You want to know why the contract ended suddenly and all of the money was refunded to you?
I can't think of any reason other than this:
The freelancer issued a refund to you of all the money that you paid to him, and then he closed the contract.
re: "I need to know why and would very much like them to be reinstated so I can rehire them."
Reinstating/rehiring this freelancer may not be an option.
You may send the freelancer a short message, such as this:
"Jeremy: I hope everything is okay. I saw that the contract was closed and payment refunded. I would like to set up a new contract and continue payments and training."
But...
There is a strong possibility that you will not hear from him, or that if you do hear from him, that he will simply be clarifying the fact that he is not available to work on your project.
I don't doubt that many people reading this thread think that you should not try to re-hire this freelancer under any circumstances, because doing so would only be a waste of your time.
If I am the client in this situation, this is what I might think:
"This experience has shown me how important it is to have more than one person trained to do these tasks. I want my system to be robust enough that it can continue even if a freelancer is suddenly unavailable."
In my experience, actively reading the Forum for many years, I have seen that personnel turnover is a real possibility for any project, and effective project owners plan for that by having multiple on their team who can proceed with the work.
