In the last few weeks we’ve been witness to world history as well as Church history with the Covid-19 pandemic. I hope you’re writing things down as they happen, so you can look back in a few months and evaluate how you did in this crisis and make changes for the next crisis (because that will come one day).
In the last few days we’ve begun to see the return of missionaries from overseas missions to the United States and Canada. For most of us this is an unprecedented experience, but it is not the first time missionaries have been recalled from the work. In my own mission we were evacuated from our city on December 22, 1995 due to legal troubles by the police in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. We were only gone a week, and were not allowed to openly proselyte for a month while we worked things out. But it was a stressful time nonetheless for us and our families. I want to say to these young missionaries to look for the compensatory blessings — they will be many!
I’ve had many friends with missionary kids out express their frustration, their fear of the unknown, and bitter-sweetness of these homecomings. Sweet to have their kids home, bitter because it was not under ideal circumstances.
In 1939, on the eve of WW2 missionaries were evacuated from Europe. This evacuation was before cell phones, the internet, and even regular telephone communication. Missionaries received telegrams telling them to leave, and began their exodus westward. In many cases they left without knowing how to find each other, how to communicate with their leadership, how to get thru closed borders, and how they would actually leave the European continent. Many miracles happened during this evacuation to get everyone safely out. Similar miracles are happening and will be happening to get everyone home during this evacuation.
Here are two articles that you might find interesting about the 1939 evacuation effort.
European evacuation was ‘a miracle’
The Evacuation of the Czechoslovak and German Missions at the Outbreak of World War II
Let us keep all of these missionaries and their families in our prayers.