Today we finished up all of the training activities. The schedule called for the training to continue into tomorrow (Wednesday) through noon. However, most of our group are couples going to Nauvoo, Illinois to the Church’s historical site. They needed to be in Nauvoo by Friday afternoon, so today was a longer day to give those folks an extra half-day to make that trip. So, we’ve essentially got a completely free day tomorrow! That means I can sleep in perhaps all the way to 7 am…. It hasn’t worked sleeping all the way to 6 am since we got here, so I’ve little confidence in “sleeping in” tomorrow, either.

On Monday we went as a group to Temple Square and spent a couple of hours with young sister missionaries as they showed us what they do with their days working in the Temple Square Visitor’s Center. It became clear very quickly that there is plenty to do … and there are a number of new capabilities that have been put in place taking advantage of technology.

I’ll get a little religious….

The LDS Church’s visitor’s centers (and there are a couple dozen of them around the world) have been set up for a couple of key purposes. First, of course, is to help members of the Mormon Church to learn more about their heritage, history, and doctrine and anyone else to become acquainted with the Church’s doctrine and history. Secondly, many are at locations with significant historical significance and these centers have the further responsibility to preserve, protect, and teach about this heritage.

At the historical sites, such as Nauvoo, Illinois and Independence, Missouri about half of the visitors are members of the LDS Church. At the other centers, most of which are located near a Mormon Temple, about 65% are not members and are curious about the Mormons. As we greet and spend time with these visitors, some will want to know more about what we believe. Others have questions about specific doctrines and teachings (and mis-information) about the Church. In the past, these folks could fill out a request for information which would be sent in the mail to Salt Lake City where it would get sorted out by the area where the person lived, forwarded to the LDS Mission in that area, and finally given to a couple of young missionaries so they could visit the person and fulfill the request.

This process would usually take anywhere from four to six weeks before the missionaries made the visit. By that time the interest had often waned or the question forgotten. Now, the person can give us their email address and we can carry on an electronic conversation with them in the meantime until the local missionaries can take up the process. Further, Salt Lake is no longer the clearing house. The referral goes directly (and electronically) to the local missionaries, significantly reducing the lag time.

While we were at Temple Square I had the chance to observe a couple of young sister missionaries on the computer talking (in Chinese … I actually understood a bit of the conversation!) using Skype with a person they had met on Temple Square a couple of weeks before. They were having a fun conversation! On the computer screen were all kinds of resources available to the missionaries … short video clips, quotations, pictures, Bible and other scripture references, and such that they could easily “find, click, and send” as the conversation proceeded. Being a bit of a geek, I was really impressed with this capability! All of the missionaries at the visitor’s centers have time scheduled for them to be able to follow up with people they’ve met and talked with previously. Both Nina and I are quite comfortable with this technology and I’m really looking forward to being trained and starting to incorporate this technology into our missionary work.

Also, some folks reading this may be familiar with mormon.org. This is a website that has lots of information about the LDS Church, including hundreds of “I Am a Mormon” profiles put up by members of the Church. One capability is that people can search for members that meet certain criteria (such as a single mother raising young children who is a member of the Church), read their stories and, if interested, make email contact with them.

On the main page, on the top right, is a “chat” icon. Clicking on that icon will start up a chat session with a missionary (young, or possibly a senior missionary like us) at one of these Temple Visitor’s Centers. There, through the chat capability, questions can be asked, concerns shared, and serious discussions held. This will also be part of our missionary experience at the Laie Hawaii Temple Visitor’s Center. I’m thinking this could be really interesting and a lot of fun! You don’t even have to go to a visitor’s center to be able to “chat” with someone at the center. This is pretty cool stuff.

So, Thursday morning at 7:30 am we leave the Missionary Training Center for the Salt Lake Airport. We fly out at noon on a direct Delta flight to Honolulu arriving about 3 pm Honolulu time (Hawaii is currently four hours earlier than in Salt Lake City … so 3 pm in Honolulu is 7 pm in Salt Lake City). Elder Johansen, a senior missionary in the Honolulu Hawaii Mission, will pick us up and drive us the hour and a half north to Laie, Hawaii to our apartment. Friday morning we’ll start the next phase of this Grand Adventure … and start learning about our assignment and the associated technology.

We’re ready to be on our way! Life is grand!!

We’re allowed two bags (50 pounds each maximum), a carry on (40 pounds), and a personal item (such as a purse or computer bag) at Church expense. Trying to fit everything in that we think we’ll need for the next two years within that weight limit just isn’t working for me!

This afternoon I packed my suitcases and took them across the hall to the exercise room. In addition to two treadmills and two stationary bikes, there is, very conveniently, a flat bed scale. I’m at minimum 16 pounds overweight so long as no one checks the actual weight of my carry on bag…. So, tomorrow I’ll mail one more box to Hawaii. Hopefully that’ll be sufficient.

Delta charges $25 for the first bag, $35 for the second bag, and $150 for any additional suitcases. Further, there is a size restriction (length plus width plus height). All of our suitcases fit within the size restrictions. If the bags are overweight, there is an additional charge: 51-70 pounds is $80 and $150 for bags weighing more than 70 pounds. Any additional bag or excess weight charges is at our expense. It’s less expensive to mail the excess weight than it is to pay the airline to fly it!

Yesterday was our “preparation day” or P-Day for short. We didn’t have any scheduled classes or meetings. It was a full day, however. After breakfast we walked up to the Provo Temple and did a session. We were back in time for lunch. Then we did laundry in one of the largest laundromats I have ever seen. There must be more than 150 washer/dryer combinations. Using the facility is cost free, we just have to furnish the detergent and fabric softener. By the time that was done, it was time for dinner. After dinner it was time to iron the shirts and get everything put away and ready for bed.

This morning we attended Church services here at the MTC. We’ll have two meetings this evening. At 5 pm is a “Departure Devotional” for anyone departing the MTC during the coming week. At 7 pm is another devotional which will feature a General Authority from Salt Lake. When that’s done, we’ll be ready to crash for the night.

We’ll have training on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. Then finish packing and catch the shuttle at 7:30 am to the airport on Thursday. It’s getting close!

Life is pleasantly tired.

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!

As we were waiting for our first meeting to start after arriving at the Missionary Training Center, I took this “selfie”. The couple in the background are Elder and Sister Cronk. We hadn’t met them, yet. It turns out that we are in the same “district”, a set of four missionary couples who train together during the week here at the MTC. They are delightful people who will continue to live at home in Draper, Utah and serve what is called a “Member Leadership Support” (MLS) mission. The Cronks along with the Elder and Sister McKnight (going to Australia), Elder and Sister Willis (going to Nauvoo) and Nina and I make our our district. So far we’ve spent more than 28 hours together in training and several more hours together in devotionals and the cafeteria. It’s amazing to me how quickly we have come to love and respect each other.

Nina has written today about some of the training we’ve gone through in an action packed day today. What she hasn’t said is that we’re also very busy learning how to talk to each other! Actually communicate!

As missionaries we’ll be meeting with other people to talk about and teach about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These are not pre-prepared or “canned” lessons. The intent is that we (Nina and I) talk about what we want to discuss or teach and figure out who will do or say what. Neither of us are to dominate the conversation … and in fact the people we are meeting with should be dominant. If there is nothing else we’ve learned this week, it is that we really need to continue working out how to talk and plan with each other. It’s been quite a revelation!

But, it is working. We’re getting better at this communicating thing. We’re figuring out how to draw on each other’s strengths. It’s a delightful thing.

Life is wonderful!

The main LDS Missionary Training Center is located in Provo, Utah just north of the Brigham Young University Campus. There are several other training centers around the world located in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bogota, Columbia; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Preston, England; Acra, Ghana; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Mexico City, Mexico; Aukland, New Zealand; Lima, Peru; Manila, Philippines; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Madrid, Spain. Around 3,000 missionaries are in training at these centers at any one time. The training is anywhere from one week to nine weeks. For instance, missionaries that will be working in mission offices or in their hometown areas attend one week of training. Missionaries (like Nina and me) going to Visitor’s Centers receive ten days of training. Most missionaries that are native speakers of the language where they’ll be serving receive two weeks of training. Missionaries learning a language will have six to nine weeks of training depending on the language.

The Provo, Utah MTC is a small campus area all quite self contained:

All of the buildings in the center are numbered and named. Many are dormitories in addition to having a number of classrooms. There is also overflow housing about fifteen minutes away for senior missionaries (senior missionaries are usually husbands and wives or single women over the age of 40. Single senior men aren’t eligible to be missionaries). This week there are 95 senior missionaries at the center, the largest group in several years.

Our days begin at 8 am and concludes around 4:30 pm with generous breaks during the day. The training is conducted in “large group meetings” where all the senior missionaries are in attendance and “small group meetings” where six to eight senior missionaries work with an instructor. All of the instructors are young, returned missionaries who are students at BYU and highly recommended by their mission president. We have a young man instructor in our “small group” in the morning and a young woman in the afternoon. They are delightful, knowledgeable, and very passionate about their teaching responsibilities. The instructors are paid positions and highly coveted. It’s a great way for these return missionaries to pay for their education while doing something that they dearly love. For a closeup look at our training activities, take a look at Nina’s blog at http://seashellsandseaglass.wordpress.com/.

We’re having a great time!

Grandson-in-law Randy drove us down to the Missionary Training Center this morning. We arrived right on time to a very well orchestrated intake process! There were people at every step of the way ready to help us through the entire procedure.

