By Ken Jarvis, Area Media Relations Specialist
My wife, Rosie, and I are retired. So, when it became necessary to stay home to help control the spread of the Corona Virus, we didn’t notice much difference in our schedules. But as we communicated with our children around the country, we quickly realized that for many families, especially those with children, staying home seven days a week was quite an adjustment.
That got me thinking, how are the families in our San Antonio area dealing with this dramatic change in schedule? And before long I had an appointment to meet with my Bishop…his wife, Erin, and their seven children.
Sister Clark said she had the same problem that my wife and I had, she had trouble keeping track of what day it was. “So, we talked about how we could make today different. We talked about the fact that the boys would dress up to administer and pass the sacrament and that we should all dress up so it felt different.”
Harrison, a Deacon of three months said it was really different to pass the sacrament to just his family. “I feel less nervous and it’s easier to do it.”
Bishop Clark said they wanted to center their Sunday worship on the emblems of the sacrament. “We tried to make it as spiritual and as simple as we could. That particular moment was very spiritual, very touching and we could feel the spirit at that moment.”
Kenyon, a Priest, noticed one of the biggest changes was the need for personal responsibility. “We have to do a lot of learning by ourselves now that we don’t have church at the chapel.”
Sister Clark said in reference to that, “We now have the Come Follow Me family study. We don’t find it at all a coincidence that we had over a year to practice this. So, it doesn’t feel frantic. It doesn’t feel like we’re in a hurry trying to figure this out because we already know what to do.”
The Bishop added, “We reflected on how we are receiving, almost daily, instructions from our Prophet and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles giving us ideas and updating changes. Then we tried to personalize it to see what the Clark family could do.”
The Clarks then closed their service with another song and a prayer. They were careful to divide the tasks up so that each child could have an individual experience. Eldest daughter, Abby, who just completed her stake’s pioneer trek, saw a comparison between what her family is going through and the challenge of fording a river with the handcarts. “We had to work together to cross the river,” she said. “And now we have to work together to get through this.”