Week 63: Hope During Coronavirus
Dear Loved Ones,
Earlier in this week, the Coneys, our restoration branch family committed to come to church! I was ecstatic. I've gone three or four months at a time without being able to get one person to church, and now I had six!
A family in the ward, the Stowes, arranged to have us, our little family, and another friend of theirs over for dinner Thursday. Sister Stowe needed to buy food enough for sixteen people, so she braved hoarder crowds at the store. She told us everyone kept looking at her cart funny. When we were en route to the Stowes, our bishop texted us to say church was canceled for coronavirus. Both families had already heard the news by the time we showed up. We passed the time between eating and teaching by telling Corona jokes. When you make fun of something serious, you claim it as your own, wrestle it into submission, and it can't hurt you anymore. The gathering turned to games and dessert after the lesson and my companion and I ended up in the kitchen with the Stowes' family friend while everyone else played Jenga in the living room. She asked us questions about the gospel and said, "Will you be there on Sunday?"
"No. Church got coronavirused."
I pulled Brother Stowe aside and asked, "Could you hold a home church with all of us on Sunday?"
Three days later, all sixteen of us were back again. My companion and I conducted church ourselves, sliding in half the Plan of salvation lesson with Come Follow Me, before gathering in the kitchen for beanless and riceless tacos. Those were all sold out. This woman is my hero, feeding us when food is cleared from the shelves and providing a place for us to teach so many people. Yesterday I Iooked out at the crowd from behind the taco counter and thought, "There are no people I'd rather be with during coronavirus."
There are moments you can just feel becoming permanent. Part of the tour at the visitors' center goes through a cabin where narrations about the lifestyle of early Latter-day Saints in Jackson County describe ten families cramming into one small cabin, sharing food and all they had. The last voice you hear is Parley P. Pratt saying, "There was a Spirit of peace and love, the memory of which would always be dear to my heart."
Even with mobs coming in later, the memory of peace and love held dear. That was my afternoon with Stowes. I understand now what it was like for the early members of the church in Jackson County to consecrate and share everything.
These families were an enormous balm on my mind in an otherwise troubled week. I count myself blessed in many ways. I am not in an area where people i teach and love are contracting the virus. I am not international, where I might be stranded. I am in a good-sized area with supportive members and people to teach. I, personally, am not worried about coronavirus, but it is impacting my work.
My mind keeps going to a C. S. Lewis quote about the atomic bomb:
"'How are we to live in an atomic age?' I am tempted to reply: 'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.'
"In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
"This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."
There is hope to be had our there, friends. This too shall pass and I'll be rolling my eyes and my stocked cart soon. Last night, I nervously took inventory of our cupboards and wondered what I might be living off soon. But I went to Walmart this morning and found plenty of bread, a little toilet paper, and the LAST bottle of dish soap. I know enough about food sourcing from ninth grade human geography to know the all the important things like milk and potatoes should be readily available for a good long while.
I got a lot of apocalypse-mongering in Independence and learned to roll my eyes at it. So far, every generation has predicted the end of the world and so far every generation has been wrong. We have weathered plagues and vikings before and will hold up well enough now.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Earlier in this week, the Coneys, our restoration branch family committed to come to church! I was ecstatic. I've gone three or four months at a time without being able to get one person to church, and now I had six!
A family in the ward, the Stowes, arranged to have us, our little family, and another friend of theirs over for dinner Thursday. Sister Stowe needed to buy food enough for sixteen people, so she braved hoarder crowds at the store. She told us everyone kept looking at her cart funny. When we were en route to the Stowes, our bishop texted us to say church was canceled for coronavirus. Both families had already heard the news by the time we showed up. We passed the time between eating and teaching by telling Corona jokes. When you make fun of something serious, you claim it as your own, wrestle it into submission, and it can't hurt you anymore. The gathering turned to games and dessert after the lesson and my companion and I ended up in the kitchen with the Stowes' family friend while everyone else played Jenga in the living room. She asked us questions about the gospel and said, "Will you be there on Sunday?"
"No. Church got coronavirused."
I pulled Brother Stowe aside and asked, "Could you hold a home church with all of us on Sunday?"
Three days later, all sixteen of us were back again. My companion and I conducted church ourselves, sliding in half the Plan of salvation lesson with Come Follow Me, before gathering in the kitchen for beanless and riceless tacos. Those were all sold out. This woman is my hero, feeding us when food is cleared from the shelves and providing a place for us to teach so many people. Yesterday I Iooked out at the crowd from behind the taco counter and thought, "There are no people I'd rather be with during coronavirus."
There are moments you can just feel becoming permanent. Part of the tour at the visitors' center goes through a cabin where narrations about the lifestyle of early Latter-day Saints in Jackson County describe ten families cramming into one small cabin, sharing food and all they had. The last voice you hear is Parley P. Pratt saying, "There was a Spirit of peace and love, the memory of which would always be dear to my heart."
Even with mobs coming in later, the memory of peace and love held dear. That was my afternoon with Stowes. I understand now what it was like for the early members of the church in Jackson County to consecrate and share everything.
These families were an enormous balm on my mind in an otherwise troubled week. I count myself blessed in many ways. I am not in an area where people i teach and love are contracting the virus. I am not international, where I might be stranded. I am in a good-sized area with supportive members and people to teach. I, personally, am not worried about coronavirus, but it is impacting my work.
My mind keeps going to a C. S. Lewis quote about the atomic bomb:
"'How are we to live in an atomic age?' I am tempted to reply: 'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.'
"In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
"This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."
There is hope to be had our there, friends. This too shall pass and I'll be rolling my eyes and my stocked cart soon. Last night, I nervously took inventory of our cupboards and wondered what I might be living off soon. But I went to Walmart this morning and found plenty of bread, a little toilet paper, and the LAST bottle of dish soap. I know enough about food sourcing from ninth grade human geography to know the all the important things like milk and potatoes should be readily available for a good long while.
I got a lot of apocalypse-mongering in Independence and learned to roll my eyes at it. So far, every generation has predicted the end of the world and so far every generation has been wrong. We have weathered plagues and vikings before and will hold up well enough now.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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