The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.

Just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, a Church News Viewpoint posed a hypothetical question: “What would we give to live Sept. 10, 2001, again?”

For most Latter-day Saints living in the United States, that forgettable Sept. 10th was a Monday filled with Monday’s rituals: the beginning of a new work week, family home evening, and maybe an hour or two watching the football game.

“Who knew,” the Viewpoint author asked, “that Monday would be the day before a new generation would suffer its own day of infamy.”

The ongoing COVID-19 tragedy did not arrive with 9/11’s noise and suddenness. Outside of China, where the virus was beginning to claim headlines, most began 2020 with little association with pandemics outside of a few doomsday flicks and perhaps vague recollections of the 2003 SARS or 2009 H1N1 global outbreaks.

But within weeks, the virulent coronavirus was altering how the world functions – including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Almost all defining elements of the Latter-day Saint experience — temple work, Sabbath-day worship, missionary service, the biannual general conference, even the weekly ‘Music & the Spoken Word’ broadcast —were dramatically impacted by COVID-19.

Now 2020 is closing, and Latter-day Saints have perhaps pondered what they would give to return to the pandemic-free days of early January when few owned protective masks, managed Zoom accounts or fretted every time someone coughed.

But perhaps they are also asking what lessons they have learned from a year no one cares to repeat. And how will they live their lives when COVID-19 is relegated to its own chapter in Church history?

Servants on the watch

In early March, a Church News reporter reached out to a General Authority Seventy and asked how he would be observing home-centered Sunday worship after the Church announced that all Sunday gatherings would be temporarily on hold.

To read the full article, CLICK HERE.