Featured Story

Featured Letter: Celebrating ‘with voices on high’

To the editor:

The Dec. 24 article “First Congregational gets a grand present,” written by staff writer Nicole Smith, described beautifully the struggle the members of First Congregational Church endured for the past seven months. We truly celebrated with voices on high and tears in our eyes on Christmas Eve, ever so grateful that we could celebrate services in our newly restored sanctuary.

We also were graced with camera crews from CBS Channel 2 and Long Island Channel 12, who both reported the story of our struggle to save and restore our sanctuary, which is a registered historic structure.

The article addressed the funds raised in our GoFundMe account. While the figure is correct, it would be remiss of us not to thank publicly the community at large and especially the members who have worked very hard at raising funds, which near $100,000. While that’s good news, we are still several hundred thousand short of the costs. As stated in the article, “There is still much work that needs to be done; the capital fund campaign will continue for a couple more years to raise funds to finish the work.”

Elaine ‘Bunny’ Burns
deacon and capital fund campaign secretary,
First Congregational Church of Riverhead

See the CBS 2 video below: