Wonderful MTC Experience

You may notice that I am writing this almost six months late. Since arriving here at the MTC in mid-January we have been running. While our 3 year mission in the Philippines Cauayan Mission was a three year marathon of activity this experience has been a 6-month sprint! I have a feeling it will be like that until the end. When we were called we asked why this calling was a 2 year calling compared with the 3 year calling of a Mission President. Our trainer at the MTC said, "I'm not going to tell you, you will figure it out." Here we live and eat and breathe with missionaries 24/7. And it's taken me this long to finally download photos we've taken and get them organized. My hope is that in the next few weeks I will be able to go through the photos and get them organized.

This is the view when we left for the MTC. Snow was everywhere and dreams of living in Summer for the next two years sounded good to us!

I jumped into our flight and arrival but feel like I need to go back and write a little about our MTC experience. Our batch consisted of six other newly called MTC Presidents serving all over the world: Provo, New Zealand, Mexico City, England, Dominican Republic, and Columbia. It also included Visitor Center Directors. This was fun because several of those couples had served with us in the Philippines. The Ferrins were called to direct the Washington DC Visitor's Center and the Petersons were called to oversee the Independence Missouri Visitor's Center. At first we all wondered why we were to be trained together but it became evident once the training began. Visitor Center Directors all have a crew of sister missionaries that man their facilities. They aren't the ecclesiastical leaders but still work with them on a daily basis. During our training, we did some break-out sessions with just the MTC President and wives, but many of our sessions were geared for both groups.

Our experience was reminiscent of our earlier MTC experience. It was filled with the opportunities to hear inspired General Authorities who gave such timely counsel to us. What a privilege it was to participate in the training. We left feeling like our own buckets were filled to the brim and eager to implement many of the ideas presented.

                                      Who doesn't take a photo at the MTC world map?

While in the MTC we met many wonderful missionaries who were heading to the Philippines.

And we got to see dear Elder Johnson a dear friend from Omaha!

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