An MTC Thanksgiving

Our final day at the MTC is American Thanksgiving and I can say I am so grateful for the time we spent here, but we are ready to get on with things so I'm also grateful that first thing tomorrow morning we will be shuttled to the airport and we are off to Rome. Now before I get on with things, I have to show you another picture that hangs on the walls of the MTC:       

This photo was taken in Russia and you can see that they had to cut  a hole in the ice to baptize. Brrrrr! Granted it doesn't seem as life  threatening as last week's picture from Papua New Guinea, but still quite eye opening as to what people are prepared to do in order to join the Church. 

So this week there were only three Senior Couples including us in the MTC and today there is only Hermes and I. We had four days of office training condensed into two days because of it being Thanksgiving week. It was fine because we were all used to using computers. One of the couples, the Pedersons, are leaving on Monday to work under President Thomas (fellow North Stakers take note) in the Democratic Republic of Congo Lubumbashi. They are the couple on the left. We became very good friends with them.

They live in Utah so of course they left to spend Thanksgiving with their family. Hermes and I did received some Thanksgiving invitations but in the end we decided to stay at the MTC so we could go to the Devotional and participate in a scheduled service project. Also, we need time to pack!

The Devotional this morning was awesome because we had the Apostle Dallin H. Oaks come and speak to us. Also, he had a lot of his family there including his rather famous violin virtuoso daughter, Jenny Oaks Baker and she and several other family members played for us as part of the Devotional. She is a tremendous talent! I was reading about her afterwards on-line and it turns out she has a Master's from Julliard and played at some very famous venues. Some of the family members that she played with were her children and they were all wonderful. Their rendition of Amazing Grace sent shivers up my spine. Here's a You Tube Video of her:

What I can also identify about being at that Devotional and many other times being at the MTC is the tremendous peace that has accompanied these experiences. The Spirit of God fills this place and in turn fills my heart. I really have treasured these few weeks here.

Our Thanksgiving dinner came at lunch and it was yummy. It's amazing how they can make such a great turkey dinner for 1500 people. Then later in the afternoon we joined up with a service project. A Christian charity called Feeding Children Everywhere teamed up with LDS Humanitarian Services to do this project. What they do is they fill small plastic bags with about a tablespoon of Himalayan Salt, what I think is about 1/3 cup of dehydrated vegetables, a cup of rice and maybe a bigger cup of Lentils. This apparently can make a nutritious meal for six people. They put up long tables all through the cafeteria and we all worked in teams. I was the rice girl at first but the Hermes and I switched places after a while and I became the Dehydrated Vegetable scooper. There was this large cone and one person would hold a plastic bag underneath it and then each of us in turn would scoop in our quanity of food. Then the bag would go down the line for sealing and then boxed. Whenever a box was completed, the table that had completed it would give out a cheer. You can imagine how noisy that got. We kept hearing some Elders, we think from New Zealand or the Pacific Isles let out what sounded like a Maori chant whenever they completed a box. I would love to show you some pictures of the event but we were told we couldn't bring cameras because Church News and Deseret News have exclusivity on photographing the event. So the best we could do was go back to our room and do this selfie in our red hair nets:

Just one half of all the missionaries were in that first round and the other half were watching a film. Then at 5:45, the two groups switched places so we went to watch the film. I thought that we were going to see a documentary on the Church's Humanitarian Services but it turned out to be the feature movie, 17 Miracles. I've previously watched that movie, twice in fact, on Netflix but Hermes had never seen it. It was certainly worth viewing a third time. If you've never seen it, I would recommend it highly. Here's a thing on You Tube about it in case you want to check it out.

Finally tonight the Christmas lights were turned on at the MTC. I had originally hoped to see the ones at Temple Square but it turns out they don't get turned on until tomorrow night. But these MTC ones were beautiful and a consolation until the day comes when I will see the Temple Square Christmas display.

My love for the gospel has grown over these last few weeks. It has been great to be here but I am very much looking forward to beginning our life and service in Rome. So once again, Arrivederci!

