Week #2 MTC Provo

The photo above is from day one at the Missionary Training Centre (MTC) here in Provo, Utah. Our common threads are our love of God and our love for all of his children and our having left our families and lives behind to serve as full time missionaries in various capacities. Some sold their homes and left behind numerous grandchildren. For some this is their fourth mission - for us, it is our first. Our training this week focused on, "A Guide to Sharing The Gospel of Jesus Christ: Preach My Gospel". While Sister Schlachter and I have been assigned as self-reliance services and humanitarian aid missionaries for our church, our purpose is the same as the younger missionaries, to invite all to come unto Jesus Christ. Simply put, you can have a better life and God will help you. The photo below was taken on Friday afternoon during an activity with another couple with objective of supporting and encouraging each other in an informal setting. The MTC campus is beautiful! We were posing to make postcards to send to our children. The flags represent the 130 plus countries where missionaries currently serve. 56 languages are taught to missionaries here - 31 of these in only 9 weeks of which 26 are Asian and Eastern block languages. Today we spoke with missionaries learning Russian while we were in the travel office. Wendy and I did some on-line refreshing of our Spanish with MTC tutors before we left. 

For our training this week we were organized into a district with 10 other couples. Mission assignments in our district included Bosnia, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, the United States, including Hawaii and Zimbabwe. Like us, the couple going to Morocco has been assigned with delivery of humanitarian aid services - this is timely given the earthquake that struck that country on Friday. The missionary couple does not speak either of the two official languages in Morocco (Arabic or Moroccan Berber) but even if they did, they are not permitted to talk about the church with anyone in any way when they are there, not even with members of our church already living there. I feel for them. When we lived in Mexico in the mid-to-late 1990's our interactions with others were not restricted in the same way but the only English speakers we knew were ourselves which was very isolating for Sister Schlachter - imagine having only me and our small children to speak to day in and day out...for years. Adding to the challenge, I spent a lot of time in university classes or in the computer lab and I was often away from home on church assignments. 

When Sister Schlachter and I are working in Mexico on humanitaria aid assignments we wear a special identification badge for LDS Charities instead of our usual missionary tags. LDS Charities is an arm of the Church’s humanitarian efforts to relieve suffering for families of all nationalities and religions. As humanitarian aid workers we defer questions about the church to others.   

Here are some of the highlight of this week's training. 

The use of technology: The premise of our training was that, “Every discovery in science and art, that is really true and useful to mankind has been given by direct revelation from God...to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of truth, and the redemption of the earth from the power of sin and Satan" with the focus being Elder Bednar's 2014 invitation (Elder Bednar is one of the 12 modern-day apostles).

What has been accomplished thus far in this dispensation communicating gospel messages through social media channels is a good beginning—but only a small trickle. I now extend to you the invitation to help transform the trickle into a flood. Beginning this day, I exhort you to sweep the earth with messages filled with righteousness and truth—messages that are authentic, edifying, and praiseworthy—and literally to sweep the earth as with a flood.

Only three of the couples in our district were our age, most were quite a bit older and many not familiar with social media, let alone how to use it. One of the questions asked was why anyone would use social media when they could just text. Our teachers were kind, very patient, recently returned missionaries in their early twenties. The "why' was clarified and under their loving guidance we practiced creating posts that were authentic, edifying and praiseworthy. Here is the post I made during our class - I strive to build and uplift others though regrettably, I often fail and feel like I was just dug out of the dirt. Everything in the dish came from the garden we left behind in Lethbridge. A family in our congregation is trying their hand at gardening in our backyard while we are away - their first task is harvesting potatoes like the ones in my post, strawberries, tomatoes, Swiss chard, cucumbers, rhubarb, jalapeño peppers, zucchini, squash etc.  I have offered to be available remotely for advice if they feel it would be helpful.  

Choir Practice and devotionals: I love to sing so I went to choir practice - it was described as a "pop up" choir...and has over 800 voices. It was absolutely amazing that that many people, most of them18 years of age, could focus on the music, the accompanists (including three trumpeters) and the instructions of our choir director to produce what in my mind was a flawless performance of an arrangement of Redeemer of Israel with only 60 minutes of practice. I took voice lessons this past year from Devin Law and sang in choirs he directed.  He a multi-talented creative fellow with an incredible voice. The instructions we received in the MTC popup choir were consistent with much of Devin's instructions - no pirate "arrrrr's", focus instead on the vowels, watch the conductor for the dynamics and cutoffs with no sound of any kind when we finished that glorious last note...and you could have heard a pin drop when we did. 

Our common task was to invite the Holy Spirit for the devotional that night, Sister and Elder Stevenson (one of the current twelve apostles) who spoke to us about what missionaries are called to teach and why. The following evening we watched a pre-recorded devotional that included segments of a presentation by Elder Bednar that were the focus of an interactive discussion with those present. A line of Elder Bednar's that still sticks with me was his admonition to "get over ourselves", to focus outward instead of inward, in order to serve with our whole heart, mind and strength.  We participated in another incredible devotional on Sunday evening that featured the instrumental talents of Jenny Oaks Baker and her children and their and her spouse's testimonies. I have never before heard live music that was so soul penetrating. 

Cafeteria miracles: The Missionary Training Centre provides three meals a day to over 2600 missionaries on site. Dinner takes just 105 minutes. I don't know how they do it but its a miracle as there are only a small number of full-time employees (all young men and women) and most of the serving of the food is done by the missionaries. Everyone is so friendly and polite though the floor around the salad bars does get a bit sticky at about the 60 minute mark. As "senior" (i.e., old) missionaries, we are encouraged to cut into the lines even though they move pretty quickly. The food is very good with a lot of variety with special meals provided for those with specific dietary needs.  It is an all you wish to eat affair which is very convenient for my one-meal-a-day habit. With 18-year-old young men being the bulk of those here, there is a lot of starch on the menu and unlimited ice cream, chocolate milk and cookies.  This afternoon I had a chicken waffle - a grilled, flattened, boneless breaded chicken thigh with a couple of strips of bacon on top of it and served on top of a waffle with maple syrup drizzled over everything - apparently this is a southern US dish. Good as the food is, I am very much looking forward to home-cooked meals when we are living on our own again - which will be this coming Friday.  

Saturday was preparation day, "P" day, time to do laundry and other necessary tasks to prepare for the week ahead and to relax a bit. We rented a car and drove out to visit our son Alex and Liz in the Richard's family cabin near Kamas, UT. Wendy also presented Alex with the "attic window" quilt she made for him.  

There is a backlog in getting our visas for Mexico as, post-covid, many more people are travelling. We have been temporarily re-assigned to the Utah Salt Lake City Headquarters mission to serve in the Salt Lake Family History Center while we wait for our visas. 

This week our training is focused on Welfare and Humanitarian Aid. Today we did a fairly deep dive into the mechanics of the church's humanitarian aid efforts - I am so excited !:)  We move to Salt Lake City on Friday to begin our temporary assignment - they lovingly refer to us as "waiters".