Life in the MTC

Coming to the MTC has been a great experience!  We have been well fed physically (too well fed!) and spiritually well fed!  It has been so fun to meet so many senior missionaries as well as young missionaries.  We have run into former students, fellow Rexburg folks, and met a lot of new friends. The teachers are well trained and amazing.  The speakers are extremely motivating, and I am impressed with the knowledge and testimony of my companion.  Tomorrow we will leave this sacred place of tremendous faith, enthusiasm and excitement.  We have focused on "Preach My Gospel" this week, and although we will not be serving a proselyting mission, the skills and principles we have learned will be very valuable.  Now we will start our training for the Self-Reliance Intiative.  We will be headed to the Church Office Building for this, and so we will be spending the rest of our time in Salt Lake City until we leave for France, Thursday, August 18.

Day One of Our Mission.

We entered the MTC this morning and were so impressed with the friendliness, kindness and wonderful spirit.  It is amazing how well organized and orderly things are here, especially with over 2500 missionaries in residence.  Immediately upon entering we were greeted and given the name tags that we will be wearing for the next 18 months.  That was a thrilling moment.   Reporting today with us were approximately 25 other senior couples and 3 single sisters.  It was an extremely diverse groups with couples going to places like Jamaica, Australia, Hawaii, California, Fiji, Guatemala, Japan, Congo, Bulgaria, Spain, New Hampshire, New Guinea, Vanuatu, Dominican Republic, Bosnia, Croatia, Brazil, France (us) and even Boise Idaho!  We got to know each other, had several classes, ate meals (very good - we'll have to be careful), and are now getting settled in for our first night.  Bottom line: we know we are in the right place for us right now and doing what we should be doing.


The obligatory MTC photo.



Took an evening walk to the apartment
where Chris lived when we first met
46 years ago!

Getting close...

After lots of packing, studying, preparing and arranging, we are finally about ready to go.  We leave our home tomorrow morning for a weekend visit with our three sons in Utah and will report at 10am Monday morning at the MTC in Provo.  The plan is for us to spend the first five days at the MTC studying "Preach My Gospel".  The following Monday through Wednesday we will be trained on the Self Reliance program at the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City and then we fly to Lyon on Thursday, August 18.  We are really getting excited.

A Change in our Calling.

It's been some time since our last entry and much has happened.  In April we were in Kalarney, Ireland when my phone rang.   It was our bishop calling and the first thing he asked was "Did you hear what happened?"  My initial reaction was absolute panic!  I could only imagine that something tragic had occured .  So when he said that our call had been changed, it was total relief...and then a little concern again as I imagined where we might be asked to go.  We were so excited about our call to Paris.  So when he then said that we will be serving in the south of France in the Lyon Mission,  the emotional roller coaster shot back up!  As it turns out our call really won't change that much at all.  We knew that with the call to Paris that we would be the only Self-Reliance couple in both the Paris and Lyon missions and that we would have responsibilities in both.  With the change we will still cover all of the French speaking stakes in both missions.  The only difference is that we will be living in Lyon now rather than in Paris.  As much as we love Paris, I think we are even more thrilled with the opportunity to be in Lyon.  Our only concern is that Lyon has the reputation of being the gastronomic capital of France and we both love to eat! 

Since our last post we have both also retired from teaching at BYU Idaho.  It has been a little strange to move out of our offices and for me to move out of my university sculpture studio of over 30 years.  Rather than a retirement party, I did a final one-man-exhibit of my sculptures in the Spori Gallery on campus.  That helped me to have a final closing chapter to my teaching career.  And we are both so happy to have this mission to look forward to and prepare for.  I think we would feel a big hole in our lives if next fall came and we didn't have a new "semester" to begin.

We have also been trying to make the necessary preparations for the next 18 months.  We will have read the Book of Mormon in French before our report date.  We have been studying the Self-Reliance materials, also in French.  And we have done some language brushing up with the MTC programs.  We have also had to do a little shopping for necessary mission clothing, arranging the house for a young couple to house sit for us and we are getting our social security, medical insurance, and other finances organized.  It seems like for every item we cross off our to-do list two more things get added!  It will probably be a relief when we finally report to the MTC on August 8, just over one month from now. 

Five months from today...

There are so many things to do to prepare for a mission.  We have been fortunate to be in contact with the missionary couple currently serving in France that we will be replacing in August.  They have been so helpful in helping us to get an idea how to be prepared.  We have also contacted the MTC and are setting up language coaches.  We are reading the Book of Mormon together again in French and should be able to finish at least once before we leave.  And there is a mountain of paperwork to be completed.
Of course there are so many things to do to complete our teaching careers at BYU Idaho.  We will be taking a group of 46 students to Europe in April and May, I have a one-man art exhibit scheduled to open one week after we return from the Europe trip, we both need to move out of campus offices and studio, we need to make arrangements for our home while we are gone and it seems that for each thing we check things off the top of our to-do list, three things get added to the bottom!  But the more we do and the more we prepare, the more excited we become about serving this mission.  We just know that this is what we are supposed to be doing and we know that we will have special help when challenges come.

France Paris Mission!!!

It finally arrived!  I was at home for lunch when the mail truck pulled up in front of the house.  When I saw a large white envelope go into our mailbox my heart went straight into my throat.  Our long awaited call was here.  Chris was on the BYU Idaho campus in the middle of teaching a French class.   We had agreed that morning that if the call arrived we weren't going to wait for her classes to be over.  I quickly drove up, found her classroom and peeked in; she knew what it meant.  When she announced to her class why she would be leaving a loud cheer erupted and I don't think that it was because they were getting out of class early.

We sped home, got our four kids together (three online and one with us) and opened the envelope.  Chris was standing behind me leaning over my shoulder.  We read down to the words "You are assigned to labor in the France Paris mission" and then the siren went off!  It's a good thing that we don't report to the MTC for almost 6 months so that I will have a chance for my hearing to return.

We have been assigned to serve for 18 months as "Perpetual Education Fund / Self Reliance" missionaries.  Even though we don't yet know exactly what this call entails, we couldn't be more thrilled about this marvelous blessing and opportunity.  We will do all that we can to learn and prepare.

Still Waiting. . .

We had no idea how anxious we would be to receive a call and know where we will be going!  A week ago our Stake President told us he had received a call from the missionary department asking if it would be possible for us to report on August 8th, almost two months earlier than what we had put as our availability date.  I had a retrospective sculpture exhibit scheduled for September but was able to move it forward and it will now be in May.  So we told our Stake President that we can be ready by August.  Now we are just anxiously waiting by our snow-covered mailbox!