June 2020
Missionary work has changed because of the COVID-19, and the California Riverside Mission has taken on the challenge. While we became a “technology mission” in 2018, we did not dabble much in social media. Then came the coronavirus with vengeance and moved us inside, holed up in our apartments.
Missionary work has changed because of the COVID-19, and the California Riverside Mission has taken on the challenge. While we became a “technology mission” in 2018, we did not dabble much in social media. Then came the coronavirus with vengeance and moved us inside, holed up in our apartments.
Young men and young women, many of them just six years out of primary,
are not mean to be inside for longer than twenty minutes at a time. For the
most part, though, our missionaries are succeeding in keeping productive and
following the missionary schedule.
We literally do all of our missionary work online via social media and
video conferencing.
All zone conferences, which we fondly call “multi-zone conferences,”
are done via video conferencing. Before COVID-19, we held four different multi-zone
conferences with two or three zones together (we have ten). We would travel to
a church building and be the missionaries from 9:00 a.m. to about 3:00 p.m. We
stopped for the lunch, and the members from the Relief Society, the phenomenal
women’s organization in the Church, prepared and served a delicious and nutritious
lunch.
Before lunch, we always took pictures of each individual zone to post
to the blog and for their parents to see on Facebook. Then, we spent an
incredible afternoon of presentations and trainings from the zone and sister
training leaders, the missionary leaders in our mission. The final event was
the testimony of those who were new in the mission and those who were leaving
during that transfer of six weeks. It was highly spiritual and often teary,
especially with those going home.
Then the Coronavirus drove us inside and onto video conferencing and
social media to a different way of having multi-zone conferences.
Now, we have truncated our scheduling, primarily because it is challenging
to sit in an apartment and stare at a small telephone screen for six hours and not
become mesmerized with smallness. We went to a three-hour training time with
five zones on the video conference at one time on one day and then the other
five zones the next day. We usually had them read or study talks or doctrine
prior to them arriving to the video conference.
All musical numbers, which have always played an integral in our
meetings, were pre-recorded because of the difficulty of hearing them live, primarily
because they could no longer get together to create a choir from a zone full of
missionaries. Nonetheless, the musical numbers did not diminish in quality. In
fact, they were enhanced because of the missionaries who performed them.
The testimonies of those going home were short and powerful. The Assistants
to the President now have the outgoing missionaries pre-record their testimonies.
Then during the north zone multi-zone conference, we play the pre-recorded
testimonies of the south zone, and then the missionaries from the north zones give
their testimonies live. Then, the reverse happens when we the south zones gather
for their multi-zone conference. The testimonies are powerful and poignant.
As we moved these multi-zone conferences to video conferencing, we
worried that the Spirit might not be as plentiful. After the very first one, we
did not have to worry because the Spirit was even more powerful and plentiful as
we gathered via video conferencing. We all felt it and testified of it.
Yes, missionary work has changed—missionaries now spending more time in
their apartments than out of it physically. The irony is that missionaries now
have great connections to so many people who could not connect with by our
missionaries walking down a street. But what has not change is the Spirit and
the testifying by the Spirit, and the teaching from Preach My Gospel and
from the scriptures.
Their telephone screens may be small, but the missionaries loom large
into homes of people. Our rediscovery is that the Spirit teaches, no matter the
location, no matter the modality, and no matter the language. It is the Spirit
that touches the lives of the people and aligns with their Light of Christ.
