Sister Bliss's Mission to the OCM: 10/5/20 - Our mission's first COVID case

Hey everyone!

So, first things first... COVID UPDATES:

My mission finally got our first case of COVID-19. We now have two Missionaries who have tested positive and another who has started showing some signs. Because the case is nowhere near us, it hasn't affected much other than our Zone Conference was pushed back a week (a huge relief to those of us who have to plan it). However, even though we were allowed to watch General Conference as a district (wearing masks and sitting 6 feet apart), some of the Elders were recently at a meeting with the Sister who got COVID-19, so we decided not to get together just in case.

One big positive update is that we are no longer doing 2 week transfers! We've been doing transfers since sometime in May, so going back to 6 week transfers is going to be really strange. This next transfer will just be 4 weeks long due to my group of missionaries going home, so I'll never see 6 week transfers again, but it'll still be nice to not have a change for the rest of my mission

Updates on people we're teaching:

-Chuck's baptism is currently being planned for this Saturday, the 10th! It's been really difficult to solidify and plan things, but that's normal for baptisms since everything must go wrong right before a baptism. We're praying really hard for Chuck that he'll get back to us and we'll be able to make things work for his baptism.

-We had a neat lesson with our friend Paula. She was honest about not believing what we taught, but the neat miracle was how excited the member who joined us was to help teach! She studied Preach My Gospel beforehand and bore a powerful testimony as well. She's been a great friend to Paula for some time now, and even though Paula doesn't believe the same things as us, she says she wants to know if it's true and will read the Book of Mormon to find out for herself.

- We had a strange miracle where we got a referral, but she didn't seem to remember requesting missionaries or she had decided she no longer wanted to meet with us. As she went to hang up I quickly asked "Can we share a message about Jesus Christ with you?" and she responded asking how long it would take....

Our mission President is very adamant about doing specific time periods like "Can we share a 7 minute message with you?". I've never been super good at it, but in this moment I clearly remembered his advice and blurted "We can take just 3 minutes to share a message with you." She accepted and I quickly pulled open the first scripture about Christ that I could find and tied it into talking about the Book of Mormon and the restoration. After asking if we could call back and share more she asked "what more is there" and I got really excited about eternal families and a modern prophet and the fact that we have so much more that we share as missionaries. I barely remember anything I said, but she did set up another lesson and I remember getting off the phone feeling really good! It was really exhilarating to have something that felt so much like a normal street contact before COVID-19. I will have spent almost half of my mission in quarantine by the time I go home. It's really strange to think about that. So this was a nice tender mercy that I was given the opportunity to "contact" someone like I used to many many months ago.

-We also got hoosed (talked at) twice this last week! I got to have my first three in-person lessons with people we're teaching, and it was a great time. One was with this woman named Cindy who hoosed us for a solid hour. People tend to talk a bit less over phone call, so we don't get as many hoosiers when we aren't in person. It was a nice breath of fresh air to have that again!

General Conference was so good! I hope you all got to watch it. I loved the overarching theme of unity and being prepared for the future. I can't wait to listen and read it again and gain even more insights!