Pandemic accelerates Mormon missionaries' transition online

Pandemic accelerates Mormon missionaries' transition online

SeattlePI.com

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BRIGHAM CITY, Utah (AP) — Wearing dress shirts, ties and name tags, three missionaries with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sit around the kitchen table inside a Utah apartment planning how they'll spread their gospel that day.

Seth Rather, a 19-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, reads aloud as he types on a smartphone: “During this time, we must put our faith in God to deliver us through these unprecedented times. How has putting your faith in God helped you in your life?

“That good?” he asks his two companions.

“I like it,” Andrew Zitting responds. Guenter Castrillo nods.

With that, the young men have their Facebook post for the day.

This is what missionary work looks like during the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced the Utah-based faith widely known as the Mormon church to accelerate its online outreach.

After hastily bringing home more than 26,000 young people from overseas missions aimed at recruiting new members, the church has begun sending many of them out again in their home countries with a new focus on online work that may persist even after the pandemic, officials told The Associated Press.

“The leaders of our church have been asking us: What are we learning from this pandemic that will help us become better, become more efficient,” said Brent H. Nielson, executive director of the church’s missionary department. “We’ve learned that finding people, teaching people online is much more effective than trying to meet people in person on a bus or on a street corner or somewhere else. This will change what we do, I think, forever.”

Missionary work has changed drastically for young people like Rather and Castrillo, who had spent long days walking through the streets in the Philippines to spread the word of their faith...

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