April 13th - APRIL 27

MTC EXPERIENCE

The original date for our Missionary Training Center entry was May 11.  In February, our mission president asked if we could come earlier so we could attend two conferences that would help us immensely. After looking at our schedule, we made the necessary arrangements with the church travel department and the MTC. After some scrambling with visa rules and decisions about moving, we moved our household furniture and stuff into storage and entered the MTC on April 13.

Our first week at the MTC consisted of intensive instruction on the Preach My Gospel handbook. We elected to stay in our friend’s home and commute to Provo each day, arriving at 8:00 am (or close to that). We were placed in a district that included couples going to mission offices, humanitarian services, seminaries and institutes, and young single adult program. We became good friends with the Mitchells who went to Ball State University to run the institute program there, and at a few surrounding academic institutions.  It was a sweet and interesting time, and we learned about many ways to serve missions.

We had morning classes, a lunch break, and then afternoon classes, which meant a lot of sitting for people if a certain age, who needed to stretch and move a little every now and then The classes are help in a building reserved for senior missionaries, patterned after the young missionary classes, including role playing which was called TRC.  This was something e had heard about from our missionary children and it was as nerve wracking as they claimed! Our trainers were young returned missionaries who work every week with seniors. We approached our role-playing with trepidation, but decided that whatever happened we would be together. It turned out not to be that scary, especially for Greg’s companion missionary who served a mission a few years ago. (That is a lie.)

Some former missionary couples had mentioned to us that the food at the MTC was really good, but our experience was that it was still cafeteria food and some was good and some not. But it was fun to mingle with our couples as well as the young missionaries. The best thing was the ice cream served on Wednesdays and the beautiful spring flowers and weather.  The days were long but the first week flew by and we entered the weekend.

Due to scheduling problems our ward needed to fit our farewell on April 19, which was smack in the middle of our MTC training. We decided that we would talk about our missionary experiences thus far, including the MTC. We invited friends and family to attend and to our surprise many did actually attend, giving us a great boost of love and well wishes. We spoke about our week at the training center and our experiences of faith and friendship. Our ward was wonderful to us and we felt their love.

We entered into the second week of three days training which was focused on the CES, or Church Education System, programs. So our group narrowed down to those couples going to institute or seminary programs or to YSA program like us. It was interesting and more lecture-oriented, so more sitting. The third day included an introduction about security which included all the bad stuff happening around the world, or that could happen.

Our flight wasn’t until the following Monday so we had four full days to rest up, do final packing and weighing of bags and seeing grandchildren one last time. We also had time then to have lunch with a colleague of Greg’s to talk about a project he and Greg had jointly worked on years ago, that was in many ways a career highlight. It was fun and exciting. 

Then it was off to Logan where we stayed Sunday night with Jayne’s mother Maurine, laughing and doing final packing until early in the morning. She  encouraged us through several small meltdowns and drove us to the airport and away we flew to Denver, then Frankfurt and Zagreb!  Our first plane was a prop jet - our first in many years.  They should really attach those propellers better.

At the Salt Lake airport we had one last fountain drink and chat on our phones, then turned them off for the next 18 months!