The Mergenthaler Family

When toilet paper and water bottles began disappearing from store shelves a month ago, I thought it was funny. I laughed at some of the jokes. I even bought a little extra for my own family because, you know, what if? But then school closures, event cancellations, and pleas for people to "just stay home" reached my social media feeds and I got nervous. I did some research. I prayed and pondered and thought hard about how I should react to the current situation as a mother, wife, daughter, neighbor, and disciple of Jesus Christ. The jokes weren't funny anymore because I recognized the fear and anxiety behind the behaviors. People were scared. And seeing empty store shelves made me a little scared too. So, we told our children we would be staying home--no friends, no play dates, no social interactions of any kind. And a couple of our children were not happy. When we told them we would not be going out they HAD to get out. Suddenly, they wanted to be out of the house more ...

From Emily on March 16. I disagree with her title but am trying not to worry too much.  I have never been to Suriname nor lived there. I'll trust her mission president's intuition and revelation for guiding the missionaries he has stewardship over. He is clearly more aware of the circumstances there than I am. Here's her email: Hey friends! Hoe gaat het? First of all, if you are worried about me/missionaries in my region, don't be. We are probably the safest out of everyone in the world right now. I live in a jungle that most of the world doesn't know about, so I'd say we are good. It was a good week. Kinda crazy, but much crazier everywhere else in the world. I'm praying for you guys! The Corona virus got to Suriname this week, but they immediately quarantined the dude (he was a Nederlander). School is out and stores are closing, but we got a good food storage going and the trusty guy at the banana stand on the corner isn't scared, so we'll defini...

No email from Emily on March 2, but here’s the one from the week before with lots of pics: Hey guys! here are some pictures. This week was great. We were really really bold....so by the end of the week, we had dropped half of our investigators. Br. Mateda isn't getting baptized anymore. We had a scary experience with that, but we are all good now. Suriname is whack sometimes I'll just tell ya that. We found 6 new investigators and a really cool less-active family that's been to the temple and makes really good Roti. A mom tried to sell me to her son for marriage (there's a better way to say that in English but I don't remember how to). Here's a couple cool experiences: We were heading out to do what we call "talk to everyone you see until you get to your destination" which is a fun game we like to play when we have some time before a lesson. So we were biking when we saw a lady smoking outside. We stopped to talk to her and learned she was a visitor fr...