End of the First Week of the MTC

Here it is Saturday, September 14th and we just finished our first transfer!  We transferred from the Provo Marriott Hotel to the MTC - building 2M, room 315.  It has all the comforts of home (the home we have known for the last 2 months), bed, closet, bathroom, dresser and shower.  And we thank our son, Andy for those comforts!  It is actually really nice and it has some beautiful pictures in the room.  We told the MTC that we would need a fridge to put Kelsey's insulin in and they said they would have it for us.  However, our room didn't have a fridge, but it turns out that we are across the hall from the supply closet and the door is open.  We saw two fridges in there and we found the floor manager (who is also the MTC barber) and asked him and he helped us move a fridge in our room.  We plugged it in and it was noisy.  So, when he left we decided to check to see if the other one was quieter and it was so we switched them.  Then I had to iron Kelsey's white shirt and the iron in our room (and it has an ironing board) was scorched on the bottom, so Kelsey went to find another iron and he found that the room next to us was empty because the missionaries checked out and went on their mission.  Well, there was a brand new Teflon bottom iron in there, so we exchanged irons with that room.  Therefore - we are all set. This room is much better than the Marriott!  The Church sure does everything nice.

We are glad that we have completed the Preach My Gospel training as it was very hard for the seniors.  We read the Preach My Gospel before we came - but we had to learn to follow the spirit, listen to the people and keep it simple.  We learned to teach people vs. lessons.  We have come to realize that the Gift of the Holy Ghost gives us the power to teach and invite others to come to Christ.  One of the hardest things to do is to commit people to pray for their own answers; and to commit them to read the Book of Mormon and exercise faith in the promise that is found in Moroni Chapter 10: 3-5.  All of the senior missionaries were divided into districts and our trainers were young returned missionaries - in the morning we had Brother Bateman and Sister Russon.  In the afternoon we had Brother Rowe.  They are very, very patient with all of us.  Here is our district and our trainers:  From left to right:  Brother Bateman (co-trainer); Elder and Sister Singling are going to Laos; Elder and Sister Greer are going to Equador;  Elder and Sister Pack are going to Ghana; then us and Sister Russon (co-trainer). We made a great district!

Morning trainers

with Brother Rowe in the afternoon

 

 

 

Here is Elder Bateman and Sister Russon as they were teaching us to keep it simple seniors!

The next segment of Preach My Gospel was to role play that we were less active members and another set of missionaries were the missionaries. They would have to get to know us and then determine what they could do to help us have a desire to return to activity in the Church.  We each took turns being the less active couple and the missionaries.  We had to develop a plan based on what we had learned and help them resolve and over-come their challenges.

One night while we were still at the Provo Marriott, we walked down to see the construction on the Provo Temple.  It is truly amazing what they are doing.  Here are those pictures:

 

When they are finished, the underground parking lot, will have trees, grass and walkways on top of it.  One more picture of us that some elders took while we were sitting on a bench inside the MTC grounds - which are really, really beautiful!