We’ve finished our first week of training here at the Missionary Training Center. It’s been a pretty intense week. Nina on her blog has written some detail about what we’ve been doing for the past couple of days.

We’ve spent most of our training time in small groups consisting of four senior missionary couples and an instructor. I find it very interesting how eight people can become so close to each other in just a few days … and we’ll probably never see each other again. But, we’ll always remember the time we’ve spent together. We had dinner in the cafeteria with the couple on the left as they were waiting for the traffic to subside. They’re going back home where they’ll serve in the Provo Utah Mission doing member and leader support in their Stake. The couple to Nina’s left will (eventually) be going to Australia where they will be serving in public relations. They’re waiting for their visas to be approved which should be sometime in the next week. He’s been the mayor of Snowflake, Arizona for the past ten years! On the far right of the picture is a couple going to Nauvoo, Illinois to participate in the pageant and historical site activities. This is their second mission to Nauvoo. All three of these couples are some the best people on earth. It has been a real blessing to Nina and me to get to know them.

Our afternoon instructor was Sister Smith who served her mission in Minnesota. She is quite the perky, fireball teacher! Our morning instructor was Brother Bellingham, also a return missionary. I didn’t get a class picture with him as the person taking pictures for each of us dropped my phone (it pretty much survived, but with a damaged camera lens). So that picture is on Nina’s phone. Both of our instructors are full time students at BYU working their way through college by being instructors at the MTC. It was clear to us that they thoroughly enjoyed their jobs and were doing what they loved to do: teach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In the corner of our room is a small table and two chairs. Just enough room to set up our computers. We don’t get a lot of time, however, to spend on the computer! This afternoon, being the last day of training for the week, classes ended at 3:15 pm. We had a few minutes before dinner at the cafeteria, so Nina fired up her computer and put together a short blog entry. After dinner, we searched out the laundry facility (a needed activity tomorrow) and found the largest laundry room I’ve ever seen. There are at least 150 washer/dryer setups with the dryer on top of the washer. The use of the machines is free, we just have to provide our own detergent, bleach, and dryer sheets. Sometime tomorrow we’ll be making use of a couple of those machine sets.

Our window looks out towards the mountains to the southeast. The rather-well-known ‘Y’ for Brigham Young University is on this hill (look closely). The weather this past week has been very nice with high temperatures in the low 60’s, very few clouds, and little or no wind. It’s actually quite unusual weather for this time of the year, so we feel quite privileged to be here with such good weather.

Our days start at 6 am and end around 9:30 pm. The first couple of nights here I didn’t sleep very well. Lots going on my my head, new bed, and new surroundings. Each night has gotten better. I think I’ll probably really crash tonight! It doesn’t do much good to go to bed early because every evening, like clockwork, at 9:40 pm there’s an announcement on the PA system into all the dormitories listing off the missionaries who need to “immediately go to the front desk in the administration building.” A similar list is on big-screen TV monitors as one exits the cafeteria. I’ve no idea why they need to go to the front desk. But, it’s better for me not to be awakened by this announcement because it takes forever for me to get back to sleep. Just one of the little interesting tidbits about life at the MTC.

So, tomorrow is open … it’s our “preparation day”. Sunday we’ll have Church services and a couple of devotional sessions in the late afternoon and evening. Then on Monday we start the last 2 1/2 days of training. The past week has literally flown by. I’m sure the next five days will do so as well. Then we’ll be on our way to Honolulu and get down to work for real.

It’s beginning to feel real!