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Brothers and sisters, Carolyn slash podcasts, podcasts and

and I are thrilled to join you again today for this

devotional. It's just two years from when I have the privilege to

address you in early November of 2019. Since that time, as you're

all keenly aware, the world's been turned kind of upside down by the impact of

COVID-19.

Every aspect of life, individually and as a society,

has been affected by the pandemic, as you well know.

But my intent today is not to politicize the pandemic,

which we've kind of seen from both sides of the political spectrum,

but rather to learn from a specific issue that became much more visible due to the pandemic,

and to see how it can apply from an eternal perspective. And that would be the

importance of staying connected. Now on a personal basis, my desire to stay

connected with Carol while we were long-distance dating, she at

BYU and me at San Diego State, led to many letters and expensive long-distance

phone calls, something you only read about in history books.

Well, what happened is that just prior to dating Carol,

I had what I thought was a brilliant idea

...