May 27, 2008
It is time for bed but I wanted to write a little bit about today. Today is May 26, 2008. We entered the MTC today. It was interesting. They didn’t have any of our material because someone had indicated that we were not coming. It is a long story as to how that happened and I will tell it later for now let’s just say that Darwin was looking forward to getting his name tag and that was one of the things that was not available. They got things straightened out so we were able to get a room but will not have a name tag or id card until wednesday. In the meantime we have keys to our room but no key to the building we live in so we have to go in when others can open the door for us. Other than a minor problem about whether we were supposed to be here or not everything went fine. It is kind of overwhelming to be here. There are only 15 couples and one single older sister in our group of senior missionaries for this week. We are headed all over the world. I need to go to bed now so will write more tomorrow.
Email below went out today
This is just a note to all of you that we promised to keep informed. We entered the MTC yesterday (Mission Training Center for the non members of our church- please excuse us if our lingo sounds like alphabet soup. We have a ton of acronyms. I think we in this church could speak for days and never complete a sentence that didn’t have an acronym in it.) Entering and beginning training was an overwhelming experience. Seniors come in on Monday, Young Elders and Sisters from the US and Canada come in on Wed. and Foriegn Elders and Sisters that are coming here for English training come in on Thursday. There are other language training missions around the world so not all missionaries come here. There are between 1800-2000 Young Elders and Sisters and about 100 Seniors here now. We are in training or have homework most of the day. I have a few minutes tonight because we just finished a Devotional. It was done by Sister Ann Dibb, she is a counselor in the Young Women’s Presidency and the Daughter of President Monson. Her remarks were about the characteristics of her father. It was a great experience. The Seniors all sit down front and it was overwhelming when 2000 missionaries behind us sang Called to Serve. The couples we are in the MTC with are mostly Humanitarian and Welfare missionaries with a few going in other directions and 3 medical and 5 proselyting. We have couples with us who are going to the Republic of Georgia (humanitarian), Taiwan (Proselyting) Hong Kong (Medical), Singapore(humanitarian), the Marshall Islands(medical), Suriname(Proselyting), Canada(Proselyting), Germany (Humanitarian), Madagascar( can’t remember to do what) and Us to Colombia(medical and auditing). The rest are going to places in the US, About half of the couples have already served at least one mission. Some have served more. There is another group of seniors here as well who are finishing up training for Church Education System Missions. And there are some mission presidents and wives learning languages. I met one the other day struggling with Tagalog (I think) anyway what they speak in the Philippines. It is amazing the language program that goes on here. Starting Friday I will be teaching gospel discussions in Spanish. That is a scary thought since I am not quite sure how to ask to go to the bathroom. I just finished an exercise where I had to give Darwin commands and directions and get him from one place to another in Spanish. I only walked him into a poll a couple of times. Oh well.
Oh By the Way. We have learned that we will be traveling a lot in Colombia and Ecuador and we will have a 2 day training with the auditor trainers from the Carribian, Mexico, Central America and Western South America in Mexico City in July so I will try to keep the pictures and posts coming. The pictures that will go up with this post are just a few scenes from the MTC on Wed of Last Week when we shout a few pictures of the 10:00 batch of missionaries coming in. I also hope to have a picture of our MTC Tutor up. So check it out.
Love you all and miss you.