The Happiest Place on Earth

Now, I know Disneyland says that it's the "Happiest Place on Earth" but I'm telling you the Missionary Training Centre (MTC) in Provo has got it beat. We are having the most awesome time here. Everyday is a spiritual feast and I have learned so much from the wonderful young teachers here. More on that in a moment but first I have to show you this picture that hangs in the hall here at the MTC:

This is a picture of a baptismal service in Papua, New Guinea. The missionaries and the people being baptized are all ankle deep in mud and you can see that they are baptizing in very muddy water. But that is not the most jaw dropping part. Do you see those men on the shore nearby standing with  axes and spears in their hands? Hermes and I stood in front of that picture for a few moments wondering why on earth there would be people there with axes and spears. And then it dawned on us. It was to keep the crocodiles away! They had to baptize people in a place where they could have been attacked by crocodiles! Holy cow, I can't imagine. I just had to share this picture with you. And if you're wondering if our interpretation of that is correct, it was confirmed by a leader here in the MTC.

Here's a picture of Hermes and I arriving at the MTC:

So, as I said, we love it here. I am a little bit in mourning that all the things I am learning on how to be a good teacher were not things I learned 34 years ago when I went on my first mission to England. The young people they have teaching us old fogeys are fantastic. In the morning, we've had three young women team teaching us; one went on her mission to Russia, another to Peru and the third to Italy. In the afternoon we have a young man and a young woman, both of whom went on missions to Honduras, although different missions. I'm pretty sure they're all BYU students. They are all so much fun and make our classes interesting. In our class we have two other couples, one going to Mexico City and the other to Chile.

There were 34 couples who entered the MTC this week which they say is a small group, probably because of the time of year (right before Thanksgiving). There are about 1400 missionaries here, most of which are young 18 and 19 year old men and women. They are a sight to behold! Sometimes they are so cute, I just want to pinch their cheeks, but I don't. While the majority are Americans, there are a number from all over the world. We see big tall African  young men who remind me of some of the lovely Sudanese young men I helped with resumes back when I worked at Father Lacombe High. There are a lot of Spanish speaking missionaries from Latin America. The other day, we talked to two young men heading to the Milan Italy mission, one from Florida and the other from Budapest, Hungary. Today we talked to the cutest young girl from Italy who will be heading to the SLC Temple square mission along with her companion, another cute girl from South Korea. 

We checked into the MTC on Saturday afternoon, two days earlier than we needed to, and I'm so glad we did because I got to attend a special Women's Conference on Sunday morning and we both attended a terrific devotional on Sunday evening. I have to tell you about an experience shared at the Womens Conference that I thought was pretty cool. One of the speakers had served with her husband as Mission President/Matron in the Czech Republic mission. They were concerned about how to help the Church gain legal recognition in neighboring Slovakia. There was a small branch of the church there with a very dedicated Branch President who had been fasting twice a month for years that the Church would gain legal status and the missionaries would be allowed in. The only way they could get legal status was to have a petition signed by 20,000 Slovakians saying they wish to allow the Church in. This was a daunting task because most Slovakians had lived for years and years under a suspicious Communist regime and were not a trusting or open people. Furthermore, the petition would require not only their signature, but also their address and the equivalent of what Canadians call their Social Insurance Number and what Americans call their Social Security Number. So, since many Slovakian students made a part-time living collecting names for petitions as a part time job, the Church at first hired students to see if they could collect these signatures. The students quit after two weeks having collected less than 100 signatures. More fasting and praying happened and in the end, the leadership decided to bring in all the missionaries from the Czeck mission to collect the petition signatures. The missionaries were taught that if they were obedient and had faith, they could expect miracles. Some of the missionaries stated they were sure they could collect 200-300 signatures in a day. And so they went forth. The Sister who spoke said she went out and sometimes people would seem angry that they were approached but would sign anyway and this would happen over and over. They had given themselves one week to collect 20,000 signatures. At the end of four days, they had collected 25,000.

