By: The UTO Board and Staff

The 2019 UTO Annual Report is now available here. In the annual report, you can find out what UTO accomplished in 2019. We have to admit, it feels more like a trip down memory lane than usual, since what was normal in 2019 was no longer normal when we were compiling the report. A huge thank you to Isabelle Watkins, our UTO intern, who designed our annual report this year. The good news you will find in the annual report is that giving in 2019 held steady with the 2018 Ingathering. For a full breakdown of the Ingathering, be sure to visit our blog for those annual reports with more detail. If you are a diocesan staff person or a diocesan UTO coordinator/organizer, you can access your donor records for all of 2019 by emailing Heather.

Now that the annual report is out and ready for folks to see it, we have started thinking ahead to the 2020 report. Heather researched what UTO members were doing during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and found that many did not connect that work to their practice of gratitude directly until it came time to send more missionaries and support to hospitals, schools, and so forth. We know now that our practice of gratitude is directly linked with our behaviors during this pandemic. Therefore, we want to document in the 2020 UTO Annual Report (and here in our newsletters) what everyone is doing during this time, so please send us photos of how you are helping or let us know where you are donating your time or money. If you are staying at home, take a photo of your odometer on the car at the beginning of May and then at the end of May to show us how far you didn’t go this month. All of these actions – sewing masks, chalking the sidewalks, placing bears in windows, taking meals to those in need, helping an elderly neighbor with groceries, or simply staying home – are ways of giving thanks for the efforts of essential workers to help those that are sick. We are so grateful for all of the ways you are helping flatten the curve, and we want to make sure we tell those stories. So please, send us your photos or stories! You can do that through emailing Heather. Thank you for helping us tell the story of this time!