Mormon missionaries in US take message online

This is what US missionary work looks like during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now accelerating its gradual embrace of online proselytizing to talk to fellow members of the Mormon faith.

If they're not on a video call, these three missionaries they might be sitting around the kitchen table of their Utah apartment, planning how they'll spread the gospel that day.

For now, its via a propped-up smartphone.

After hastily bringing home 26,000 young men and women who were serving in foreign countries, the faith has begun sending many of them out again in their home countries with a new focus on online work that could stick even when the pandemic is over.

Seth Rather, a 19-year-old who was serving in the Philippines just months ago, reads aloud in a slow cadence as he types on the smartphone he's clutching: "During this time, we must put our faith in God to deliver us through these unprecedented times. How has putting your faith in God helped you in your life?"

"That good?" Rather asks his two companions.  Rather, a missionary from Wichita, Kansas said it has been an adjustment.

Brent Nielson, the executive director of the church's Missionary Department the shift to online proselytizing may be here to stay. "Finding people, teaching people online is much more effective than trying to meet people in person on a bus or on a street corner or somewhere else. This will change what we do, I think, forever," he said.