I found that to be an amazing example of what faith, prayer and dedication can do. I have heard many wonderful experiences this week and I could go on and on, but this blog would get too long. Hermes and I will be at the MTC one more week. We will get office skills training next week. We will be one of the few senior couples here this weekend as many of the senior couples who are not doing the office work (they are doing MLS standing for Member and Leadership Support) are leaving for their missions. We, apparently will be the only senior couple here over Thanksgiving, but we are looking forward to it because apparently an apostle will come and do a Thanksgiving Devotional and then we will help all those hundreds of kids with a service project where they pack up meals for the homeless.  I'm sure there will be turkey dinner in the cafeteria too. The day after Thanksgiving, we fly to Rome. 

Lastly, I want to thank two of my former missionary companions from the England Coventry mission days. First to Kathy and her husband for hosting us during Italian Immersion and then taking us to SLC to see the Conference Centre on Saturday mrorning. Here's some pictures:    

And then to Adele and her husband, who I saw just last evening for dinner:

It was a thrill to see you both and hopefully it won't be as many years before we meet up again. 

Okay, one more picture. This is an MTC tradition to take a picture in front of this map and I have one from 34 years ago so we had to do another one: 

Arrivederci! Love to all at home in Calgary! 

Parli Italiano? Kind of...

By popular demand, this is my attempt to write a blog about out experiences as LDS senior missionaries. I will do my best to make this an exciting read for you all even if I have to make stuff up... just kidding.

Officially our mission doesn't start until Monday, November 16th but we went down early to do a three day Italian Immersion. We had a bit of a rough start to our trip. Our flight to SLC was at 6:15 in the morning which means we needed to be at the airport by 4:30 AM at the latest. A few people almost made an offer to drive us to the airport but when they found out it would disrupt their beauty sleep they happily let us take a taxi. So much for the grand send off with people weeping at the airport and waving handkerchiefs as we stumble into U.S. customs. Oh well.

Anyway, back to the rough start. We had our big honking suitcases ready in the living room for the 4AM arrival of our taxi and Hermes went out the door with his big suitcase and as I picked up his carry-on, he said to me, "just pull the door shut when you leave." So I did... forgetting that my big honking suitcase and carry-on were still in the house... and the door locked behind me... and we had no key... Ooops. So it became necessary to try to wake up someone in the house. Our first attempt to wake someone up was with Hermes' son who sleeps in the basement. We rapped and rapped at his window to no avail. He must be able to sleep through a hurricane. I phoned into the house and nothing, Hermes' father and sister were sleeping on the other side of the house but neither heard the door bell ring. Finally, Hermes got a ladder, and had to climb up to her window to rap on it which finally woke her up. She opened the front door and I apologetically grabbed by suitcases and with many apologies, said a quick goodbye. That, luckily, was the only misfortune of the day.

I, personally, have not been to Utah in 15 years which is the last time I saw Kathy with whom we have been staying. She and I were missionary companions in the England Coventry Mission back in the early 80s. She has hardly changed (still looks fabulous) though she would dispute that. She has been reminding me of things that happened and people we served with which has been great fun. Oh my, we were so young and naive in those days. And its crazy how much I've forgotten about those days. At the time, you think you'll never forget what happens on your mission, but life goes on and you do.

Hermes and I spent all day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at one of the many, many LDS chapels here in the Utah valley. Honestly, it seems like there is one on every corner. Sometimes, I kid you not, there's even two side-by-side on a corner. The construction industry must be kept busy with church construction here.

Even though I chose to do this Italian Immersion and initiated it, I was dreading it. I thought it would be pure drudgery  and that my brain might explode at the end of it. Fortunately, no one had to clean up any gray matter. It was at times even lots of fun and I met Italian speaking volunteers whom I wish I lived closer to because I know we'd make great friends. I was told at the end of the day that I'm doing well and on my way to being able to converse in Italian. Nothing would please me more than to be able to converse freely with the Italian people.

Hermes spent the time learning the missionary lessons in Italian and simply conversing in order to get  the "rust," as he put it, off his Italian. Forty years living in Canada is a long time. I'll bet he'll forget how to speak English after a while, though.

Next, we're off to the MTC. I'll be interested in seeing how the place has changed in the 34 years since I've been there.

Arrivederci!