Saying goodbye to families, heading back to the office, and the dreaded coronavirus
Glynis here: I'm combining 2 weeks of letters from Jacob. His last 2 letters have been quite short. We have been able to talk to him a couple of times lately, and he is doing well. He's happy back in the office, and is excited to be able to minister to the other missionaries. So far, there are no cases of Coronavirus in the Iquitos mission boundaries, but President Parker is taking things seriously and has sequestered the missionaries for the next 2 weeks.
Ok, so this week not a ton of crazy stuff happened since I last talked to you guys, and yes my Pday is now on Saturday again as I'm back here in the office.
So the week was like this, on Monday we went and said goodbye to the pensionista, MarilÃn Chavez, and her family, as well as Sulema and Roberto, our converts. Sulema and Roberto were really sad actually, and it was a hard goodbye. I'm definitely going to go back to visit them someday.
So now I'm here again in the office as the assistant, and I'll tell you all about my responsibilities here. Something new, is that the assistant here doesn't have a proselyting area anymore. Now the focus is on ministering to other missionaries and traveling with President Parker. So, my companion, Elder Peña from Mexico, and I are currently working on a calendar for the transfer with all the visits with the missionaries we are going to do. President Parker is giving us complete freedom on this, he just wants us to go and do it, up to the point that if we feel like we need to go to another city on the mission on our own to visit certain missionaries, we can just ask Elder Trythall (the personal secretary) and he will buy us a flight to go. It's pretty exciting! We haven't done much since I've gotten here; mostly just getting ready for next week and then all of the ministering visits.
I'm sort of sad that I'm not going to have an area anymore, but at the same time it will be something different, and I hope that I will be able to help all the other missionaries to become disciples of Christ while converting myself too.
Love you guys a ton!!!
Have a great week!!!
Elder Nevescito
Buenos dÃas a todos! (Good morning, everybody!)
Ok so this week was sort of crazy, not going to lie. This week was the changes, and I'll be honest, the changes are so much easier as an assistant than as the personal secretary. It used to be so so stressful, but this time around I just got to say hi to everyone and wish them luck in their new areas. It was great!
Besides changes, we also had our leadership (or ministers) council, and a few days before it, President Parker pulled Elder Peña and I aside and told us that he wanted us to run the whole thing! It needed to be at least 3 hours long for the first night. Whew! I actually think it went really well. We chose a few topics and prepared a program, and just got everyone involved. Everyone was sharing ideas and suggestions they had and it was very edifying. Afterwards President told us we did a great job, so we were pleased with it.
But, oh my gosh, during the council we got some crazy news. President and Sister Parker pulled Elder Peña and I out of the room for a second and showed us a message that they had just received seconds before from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. It said that starting immediately all meetings of Latter-day Saints are to be suspended to stop the spread of coronavirus. No activities, no Sacrament Meetings. Nada. He wanted us to announce it to the leadership of the mission while we were there, so we did, and everyone went crazy! There were so many questions from all over the place. At the end though, we sort of turned the conversation around and talked about how we can use this unique time in our teaching.
I bear witness that President Russel M. Nelson is a prophet of God. Almost 2 years ago he told us that in coming days it would be impossible to survive spiritually without a home centered and church supported program, and thus Come Follow Me was put into place to prepare us for these times. He is a prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ and I know that our Savior is leading this church.
Anyways, I love you guys a ton, let me know what's happening with all of you.
Love, Elder Neves
