The Great Exodus
By the direction from the First Presidency, we needed to send all of our missionaries who were not Ecuadorian home to be reassigned in their own countries because of the corona virus pandemic. This created some challenges because our borders were closed, and a number of other countries borders were closed also.
All of a sudden, however, a couple of US commercial flights and a couple of US Embassy flights opened up and we were instruction to have ALL of our North American missionaries leave on those planes.
This happened all within a couple of days and we scrambled to get all the paperwork in order, missionaries packed and into Quito
The missionaries were only allowed to take one bag on the plane and so they were consolidating and dumping extra items in the office. It was a huge mess and super traumatic for a lot of them. But it was nothing that the pioneers hadn't done multiples times before.
We had to say goodbye to Elder Tolman, our secretary,
and our AP's - Elders Wright, Wilkinson, and Flint -
The office missionaries and AP's who were left to rebuild
Elder Ramirez, Elder Ruiz, Elder Felix, Elder Orben, Elder Fueres,
Elder and Sister Lewis
planes were delayed and missionaries spend hours and hours (and a sleepless night) in the airport
And they're off!
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