First stop was to check in and get our small packet with keys to our apartment and our name tags. It was a bit emotional as we put the name tags on! Randy took a picture of us, a couple of young missionaries snagged our luggage, and off we went to our apartment (pictures below). We dropped off the luggage and went down to the bookstore where we purchased our package of materials needed for the rest of the training. Then we stopped at the office and paid for our meals for the ten days that we’ll be here. From there we visited the travel office to pick up a copy of our travel itinerary to Honolulu along with information about the shuttle service that’ll take us to the airport.

We then went through a short orientation and picked up more paperwork. Then it was time for lunch.

The cafeteria is huge (and even that is kind of an understatement). There are different sections for salads and wraps, for light food, for combination meals, and for fast food meals. The food was very tasty!

At 1pm all of the senior missionaries that came into the MTC today gathered in a large conference room where we were welcomed by the MTC Mission Presidency and received a lot more information. We all introduced ourselves, stated where we were from and where we were going on our mission. There were at least fifty couples there, and I’m thinking I’ve underestimated that number. Twelve couples are going to Nauvoo. Others are going to the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Washington, D.C., Omaha, Nebraska, and more. We were then divided up into “districts” of three or four couples. Some of our training during the coming week will be in a large group and some of it will be as districts.

We’re the only ones going to Hawaii and our call to Hawaii got a lot of comment. One couple who are going to the Winter Quarters Visitor’s Center in Omaha, Nebraska, suggested during introductions that they’d be interested in trading assignments with us….

We finished up all of the orientation by about 3:15pm. We went back to our room which is on the 3rd floor of a large building. Quite a few of the senior missionaries are housed on this floor. The rest are in a condominium complex about ten minutes away.

Our room is small, kind of like a motel room. We have a queen bed, a dresser, a small table in the corner with a couple of chairs. There is a closet and a bathroom with a shower.

The small table in the corner works well for our computers. The chairs have a footstool that can be pulled out.

The closet seems to have enough space and plenty of hangers. Included is an ironing board and an iron. It’s already been put to use!

There’s plenty of places to put things away. The suitcases take up a lot of room, though.

The drawing of the Kirtland Temple is the first thing we see when coming into the room. There’s also a picture of the Savior over the dresser.

Fortunately, it’s a queen-sized bed. It is actually quite comfortable. I think I’ll be able to sleep well (and tonight I’m quite tired, anyway).

We have an outside window and a nice view of the mountains. The entire MTC complex is closed off and quite secure. No visitors are allowed at all. Seniors have a lot of freedom to come and go and there is a shuttle service available just outside our building that’ll take us anywhere in Provo we need to go.

The young missionaries have many more restrictions. For instance, they don’t have or aren’t allowed to use cell phones while they are here and going outside the complex isn’t allowed, either.

Tomorrow the cafeteria opens at 7 am and our first session starts at 8 am. We’ll be in training until about 4:30 pm and then the rest of the evening is open and available to us … but there is a Devotional every Tuesday evening at 7 pm featuring a General Authority. Of course, we’ll be there.


The excellent new adventure is underway!

Check out Nina’s new blog: http://seashellsandseaglass.wordpress.com/ and get her perspective of our time at the MTC and on a mission.

This morning at 9 am we parked the motor home and Nina’s Avalon at the Gateway West indoor storage lot. One of the buildings in the old naval gun plant in Pocatello is used for indoor storage at very reasonable rates. It’s not heated or cooled, but is inside and out of the weather. So, it was up at 6 am, finish packing everything up, and be at the facility by 9 am. We succeeded.

So, now with the motor home in storage, we’re now completely at other people’s pleasure/mercy! We drove over to Soda Springs for a last visit with mother, then on to North Salt Lake where we’ll be for the next few days. Last Sunday when the grandkids came up for our farewell, they brought Michael’s car to leave with us. Michael is chilling over in India for a few weeks, so didn’t need his car. We stuffed it (literally!) to the gills and drove down. Now we’ll re-pack the suitcases and hopefully get downsized to the requisite two suitcases and carry-on bag.

For the next few days, we’re just going to relax and enjoy visiting with the grandkids and making the last minute preparations. Life is great!

This evening at 7 pm Nina and I were set apart as full-time missionaries. We met with President Stucki, the Pocatello Stake President, who conducted a brief final interview along with some very good advice, then invited in the other guests, and set us apart. He counseled us to (1) love the people, (2) be obedient, and (3) have fun while working hard. I think we can make all of that happen!

Since we don’t have any family here in the immediate area, we invited two couples who have become our very good friends, to go with us as we were being set apart. Paul and Rosalie have been faithful home teachers for many years. Steve and Robin have been just delightful people to be around. We are very blessed to have such great friends in our lives!

So, now it’s official. We’ll get the name tags on Monday when we get to the Missionary Training Center.

Life is good!