Oral History of Mahana Delali Kodzo

Below is an excerpt from an interview with Mahana. Read the entire interview, in which she discusses her experience as a Latter-day Saint during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“[When church was cancelled because of COVID-19] It was tough. It was tough trying to maintain my spiritual life. On a normal weekday, I know that I have an assignment to teach. So if I’m not teaching the Primary, I might be teaching in Relief Society or I might be giving a talk. So whether I like it or not, I would have to prepare some way, somehow. Yes. And at work, we have devotionals, every Monday, where the whole workforce meets to share the gospel. So … we meet every Monday morning, we pray. We sing, we pray and then we share a devotional message…. And then we start the day with it.

And so every Monday, an individual has something to talk about at the devotional. You may not know who’s turn it is, so I strived, I ALWAYS strived to be on top of my game, to read my scriptures, to do all what I need to do to be spiritual, because you might never know when you’d be called upon. Yes, and I needed that, I needed the Spirit. I needed the promptings of the Spirit to do my work. I realize that when I focus on the Spirit, I am guided in what I do, I’m able to achieve more.

But when we were just in our home, and weren’t going to work, weren’t going to church, some way, somehow, I felt a little easy. I felt that there was no need to learn because I wasn’t going to teach. It was difficult, keeping my spirituality up. It was a tug of war. My mom would always say that we are being lazy. We need to do the Come Follow Me. At least our morning devotions, we should do that. It was, it was a struggle for us to maintain that. We’d do them but not as we were supposed to. And so our faith was lacking — a lot. My faith was lacking a lot. I couldn’t keep up with my spiritual studies and all that…

The ministering [program] that was introduced was also helping a lot during those COVID times. Because you could minister by just using a telephone call to [say], ‘Hello, I was just calling to check up on you. How is the family?’ And there was WhatsApp internet, we could do a video call, you know. It was … AMAZING. The way sisters called, the way the bishop called to always check up on the family. And so I think that is a plus for us — the ministering, the new way of ministering
that we are doing.”