August 9 - 23 “MTC” - Missionary Training Center

Tomorrow, August 23, 2010, Don and I will leave the MTC. We have been here since the 9^th. It has been a marvelous experience! It is a wonder to see and be a part of. I want to tell just a little about the facility itself:

There are about 2,300 missionaries here at the MTC all the time. Each Monday and Tuesday about 300 leave for the mission field. Every Wednesday about 300 new missionaries come. It is something to see when the new missionaries arrive! They are dropped at the curb where missionaries who have been here a while are there to meet them and help them with their bags to their rooms. The new missionaries wear a red button sticker on their name badge for a couple of days. Everyone tries to be helpful and considerate of them. They are beautiful!!

The cafeteria feeds 2,300 missionaries three meals a day. Do the math – that is nearly 7,000 meals a day!! And the food is great! It would be fun to see just how many tons of food passes through here. I find it interesting that I’ve never been to a meal that I haven’t seen elders with a bowl of cereal – breakfast, lunch and dinner. These are growing boys! Wednesdays is BYU Creamery ice cream day. It is served at lunch and dinner. Wednesday is the day all the new missionaries enter the MTC so this is a special treat for them and everyone else.

The laundry room is equipped with over 140 dryers and more washers. Tables equipped with computers have been put in the laundry room so missionaries can write letters and emails. Preparation days run Monday through Saturday. Everyone’s preparation day is one of those 6 days, therefore the laundry room can accommodate about 380 missionaries a day!! Don and I can run four loads of wash and drying in about an hour or so. No money is used to run the machines. Instead each missionary has been given an MTC card which looks like a credit card. We swipe the card for meals in the cafeteria and to make washers and dryers run.

Preparation days are Monday through Saturday. Each district of missionaries is assigned one of those days for preparation including doing their laundry, cleaning their apartments, doing a session at the temple, performing one hour of service and then having fun on the green. Most missionaries play soccer or some other sport. For their service, elders and sisters are assigned tasks such as vacuuming, shining water fountains, scrubbing stairs, or cleaning windows and doors. This is the only time missionaries are not dressed up in tie and suit/skirts. Name tags are worn always even on work/play clothes.

The MTC is self-contained with a post office, bookstore, and health center. New facilities to house these services are under construction so that the space they are now taking up can be freed for more classrooms.

All the buildings are “M” buildings and there are 19 of them. Building M1 is the main building housing all the offices and they have large rooms with dividing walls called multipurpose rooms. A piano is in every section of the multipurpose rooms. I haven’t counted the number of pianos, but there are several – lots and lots because music is vital part of our worship. There is a music instrument room from which the talented young people who come here can borrow musical instruments. Those who would like to try-out may be selected to present musical numbers for meetings such as sacrament meetings, relief society, firesides and devotionals. We have heard marvelous vocal solos, cello solos, flute and piano solos in the two weeks we have been here.

Every Tuesday evening is a devotional. Every devotional’s opening hymn is “Called to Serve.” WOW! These young men and women blow the roof off with their voices. They love this song! Talk about an exhilarating experience!! These young people know who they are and what they are expected to do and you can hear it in their powerful singing voices.

Don and I had to go get our typhoid and meningitis vaccines. They hurt! Okay, I’m a baby! And to soothe the savage beast in missionaries young and old, the nurses keep TONS of dumdum lollypops on hand. Mostly it soothed the painful price of the shots – nearly $340 for both of us!!

One of the miracles here is that these boys and girls learn a new language in about 12 weeks. They learn to bear their testimony and to say a basic prayer and the lessons they will be teaching. We met our Mongolian bound elders here – four of them. They are choice!! They are eager to get to Mongolia. Elder Reeve a Marine reservist was supposed to enter the MTC in March but had to complete an obligation for his military unit and was delayed. If he had entered the MTC in March he would have been reassigned to a different mission and not gone to Mongolia. It was a miracle. Elders Huff, Jolley and Wilson are just choice young men. They have enjoyed learning the Mongolian language along with Elder Reeve. We are so thankful to have met them and to be laboring with them in Mongolia.

There are many languages being taught here at the MTC, but the language being learned by most missionaries is Spanish. To find elders or sisters who are here for 3 weeks preparing for an English-speaking mission are rare indeed. The Spanish missionaries go everywhere in the United States as well as Latin America and every Spanish-speaking country. Everywhere you look there are companions studying. The only place they do not study is the cafeteria where no books or bags are allowed.

In addition to the language, missionaries learn how to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. We study Preach My Gospel, which is a remarkable book brought about under the inspiration of the Lord. And who better to instruct everyone than those who have recently returned from missions around the world. For the most part instructors are young people in their 20s, many of whom are students at Brigham Young University. They are poised, knowledgeable, experienced and confident. Don and I are, of course, with other senior missionary couples who have been seasoned in the gospel and in church service. Still, we are learning a great deal from these excellent young people. They answer our questions and concerns and do not hesitate to let us know what works and what doesn’t. We have great respect for their knowledge and experience too, having so recently come from the mission fields. They have heard it all and dealt with about every serious situation and they know how to react and teach. We are so grateful to them! They are paid for their work and their schedules here at the MTC work around their course work at the university. They are just wonderful!! It is a miraculous thing!!

The Spirit of the Lord can be felt here all the time. None of us could learn what we have to learn or do what we are required to do without the Spirit of the Holy Ghost. It is a sweet elation to the soul. It opens our minds to gospel principles and scriptural understanding. It just feels wonderful!! This doesn’t mean there are never frustrations and struggles – there are, especially among the language missionaries. Some have referred to the MTC as the "Spirit Prison" because the spirit is so strong here but they cannot leave the campus. But we seldom ever sense it because the Holy Ghost is also a comforter which teaches all things.

Years ago when I was a younger woman leaving on a mission to Canada, the MTC was one-week in Salt Lake City in an old hotel converted to accommodate the training of missionaries. What is now the MTC was, at that time, being planned. These are some of the interesting things about the facility itself. To try to describe what goes on here would take some thought and time, being spiritual in nature. It is taking “five loaves and two fish” and doing something miraculous with them. It has been a great blessing to be a part of the Missionary Training Center today.