Week 2: MTC

The second week at the MTC began on the 12th of February. Pam and I attended the morning introduction to three Seminary & Institute leaders from Church Headquarters. the leader, Brother Devon Saunders actually lived in Grandpa Cottle's ward in Ogden and his dad was the Stake President--small world. They passed out a new handbook for Seminary & Institute and it was written like Preach My Gospel. We spent the day going over the purpose and objective of the S&I program and referred to the handbook often throughout the course. At 3:30 pm we attended a short presentation on the Stake YSA Program and several of the senior couples had calls to this program where they were assigned to a specific stake to activate YSA's. 

The rest of the week, Tuesday through Friday was spent with the 8 other Military Relations missionaries being instructed by Elder & Sister Sparrow from Church Headquarters. They handed out a handbook and we went through it page by page for 3 days. The manual basically outlined all the possibilities for working with base leadership, including Chaplains, military families and individuals. On one of the mornings each couple taught a 7-minute lesson from another lesson manual, titled:  "Becoming a Self-Reliant and Resilient Family," which was geared to deploying families. One of the afternoons we spent downloading and going through software we would use on our mission, especially a monthly report. Thursday afternoon we were finished with instruction and during the last hour, Elder & Sister Sparrow invited the missionaries to bear their testimonies. There were some very tender moments as couples explained what drew them to the mission and faith-promoting incidents that confirmed they were in the right place. 

Tuesday evening we attended the weekly devotional and heard from Elder & Sister Legrand R. Curtis Jr. They both gave wonderful talks and Elder Curtis spoke on the Book of Mormon and told conversion stories and concluded by showing an excerpt from the new church movie on the Book of Nephi and it looked terrific. 

Friday morning we were up early and arrived at Church Headquarters in Salt Lake at 8:30 am. We were on the 24th floor in the Priesthood Department where Military Relations was managed. We spent the morning with two men, a former Chaplain, Rick Roggia, and he spent 90 minutes going over important items to consider for our callings, especially relationships. The final individual was Elder Frank Clausen a retired Air Force Officer who headed up the Military Relations office and discussed the history of the effort and discussed each of our bases and the potential for good we could do. He showed several videos that were downloaded to our laptop computers earlier in the week and gave us some wonderful counsel. Following his presentation, we were hosted to a very nice lunch in the basement cafeteria and it was very nice. Reluctantly we said goodbye to all of our new friends we had made the previous two weeks and then Pam and I left and our MTC training was concluded. 

We stopped at Erin and Weston's and got to see them and then returned to Monroe that evening. Everything was fine at home and we have a couple of days to finalize our packing, load up the van and head East! 

 Pam checking something on her phone before heading out to classes

 This is Elder & Sister Hubbs who we shared teaching experiences with. They are on their way to Malaga Spain.

 This is one of 12 huge murals in the new MTC buildings. They are at least 30 feet wide and our back lit and look very real. This is Alma I when he left King Noah's court and began teaching people in the Wilderness.

This is all 9 missionary couples and Elder & Sister Sparrow.