Spring has Sprung

Winter is over and spring is officially here. We see more flowers, blossoms and green leaves everyday.  Temperatures forecast for the coming week are in the 80's.  As Dad used to say:

Spring has sprung,

  The grass has riz,

I wonders where

  The flowers iz?

There is good news at the gas pump and it appears to be getting gooder.  We will enjoy it while we can.

More good news. We found this at the local Walmart Saturday morning and there were several delivery trucks lined up at the loading dock. Supply may be starting to catch up to demand or maybe we were just lucky.

Grocery shopping reminds us of the Philippines. There is food but we're never sure what will be stocked in stores and what will be out. The result is that we tend to buy extra when we see it because we're not sure if it will be there next time. We are probably not the only ones doing this, so it may be a while before things settle down.

These last few weeks have been a good reminder of why we should have a basic supply of essentials on hand and why we should prepare for supply chain disruptions before a crisis hits.

This week was a roller coaster, that's for sure.  On Thursday this census form arrived in the mail and, wanting to be good citizens, we started to respond to it online. The very first question was "Will you be living at this address on April 1, 2020?" The idea is to count everyone in the United States and where they are living on the same day - April 1st (probably not the best day to set as the official response date for a government survey).

We jokingly said, "Maybe we should wait until April 1 to fill this out, just to be sure we're still here."  Ha ha.

About four hours later we received a telephone call telling us to pack up and head for home. By Friday morning we learned we would be staying in the mission.  We are glad to be staying but think we'll wait for April 1 to fill out the census form. 

Some senior missionary couples from our mission have been released early and are on their way home. A few of our young missionaries with health issues have also returned home. All of the remaining young missionaries have been asked to stay in and work from their apartments. We are mostly hunkered down too.  So far Utah and Alabama are showing about the same number of confirmed Coronavirus cases. 

Prescription for Stress

It has been interesting to us to see how smoothly missionary work has transitioned from outside to inside.  There are challenges for sure, but the groundwork is laid so that the work continues. 

Technology in place?   ✓
Missionaries trained to use technology? ✓
Emphasis on ministering?  ✓
Home based church?  ✓

It is almost like someone has seen and prepared for this day.

This weeks mission miracle:

We have found some great success with working with the less actives and filling their homes with the spirit of Elijah. We are always amazed when we see the mission vision working before our eyes and it is a testimony builder of where this mission vision came from. Real quick experience. We have been talking to a less active lady and have been helping her with her family history work. We took one of the family history consultants with us to go see her and he was shocked. He said that he has been trying for a while to talk to her and every time she had shut him down. When he came with us she let him in and we had an hour long conversation. We also have been going out with the ministers to visit their ministering families so we took her minister with us to go see her. We had dinner together and asked her if she would allow us to take her father and grandfathers name to the temple. She said yes and then told us she was excited to get their work done! When we left her minister was shocked. He said that he has been trying to get into her house for the past 6 months and she has never let him in. SO again, it is so awesome to see the mission vision working before our eyes!