Dear Diego,

It’s good to hear from you. Thanks for telling me about how you celebrate holidays and birthdays!

Life has become a little different here in the past week. You’ve probably heard about the COVID 19 virus that’s spreading around the world and making lots of people sick. In the United States, we’re concerned that many people might get sick all at once, so we’re trying to prevent that. Large gatherings are canceled. The college where I teach is holding classes online. That means I’ll make videos for students to watch, and we’ll meet using computers instead of in person. We hope that doing all of this will slow down the spread of the virus, so that only a few people at a time get sick.

Today is a Sunday, but my church decided not to meet for our regular worship service. Instead, our pastor used a video to send us words of encouragement. He read from Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a source of help in times of trouble.” And he read from Romans 8: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” These are good lessons for this difficult time!

God gave us intelligence, so we can understand diseases and figure out how to prevent them and heal people who get sick. Science is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. I hope that we will make good use of it to develop the medicine we need and to explain to everyone what’s happening.

This virus is a challenge to the whole world. Many people will become sick, and frightening things might happen. Even so, we are called to act in love and trust God, no matter what happens.

In Christ,
— Garrett Mitchener