MTC

"I'm here to get rid of these old people, where do I take them?"

  

These are the words our loving daughter spoke to the first person she saw after driving us down to the Missionary Training Center in Provo Utah.  I love that girl. She makes me laugh.

We arrived on time even after missing our exit because of road construction and getting lost... no, a little disoriented, a couple of times. I knew we should have brought our GPS.

When we finally found where we were to go, we were met by a whole group of young elders assigned to help us. I asked them if they were assigned to help the old people because they had done something wrong, but they assured me that this wasn't the case and it was their pleasure to assist us by taking our luggage to our room and showing us the way to the MTC welcome and orientation room.  We are told that there are over 2100 young elder and sister missionaries here, and we can believe it. I have never seen so many white shirts and name tags in my life. It's a great sight.

We are one of 37 couples and 4 senior sisters arriving on this last Monday. We are a varied group, coming from different backgrounds, occupations and countries. Some have lived their whole life in the church, while one couple are members of only 4 years. Some have served numerous senior missions but most of us are experiencing our first full time senior mission.  While most have been called to serve in the US including Hawaii, others will be serving around the world in Cambodia, China, Philippines, Portugal, Tonga, Germany, Brazil, Canada and of course South Africa. The mission calls also vary greatly. Some will serve, as we will, in member and leadership support, others in employment centers where unemployment is over 20%, others to family counseling, health, medical, and dental service missions. The most interesting one I think was the couple called to serve as maintenance and operation leaders in a peanut butter canning plant in Texas.

We were given this weeks schedule and it looks busy and we will be studying a lot. We will be mainly trained by college students on the how and why of missionary work using the "Preach My Gospel" book.
When President  Brown,  the MTC president spoke, he said something that hit me hard. "There are people where you are called to serve that are  prepared to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They may not know it, but you do. The training you will receive this week will better prepare you to say the right things at the right times."  This is going to be a very spiritual week.

Tuesday we were privileged to sing in a missionary choir at a devotional where Russell M Nelson and his wife Wendy spoke. We also will be blessed to attend firesides and other devotional throughout the week, and on Saturday, attend the Provo Temple.

We senior missionaries are being put up in nice accommodations. While some are staying at the Marriott, we have been given a very nice room in the MTC (which doesn't stand for the Marriott Travel Center) but it's a nice room with a great view. We were treated to a "Haka" which is a traditional Maori war dance from  New Zealand. I don't know if it was a group from BYU or a bunch of Elders from the MTC but it was very entertaining.
















We have a cafeteria which has a varied menu and it's all you can eat. I have never eaten so much and moved so little. It's a good thing we will only be here for one week or I would be rolling to class instead of walking and looking to buying a larger size pair of pants to wear.