are reaching you after we have just heard from our Mayor, P.J. Connelly about the Stop the Spread Order that
goes into effect Thursday, March 26th through April 10th, 2020. I want to assure you of our policies and
procedures.

First, Fr. Ian VanHeusen and a team of volunteers have preemptively been given an exemption from travel
restrictions so that we can minister to the spiritual needs of our people. We are grateful to our local government
for providing this exemption.

If you need the sacraments and are in the danger of death… immediately call me at (910) 391- 8609. Please
follow up with emails to ianvanh@hotmail.com, parishoffice@spccnc.org, and assistant@ecunewman.org. The
reason is that I won’t be able to track work based on phone calls alone if the volume of requests is high, and I am
asking our secretaries to help track things.

Next, we are going to focus our efforts for the immediate future on our elderly and homebound. At this time, we
are not looking for volunteers. That might change, but we started developing this plan beforehand and now we
need freedom to execute it.

If you are relatively healthy and have a good support network, please help keep communication channels open by
not having too many superfluous requests.

If you know anyone who is alone or needs assistance, even if they are not Catholic, feel free to let us know and
we will try our best to help.

Also, we will continue to live stream Mass and possible other talks and events.

In Christ,
Fr. Ian

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