August 2020

Opening of Sunday Deewan Notice 2020

Guru Pyari Saadh Sangat Ji, Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh! We hope that you and your families are healthy and well.  We sincerely appreciate your patience and support during these tough times due to the Covid 19 pandemic. With Waheguru’s blessing, Gurughar is now open at 50% occupancy (50 people in Diwan hall) from 11:30AM to 12:30PM. This is per the mandate by the Governor that we open to our 50 % occupancy.  While this is a step forward and good news, this requires a lot of cooperation and support from the entire sangat. We all have to be very careful and responsible to ensure that nobody gets exposed. We have come up with following guidelines to follow in order to have a safe Sunday diwan. We would keep a track of the events and monitor everything closely to ensure safety of everyone. We will change the guidelines as per the advice from the Department of Health and as the situation warrants. Your safety is our first priority! Guidelines for opening Gurughar for Sunday Diwan: 1. We strongly recommend that each member of Sangat honestly decides to stay at home if they have any symptoms like cough, fever, body aches or other symptoms and seek medical attention. If there is any possible exposure to someone who is Covid 19 positive, we ask you to self quarantine at home and NOT visit Gurughar. 2. Everyone MUST wear a mask at all times when you enter Gurughar. Please make sure that the mask should be covering your face and nose. DO NOT remove the mask while talking. 3. Good hand hygiene with proper hand washing and/or sanitizing is mandatory before entry into the Gurughar. 4. We would allow 50 people in the diwan hall (50% capacity) at a given time. We humbly request you to strictly follow social distancing and sit on marked areas. Families are encouraged to sit together.  5. After you have paid your respect to Guru Granth Sahib ji, please sit on the available marked areas only. If no open space at marked areas is available, please go to langar hall and sit on the marked spots only. If no spots are available in langar hall as well, we humbly ask you to leave the Gurughar and sit in your car and wait for someone to come out. Our sewadars will let you know if we have no open spots. Please understand that we are trying to enforce this for your safety. We humbly ask the sangat members who have been in the diwan hall for some time to voluntarily leave and make room for others to have the opportunity to listen to Gurbani.  6. Langar (communal meal) will be prepared by selected team members only. Langar will be packed in boxes and placed on the table outside for all to take it on their way home. 7. Kadhah parshaad would be prepared in the morning and packed in zip lock bags to be picked up by individuals and families. 8. We will have a short diwan service from 11:30AM to 12:30PM and will strictly enforce it. This is because the data suggests that longer we stay in crowded closed places where singing is involved, higher is the risk of infection. 9. We will do the cleaning after the diwan keeping in mind the sanitization guidelines from CDC. Saadh sangat ji, please understand that we have come up with these guidelines to ensure that you all can safely visit Gurughar and benefit from Gurbani. Our first and foremost goal here is ’Safety of Everyone”. Please share your suggestions or concerns via email or a phone call so that we can understand, address them and learn from your advice. Let us all work together to ensure that our Gurughar and sangat are a ‘role model’ for safe practice of religion. May Waheguru bless the entire humankind and give us wisdom and courage to fight this pandemic.

Guru Rakha,

Executive Committee