Mission Training Center (MTC)

After our first day we settled into a routine of classes in the morning and afternoon.  We were free most evenings, with a devotional Tuesday evening where Elder Brent Nielson from the Seventy spoke to us.  It was a great talk motivating us in our missionary endeavors.

All the senior missionary couples met in the Stadium Avenue Chapel just outside the fence from the MTC campus for our training. Here is a picture of the chapel and the building we were staying in right behind it.

 

There were 40 senior couples and 4 senior sisters in our group for training this week.  We were divided into smaller groups called districts for the training classes.  Our district had four couples, Hales, Ellis, Libutti and Copa. In the morning we were instructed by Brother Zundel with Brother Smith assisting.

 



Here is all of our district with Elder Zundel.

 

 In the afternoon we were instructed by Sister Pace. Here is our picture with her.

On our breaks we would walk around the chapel and enjoy the beautiful mountain scenery.

 We had all our meals in the MTC cafeteria which was in the main building on campus.  It was a very large room that would seat about 2000 people.  There were many choices of food and they were very efficient at serving all those people.  We were not allowed to take pictures in the cafeteria, so we tried one through the small window on the door, which does not show a lot.

Also in the main building was the map of the world where pictures can be taken showing where your mission is located.  Here are ours.

There was also a map showing all 34 missions in Brazil.

 

We took a few pictures showing the security gate and a small part of the campus.

On Wednesday evening we went across the street to the Provo Temple for a session.  Here is a picture of the temple from the grounds of the MTC.

We had a wonderful week and learned many things that will help us while on our mission.  We are now back at Kimberly's for the week-end where we have been getting together with family to say our good-byes.  We have one more family gathering today after church and will then finish our packing and fly out of Salt Lake City tomorrow for Brazil. 

First day at the MTC

We entered the MTC today and are having a wonderful time. Here are the pictures.

 Here we are at the main entrance.

 This is the MTC Bookstore

 We were assigned to room 335 in the building next to the main entrance.

 This is the view from our window.

 We have a great view of Y Mountain out the window.

It is a very comfortable room and we are blessed to be here.

Set Apart, General Conference and Eden

 

Set Apart and Travel to Utah.

 

This is the group that was with us as we were set apart as missionaries. After being set apart and given beautiful blessings for our mission on October 2nd by our Stake President Tim Score, we flew to Salt Lake City October 3rd to spend General Conference weekend with our daughter Kimberly and her family in their beautiful home in Provo.  We were able to watch all the sessions of conference with them and were richly blessed with great council from our leaders.

This is Kimberly's home in Provo where we stayed.

This is where we watched General Conference.

Eden has arrived!!!
While at Kimberly's we received a call from Carleton informing us that our grandchild number 19 was born on October 5th.  Eden weighted 8 pounds 9 ounces.  She and her mom Robyn are doing well.  Here is a picture of the new born and the proud mom and dad.

 

We will enter the MTC here in Provo tomorrow morning October 6th and attend five days of training classes on Preach My Gospel. 

Mission Calls

We have been planning on serving a mission together since before we were married, we just had to wait until Ken retired.  Ken planned to retire in June 2014 after ten years working for Union Bank and 31 years working for Bechtel/Fremont.  We knew that it would be difficult to receive visas as missionaries assigned to Brazil, so we wanted to start early.  The church allows senior couples to submit their missionary application nine months before their availability date.  We wanted a few months after Ken retired to prepare for the mission, so we planned to turn in our application in January 2014 with October 1 as our availability date.

We had visited southern Brazil in April 2013 and saw the place where we wanted to serve our mission, in Gramado, Brazil, which is part of the Porto Alegre North Mission.  We spoke with President and Sister Wright, the mission president and his wife, and told them we would like to serve in Gramado sometime in 2014.  They were excited to have us come to their mission and said that when we submitted our application to let them know and they would flag our papers so we would be called to their mission.  Two days before we were to have our final interview with our Stake President we had a Stake Conference where the visiting authority was Elder Martino.  In speaking with him and telling him of our plans, he informed us that all senior couple mission applications go across his desk and he would make sure we were called to the Porto Alegre North Mission. 

We received our mission call letters on February 21, 2014, and phoned all our kids to share with them the information as we opened our letters.  Here are copies of the letters.

The call letters state that our primary assignment would be to labor as office specialists.  We later received a Missionary Change Form that stated our primary assignment would be Member and Leader Support (See Below).

We began working on our Brazilian visa applications as soon as we received our call, realizing what a long process it would be.  We had to get many documents, like our birth certificates, marriage certificate, seminary and institute transcripts, BYU transcripts, priesthood ordination certificates, etc.  Many of the documents had to be notarized, and then taken to the California Secretary of State's office to have the notary authenticated.  We had to be fingerprinted and then have the FBI do a background check to see if we had a criminal record.  We sent all the papers to Church Travel and they then had to send them a few at a time to the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco to be "legalized", after which they were returned to Church Travel.  All of this took many months, and after a few complications we were able to take them into the Brazilian Consulate.  After paying our visa application fee, they told us that we could pick up our visas on August 19. We were so thrilled when we went in August 19th and the visas were ready we went out and celebrated.

We will enter the Mission Training Center (MTC) on October 6th and will spend five days in training using Preach My Gospel.  We will then fly out of Salt Lake City for Brazil on Monday October 13 at 2:05 p.m. arriving in Porto Alegre on Tuesday October 14 at 2:25 p.m.