The First Chapel Amidst COVID-19

 By Mikaela Yeap

“I missed chapel so much...our first chapel in four months. It was a good break from classes,” Sharisse Leong (12) mused.

Dalat held its first chapel of the 2020-2021 school year this Monday. Chapel has been one of the many facets of the Dalat experience lost to COVID-19, among other beloved cornerstones of school life such as off-campus lunch privileges, lunchtime basketball, and open campus on Fridays. Thankfully, unlike the others, chapel is a privilege the community has actually gotten back.

It was an unusually empty chapel, the front row seats of Harbor Hall sparsely filled thanks to social distancing—only juniors and seniors were permitted to gather under the SOP, with freshmen and sophomores having taken the previous slot in the morning for a chapel of their own. The worship team, primarily composed of seniors, is a sea of teal shirts this semester; bizarrely, the drum set sits behind a glass wall. But the team sang and played with marked emotion and passion, nevertheless. Despite the strange separation holding the students at arm’s length, the swelling worship music filled the spaces between us.

After two worship songs, Mr. Ronzheimer took to the stage to speak on the importance of perspective during times of uncertainty. He addressed the constant low-level anxiety permeating the community in light of the pandemic and urged the student body to trust in God. It was sobering to begin the school year with an honest acknowledgment of the struggles to come.

Students and staff have been working together to respect the SOP restrictions, but the rules are easy to forget even with the tape marking the floors and the meticulously separated desks. COVID-19 cases in Penang are rising, and while STEP kids have begun to trickle in from various countries, weary from quarantine, many are still stranded overseas. The Dalat community has to work together in these odd, trying times to maintain SOP and keep our school open.