The MTC

Monday, October 9th, we entered the Missionary Training Center to begin our week-long training for our mission. Even though we have been there two other times it was different this time because of the intense training from the Preach My Gospel manual. We loved it and really enjoyed the teachers that were assigned to us.  After getting our supplies, and joining all the other senior couples that are in the MTC this week, for an orientation meeting, we were divided into Districts and met our teachers for the week. From there each District went to a classroom that would be our “home” for the next five days!

Our District: The Williams, the Haakes, our smart young teacher – Jackson Haight,  the Ashby’s and the Hamm’s.

Basically, we got to know each other and learned how to teach, use the gospel apps on our media devices,  and then practice on each other the skills we learned.

Our teachers were all young, returned missionaries and I have to admit that they were very sharp! It is always amazing to see how the confidence and teaching abilities of these young people change as they go out into the world and learn the skills they did while serving as missionaries themselves. They come home better prepared for college and with abilities that will help them for the rest of their lives and believe me, those abilities were very evident this past week!

One of my favorite activities was to go outside and randomly stop other missionaries at the MTC and practice being missionaries on them. We met a lot of fun new missionaries who were as excited about their assignments and training as we were.  We ate our meals with them in the cafeteria and experienced their excitement along with our own. 

I won’t go into much detail about all of this but I would like to mention two special things. The first was that we happened to be in the MTC on the day President Eyring dedicated the new MTC buildings. There was a special devotional for this and Elder Holland and several other general authorities were there with us.

The second experience involves one of our practice teaching activities. This reiterated to us how the spirit is in this work and the Lord uses us to be instruments in His hands to help others

The last day we were there we were told we had to take the skills we had learned this week and go teach a random person from Provo who had agreed to come to the MTC so missionaries could practice on them. Some of these people are members of the church, others are not. We were told we would have 15 minutes with the person to make introductions and get to know each other. Then the person would leave the room for ten minutes and during that time we needed to prepare a lesson that would be beneficial to them. They would then return to the room and we would have 15 minutes to give them our lesson.

I was a little nervous about this but of course John was not! We ended up with a cute lady with a big smile. She is a member of the church. We found out she has been married for 11 years and when we asked about children she told us her two dogs and a cat are her children. She has tried to have kids but had no luck. We also learned she and her husband are now students after having lost everything when living in Germany and a contractor took the money they gave him to build them a house on a piece of property they had bought. She wanted to know about us too so we didn’t learn to much more than that about her.

When she left the room John and I decided we needed to talk about trials and how our Heavenly Father is always there for us. Ten minutes isn’t much time to prepare a lesson but I found a video called “The Will of God” and a scripture I felt would go along with it. John found a scripture and thought of a personal story.

Long story short, when she came back in the room we showed her the video and then I asked her to read the scripture I felt would help her. She liked the video and as she started to read the scripture she choked up and started to cry. She turned to us and said that this scripture was the very one she was pondering this week to help her. She said that she was memorizing it because it had touched her so much.

Of course we were surprised and also touched. John finished the lesson with his story and she thanked us very much for what we had both said to comfort and help her.

My point in this is that I had no clue why I chose the scripture I did, nor did John know why he picked the personal experience he did, but they were both exactly what she needed. She told us that this was real for her and not just a practice lesson. I know that God is aware of us and our problems. He loves us and uses others to be instruments in His hands to help lift us and get us through our struggles and questions. To us this was a manifestation of the good we can do as missionaries and we were grateful to end our week with an experience that shows the power of serving others.

This is 1/4 of the couples who attended the MTC with us this week. John and I are in the middle.

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