In light of all of the crazy things that are happening in the world today with the Corona Virus, we had an interesting conversation with Ryan. They are doing their best to continue with missionary work in spite of their limitations. I can't think of a better time to share a message of hope in this world, than right now. It is challenging but they are still trying their best to work hard and help the people they have been teaching.
And then, today the church came out with a statement saying that any stateside elders that have served for 21 months will be ending their service early and coming home. We are all in shock and have many mixed feelings. Ryan has a live conference call with the President this afternoon where hopefully he will receive more information.
As excited as we are to see Ryan, it is difficult to imagine him ending his mission in this way and so we are hoping he gets a little more time. It is hard not to get discouraged with all that is going on but we need to remember that the Lord is in charge and he knows what is happening. We just have to trust and rely on Him and know that everything will be okay.
Ryan's journal entries from the week:
Tuesday ended up being a fair amount of service, we get to do some service at a salvation army. We got some Tuesdays for taco Tuesdays and that's always fun, serve up some tacos, talk to some interesting fellows and make the best of it. Tracting today we found a lot of not very nice people and a ton of Karen people, so it was quite the variety of experiences. Also we had a lesson with Juliana who came to church this last week and taught her some English and just helped her keep progressing! She iss super happy all the time and ready to keep coming!
Today we had a handful of lessons that went really well! We had one again with Jonathan the husband of a member and we talked about the plan of salvation and he really liked it and said that it all made sense to him! Also we met with Suzie and her kids in the evening and one of her daughters had just these absolutely golden questions about Jesus Christ and the atonement, it was cool, we could just feel the spirit in the simple message as they all learned and grew together.
Today we had interviews with our mission president which was good, he had lots of good thoughts as usual. He talked about how the Coronavirus will be effecting us as missionaries, said he could see all sorts of changes and churches being canceled, and then later that day just that happened. And we got notice in the evening that we are being asked to not do any tracting or street contacting and only going out If we have a predetermined set appointment. So the next little while is going to feel really weird as a missionary.
Today was pretty slow with not being able to leave unless we have an appointment. Thankfully we had a lot set up for today, and we had a lesson with Graciela who is just awesome as usual. They invited us to come celebrate her birthday with them tomorrow so we get another time to leave! Blessings. And we talked about baptism and she has good desires to get her and her family baptized, so we are excited to help them do that!
Another day that wasn't super eventful here. Our morning lessons fell through which is too bad. We dont have the phone numbers of some of the people, so now we have no way to get in contact to have lessons for the next while. We had a member let us come over to do a little lesson with their family, everyone is pretty weary right now with the Coronavirus and everything. One thing that was fun was we went over to Gracielas to celebrate part of her birthday, we went, had some food, met a lot of her friends and family and were able to break some of the stereotypes of missionaries and our church, so it was fun, a good chance to leave the house, and a great opportunity.
Well we are making the most of the days out here. We started the morning with a combined lesson with Gregory and Juliana since they live so close to each other and Juliana even made breakfast for us! So that was awesome! I think in total we shared the Jacob video 3 times today when doing Come Follow Me with different people, so that was a good time. We are super blessed to have this inspired program to help us have the gospel in our homes in a time of need like right now, we had our time to try and figure it out and get adjusted and now we are really seeing why it was put into place! Modern day prophets and apostles really are inspired and direct the Lords church in today's world!
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