"Woodrow Wilson, unfortunately my friends let me say it respectfully, was a racist!"

Quote of the week explanation

 

We had quite the opportunity yesterday evening. We were invited by our ward mission leader to view a fireside on Zoom of one Dr. Amos C. Brown, Baptist minister and board member of the NAACP, as well as friend of Russell M. Nelson (or President Russell, as he was called). In my blissfully youthful mind, I had assumed that the reason we were being invited to this fireside was going to be because it would be a veritable smorgasbord of spiritual enlightenment; a time to bask in the power of bombastic sermons and powerful prose centered around the gospel. Well, in light of recent events I suppose that assumption was rather naive of me. It amounted to an hour and a half long lecture on the problem of Racism in America. Now, don't get me wrong, that's an important issue to address. But... I don't know. I feel like I was gearing up for a southern Baptist sermon complete with choir and pipe organ playing during the prayers, and that's not what I received. It's OK, though.

 

Now to move on...

 

The weeks been pretty good. I will admit, as if it hasn't been obvious from my past letters, spending this long in shelter in place decreases one's motivation to write emails. Even the exciting things that happen don't sound all that exciting when put onto paper. In some ways, it feels like I'm not actually living all this but am simply a part of some sort of elaborate simulation designed to help people understand kind of what it's like to be a missionary. But you don't get the full experience.

 

We made a lot of phone calls. Did some other stuff. Ate a few meals. Tried to quell missionary uprisings as well as power hungry dictatorships from arising from the higher ranks. All in a week’s work.

 

Leaders and managers my friends. There is a difference, and the disparity between the two is wider than the vocal range of the Vienna boys’ choir.

 

Anyway, rest assured that we did stuff this week, and that way I won't have to bore you with the details. You would definitely want to leave if I went into the grim details.

 

So bye.

 

P.S. Kaleb

 

P.P.S. The poppy seed incident

 

P.P.P.S. The pandemic is resurging, so that's fun.