SALT LAKE CITY-Per a Thursday article on newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confirms missionaries representing the Salt Lake City-based faith are being reassigned to missionary service.
This movement occurs roughly three months after the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, causing the Church to send their missionaries home.
Elder Brent Nielson, a General Authority Seventy for the Church and the Church’s Executive Director of the Missionary Department, stated about 26,000 missionaries have been moved, all of them to their home countries, in this span.
The missionaries in question were then given two options. They could either depart for new assignments as soon as possible or delay their service for 12-18 months.
Most missionaries chose the former option.
Brent Elliott of the Church’s Materials Management Department said he and his associates did what they could to find apartments for missionaries. One of the options they have been moderately successful with is hotel properties. These were available in certain cases, Elliott said, because a lot of people are not presently traveling.
Virtual missionary training centers were then set up. This methodology consisted of assigned missionaries spending six hours a day online in a teleconference with a trainer and their class. This includes some 500 missionaries learning a new language.
Senior missionaries, many of whom are in the proverbial “vulnerable population” for COVID-19, mostly returned home from their service.
However, the Missionary Department confirmed that senior missionaries are still applying to serve.
Elder Nielson confirmed that there are many people anticipating baptism worldwide as soon as the missionaries arrive at their new destinations.
