Brethren. As Grand Master, I want to once again talk to the membership about where we are with the CONOVIRUS-19.

The first video that we put out last week has been well received and I'm encouraged to see the number of lodges taking the initiatives to keep their members well-informed and to work as Freemasons within their community. Keep this up! It is important and I reassure you that Freemasons New Zealand is working hard to support you as Freemasons and to plan for our future. One of the most important things that we need to address is following the Government rules and regulations relating to the next 4 weeks of how we as New Zealand citizens react to the lockdown and staying home. Please stay safe. I reassure you that we will do everything we can to put in place processes where lodges are in touch with their members working closely with each other talking to our members and being encouraging to make sure that our network is not lost while people are isolated from their normal activities.

I want us all to come together, I want us all to work closely with each other to actually maintain our Freemasonry as individuals and as a Lodge even though we are not collectively meeting. It is important that we continue to do that because we are on the long haul for dealing with this kind of virus. It’s going to be very, very difficult and I want to make sure that you, as members of the Lodge and as our Brethren, your family's, our widows and all those that you connect with are well taken care of and are supported. If in any way you feel that you need to talk to someone please pick up the phone and talk to someone. Use your Lodge Almoner, use the Lodge Master use anyone in the lodge to talk to people about how you feel and it's alright to say I'm alright or I need help but please use those avenues.

For the Lodges themselves, please look after your members, please talk to them on a regular basis, please ring them; ask them how they are doing? Talk to them and the widows. Connect them to each other. Setup a telephone tree where people can actually work from one to the other. It's important we communicate! It's important that we stay as Freemasons! And it's important that we continue with Freemasonry as we know it.

Our National Office is working very hard behind the scenes to make sure that we have systems and processes in place to continue with our Freemasonry, but remember they also are working from home and under difficult conditions. We actually want to make sure that the District Grand Masters and the Divisional Grand Masters are well connected to our members and are working to support you as best they can. If you have any suggestions on how we should do that please feed it up through your district Grand Master to the Divisional Grand Masters and then on to us cause we will listen to them and look at what we can do and take on board some of the great suggestions that we are already seeing. Take the opportunity to also update your personal records with the Grand Lodge Office in Wellington, and again you can do that through the website or through your district Grand Master.

Finally, these videos are going to come out on a weekly basis. I hope to do my best on them. I'm shooting them from home. I’m one of the people that’s locked down as well, so, watch the Grand Lodge website and the Divisional websites on a weekly basis to stay up to date with what we are doing.

Thank you for your time