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By Sarah Jane Weaver, Church News
As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated across the world in early 2020, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints turned their attention to the safety of 62,000 full-time missionaries. Facing increasing health risks and nations about to close their borders, wherever necessary Church leaders began returning missionaries to their home nations.
“We might have been surprised, but God was not,” said Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and chairman of the Church’s Missionary Executive Council.
In a new Church News video titled “Back to the Future,” (shown above) and in a recent podcast, Elder Uchtdorf shares an important lesson about missionary work, learned during the pandemic: “Don’t focus on the things you cannot do, focus on the things you can do.”
When the pandemic ends, missionary work cannot move back to the old ways, Elder Uchtdorf said. “We need to move back to the future.”
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