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I was thinking today how odd this whole situation is & our relationship to church. – No sacrament meetings. No meetings at all.
– No visits from members popping in.
– No missionary work that I’m aware of.
– No baptisms.
– No ward socials or other social activities.
– Very few temples are open. None in our area.
– No trips to the temple.
– No rumors.
– Some family history & indexing working. (I found out I’m 9th cousin to Linda Ronstadt.)
Covid 19 positive tests are at an all time high for the past 3 days.
I don’t expect this to end anytime soon.
A side note: I went to Menards today & ran into a member of our ward. I’m surprised that we recognized each
other with the masks on.
I’m genuinely surprised we still don’t have a weekly church-wide message from a GA. Nothing major, maybe one talk from a lower GA and one talk from a Q15. It would be over three months before a Q15 member would have to give another talk. The church certainly has the ability to pull off something like that. If it’s a correlation/translation issue, just prime the pump. Have those departments work on talks that will go out next month while talks that were worked on the month prior are given.
Maybe the argument against is that members can always watch historic general conference talks, but historic general conference talks do little to address contemporary issues and challenges.
Maybe they would have done this but thought that this situation wouldn’t last as long as it has (and will).
Minyan Man wrote:
…– Some family history & indexing working. (I found out I’m 9th cousin to Linda Ronstadt.)
…
What did you say when you found that out? Did you say of family history, “I’t so easy” even though you looked for a “Long, long time”?
I heard her say: “Poor, Poor pitiful me”. I had to bring this up one more time. I participated in our ward’s virtual sacrament meeting today. There was also a combined on line meeting for EQ, RS, YM & YW. Our SP & Regional Rep seem to be pushing for more in person participation. We live in an area where the numbers of
infections & deaths are increasing with no state or local solutions insight. To the credit of our Bishopric, they are not pushing for more
in person meetings. The virtual meetings are really sad. After every speaker, someone comes up & sprays Lysol on the microphone.
The meetings & talks are short & it is difficult for the speakers to develop a balanced talk without running over.
General Conference is coming up soon too. I’m betting there will be fewer members watching.
I personally do not foresee this pandemic getting better anytime soon. When we do get back together, there will have to be huge changes.
. The membership has changed with new move ins & others that moved out.
. Organizations will have to be changed because of the membership changes.
. New levels of activity will have to be made.
. Few members are doing family history, temple work, missionary work, fellowshipping.
. Financial contributions must be lower as a result too.
. Fewer Ministry activities (except for phone calls).
. I’m sure there are YM & YW delaying missionary commitments too.
. General commitments & attitudes must be changes along the way.
These are strange times to be living.
Our ward had Sacrament Mtg again today. Both in person & virtual. We stayed home & watched it virtually. A good friend gave one of the talks. As he finished, I sent him a text message from my home saying: Nice talk.
These are indeed strange times. Will we ever get back to normal?
This just reinforces to me how important human contact is. “Virtual” just doesn’t cut it for me.
I think a lot of wards are desperate to get back to normal. My parents’ ward just announced they’re going to start sacrament meetings with full attendance, even as their state sets new records for number of new COVID cases. So they and a few other families emailed the bishop and said they’re not comfortable attending with that many people. It seems like COVID may be making people more willing to push back against local leadership. We should push back when we don’t feel comfortable & especially when we don’t feel safe. Minyan Man wrote:
Our ward had Sacrament Mtg again today. Both in person & virtual. We stayed home & watched it virtually.A good friend gave one of the talks. As he finished, I sent him a text message from my home saying: Nice talk.
These are indeed strange times. Will we ever get back to normal?
This just reinforces to me how important human contact is. “Virtual” just doesn’t cut it for me.
We also had SM yesterday, our second time on the every-other-week plan. There is not a virtual option for us, although I’m positive our ward has the capability. We are still authorized to do the sacrament at home. Since we’ve gone to every other week, ward members have been asked to give the spiritual thought instead of the bishopric as it was prior. The bishopric ones were usually only about 2-3 minutes, less than 5. Last time the ward member did similar. Yesterday however I knew we were in trouble immediately when I heard the name and she stood up carrying pages of paper. She had prepared a full length talk.
🙄 Prior to yesterday I actually had enjoyed (as much as possible) the 30 minute meetings with the “Music and the Spoken Word” like thought. If there was a virtual option I might do it. With cases on the rise in my area (we have more now than we have ever had) I’m in no rush to get back to full attendance/full meetings.
FWIW, my son’s ward, in another part of the country (not Utah) also went to full attendance/full hour SM starting yesterday and they are likewise seeing a surge in cases.
I get that for many (most?) people the social part of church is at least as important as anything else (not for me though). But what happens when church members start getting sick?
Arrakeen wrote:
I think a lot of wards are desperate to get back to normal. My parents’ ward just announced they’re going to start sacrament meetings with full attendance, even as their state sets new records for number of new COVID cases. So they and a few other families emailed the bishop and said they’re not comfortable attending with that many people. It seems like COVID may be making people more willing to push back against local leadership.
I’m glad your parents and others had the gumption to do this.
(I haven’t read this whole thread so forgive me if I repeat anything.) At some point, people are going to start pushing back against these restrictions, they aren’t already. It’s certainly happening in the State of Victoria in Australia which has some of the most Draconian rules outside actual dictatorships. The premier of Victoria wanted to extend lockdown for two years, which would include not being able to travel more than 5 km (under 3 miles) in cities, and police entering your home without a warrant. Hostile press is forcing him to abandon this. This power has gone to the heads of some politicians and governments and we have to ask how much it is helping.
Very few younger people seem to get this disease badly, and there are also a certain number of people who have natural immunity. (Instead of going on about vaccines non-stop, we should be looking more at who has antibodies). The church has a large number of older people, but missionaries at an age where the risk to them is lower than certain other diseases or car crashes etc.
I am glad that HT/VT has been altered to include phone and email. That counts for something. The days of reading some correlated message in person are gone.
One consequence of these lockdowns is that we are going to see a lot more people on church welfare. The entire global economy is heading south and some of these measures are helping that. There are major financial institutions cynically trying to reform the economy on the back of this, but when the recession starts to bite, then it’s a different matter.
LookingHard wrote:
Minyan Man wrote:
…– Some family history & indexing working. (I found out I’m 9th cousin to Linda Ronstadt.)
…
What did you say when you found that out? Did you say of family history, “I’t so easy” even though you looked for a “Long, long time”?
If you want a weird one, I found out that I’m related to an actor who appears on a TV show I was really into. 3rd or 4th cousin. Turns out he even looks a little like me, but I never noticed the resemblance until I found out about this – accidentally.
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