Our first week in the MTC

This is Paula writing. It's pretty hard to describe all that we felt and experienced in the MTC. It's a very inspiring place. There were about 25 senior couples and maybe 6 single senior sisters in our group. As we got to know them throughout the week, it's almost like we saw into their souls and felt their goodness. Every one of them had an interesting story. In that kind of environment, where spiritual things are discussed and experienced the entire week, emotions were really close to the surface and lots of love was felt. I found myself at the beginning of the week sometimes feeling a little judgmental about someone's bad grammar, or the way another person would talk too much, but at the end of the week, I didn't have any negative feelings towards them. I realized how every one of them had an interesting history, were so dedicated to serving, and was a pretty amazing individual.

One day at lunch, I was visiting with an Elder Rapier who was telling me about how his wife had died of cancer, he had remarried, been married for 6 years and was now serving a mission. He used to live in Edgemont. Turns out, he was my stake president who interviewed Loel and I before we got married! He said he knew something seemed familiar about me.

One of the most impressive things about the MTC is how positive everyone is. All the talks, the teachers, the tutors, everyone, is positive. As they taught us how to teach the Gospel, how to really listen instead of talk, how to feel inspired as to what we should focus on, etc, they never gave us any tips for what we could do better. They just built us up as we practiced teaching and working with people. The young teachers (usually recently returned missionaries) were so cute as they would praise us for how well we were doing, compliment us on our service, talk about how we were the real experts on the Gospel, and on and on. It was so uplifting and really helped dissipate a lot of my fears and concerns. Each day I would leave and say to Loel, "We can do this!"

Several times we had senior missionaries who had served 2, 3, and 4 missions come and talk to us. They were some of my favorite speakers. They were so enthusiastic. They talked about how it was more difficult to leave the mission field at the end of their mission than it was to leave their family at the beginning. One senior sister's bishop said to her when he called them on their maybe 4th mission,"Sister, you don't seem too excited about this." She said, "I just can hardly stand the thought of saying good-bye to the friends we make in the mission field one more time." I hope that's how it is with Loel and I. We want to make that happen.

We practiced working with volunteer investigators, teaching them, we practiced working with less active members, we practiced getting to know someone without talking too much ourselves. We practiced really listening, and not overwhelming people with too much. This was really stressed and very applicable to serving more effectively; especially for us senior missionaries who have so much to share. We practiced really listening to the Spirit as we taught so that we would know which principle to focus on. This new Preach My Gospel is a pretty amazing plan for missionaries now. So different from our canned discussions 35 years ago, with our flip charts! Yet, as we discussed the differences in our little district meetings, people still joined the Church with those old discussions and flip charts. It's just so much better now.

The last night, the 5 couples who were learning a language and going to foreign countries had a little testimony meeting with our language tutors by our sides. Loel and I bore our testimonies in French since that's mainly what we've learned. (We've only had about 3 hours of Dutch training so far.) Even though we couldn't understand most of what the others were saying in Tagalog, Russian, German, and Bulgarian, we could feel of their testimonies. My testimony wasn't very elaborate or eloquent - pretty short, but as I looked down at our sweet tutor, I got very emotional, as there he was, in the front row, smiling and nodding, so encouraging, as if to say, "you can do this, you're doing great!" He was never ever judgmental of how slow we may have been learning, or how we slowed down with the French since we found out we needed some Dutch, etc. Since January when we've been meeting with him weekly, he has been positive, encouraging, and pretty great. For a 24 year old guy, he has a lot of maturity. Loel bonded with him instantly as he's going into the Air Force and wants to be a pilot!

One of the greatest blessings, I feel, of this mission, will be the way I know that Loel and my relationship will be strengthened. When you have to be together all day long, you have to be honest with each other if something bothers you, you have to communicate, you have to be positive and not critical, and on and on. As Loel and I would teach gospel principles together, I felt such a strong bond between us and felt so proud of him. Another neat thing was that as I taught these gospel concepts, the memories started coming back from my previous mission, the phrases, thoughts, and feelings I had experienced before started coming back and it felt great.

I feel like I'm in between two worlds right now. The world of Provo, family, and home and the other world of missionary work. I feel pulled in both directions. I'm anxious to finally get on the plane in a week and be on our way. I'm tired of saying good-byes and crying. Yet I'm grateful that we've had a little of a transition to gradually wean myself away. It was fun to go to our home ward with our missionary badges on and to hear two homecoming talks from young men in our ward. It was a very missionary oriented meeting and one we thoroughly enjoyed.

This is Loel: Monday morning I woke up thinking of the words to the song "Called to Serve". Paula has expressed a lot of my feelings in her thoughts. I'm the quiet one, but I do have some independent thoughts. I'm going to enter some thoughts from my journal this first week.

Monday: What are my impressions on the first day? It’s very well organized and planned. The missionary couple that are our “shepherds” are humorous, realistic and really in tune with the spirit. The sister bore her testimony and asked “what are you willing to lay on the alter to the Lord?”, comparing our “sacrifice” to Abraham’s sacrifice. I don’t know. I know what I want it to be. I want to be able to give anything I have to give. I hope I’m capable of that

Wednesday: Today we learned and presented the Plan of Salvation. We prepared and practiced similar to yesterday and then had an “investigator” from the community. He was “Baptist, moved here from California, works in Provo as a Para-legal, had read both the New and Old Testament closely, had read other religious writings, had received several Books of Mormon from friends, was curious about the Church after Mitt Romney was the focus of so much negative media attention.” He was very good and stayed totally in character throughout the entire time, even to the point of not leaving character after we were through and he was leaving. Very interesting.

Thursday: We had an exercise today where we split up into companionships and first were missionaries visiting an inactive couple. The inactive couple was a couple from our group, but they were role-playing a close friend or family member that is inactive. Then we switched. It was amazing the way the spirit speaks even in a contrived situation like that. I think it’s because truths are being spoken and the Spirit is confirming those truths. I wonder if it’s also because the Spirit wants us to experience and recognize when the Spirit is present. It was a very special experience. It was amazing how close Paula and I felt to the two couples that role played with us. We all experienced something very special.

Loel live again: To echo Paula, we became very close to the other Senior Missionaries in a very short time. How can that be? I've shared with friends and family over the last two days that this was one of the most special weeks I've ever experienced. I've felt things in ways I've never felt them before. How sad for me if I had never experienced this past week. Maybe this payment in advance for all the hard work in the future. I don't really believe that. I know there will be many more wonderful days and experiences. I can relate to Paula's thoughts that the goodbye's are dragging out, but it's been nice to be able to transition into the separation rather than going cold turkey. We talked with an old friend at Church today and she said she cried the whole first week in the mission, saying she couldn't do this. She said, "We cried twice as hard when it came time to leave and go home". I could go on and on, but it all starts to sound the same. We love it.