January 20, DAY 1 Has Finally Arrived!!!

January 20^th has finally arrived and today we entered the Mission Training Center. Our kids had made a delicious bon voyage dinner last night and this morning they again gathered to have breakfast in Provo and J The food for the two meals we’ve had so far has also been really good, just like my sons said it would be.“take us to the MTC” so they were with us as we checked in, got our name tags, picked up orientation materials and found our way to our room. The room, by the way, is very nice, just like a small hotel room. I’m sure that the young elders and sisters are not in such comfortable accommodations

The orientation and today’s classes were great. The leaders are spiritual but still humorous; we laughed a lot. They said that the number of senior missionaries is increasing just as the number of young missionaries is increasing. Today we were two of the123 new senior missionaries checking in. It was so interesting to hear these couples and single sisters introduce themselves—they come from places all over the world to be trained to go to places all over the world. One set of missionaries literally was switching places—a couple from Salt Lake was headed to Samoa while a couple from Samoa was going to serve in Salt Lake. There was also an amazing variety of specific assignments. Some, like us, will be Church Education Missionaries while others were going be working with young single adults, supporting leadership, working in visitors centers or at the Polynesian Cultural Center, photographing old records for family history work, etc. etc. One couple who had both been educators were going to the Fiji Islands to teach classes to certify teachers so that their schools could be accredited.

It couldn’t be training without a little homework I guess, but it’s very light for the first day. We’ll do that studying now and then go to sleep early since we were too excited to sleep very soundly last night. Great day 1!!!