Alive and Well and in the MTC!

What a week! The Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, UT  has been quite an amazing experience, with over 2500 missionaries coming in from all over the world, and going out to all over the world!  Every week a new group comes in while others leave.  Though different in life experiences, all have the same commitment: to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The excitement and enthusiasm here is palpable!  And to think, this is only one of the nine MTC’s around the world!

As senior missionaries, we’ve loved interacting here with these young, mostly 18-23 year olds but have also really enjoyed getting to know so many senior missionaries as well. (Age range . . . mostly old).   There were about 75-100 senior missionaries (couples and singles) who came the day we did.  We are divided into “districts” for classes and we’ve loved getting to know the 3 other couples in our district. We come from various states but all of us in our group are assigned as Church Education Specialists (CES) so that’s been fun.  In our district, we have the Johnson’s going to San Diego, California, the Atkins going to Seattle, Washington, Syal’s to South Africa and us to Albania.  It will be even more fun sharing our experiences as we serve! 

Here's our district and teachers...

Our classes have been taught by incredible young single adults, I think all 4 of ours have been between ages 21-26.  You would think they would be intimidated coming into a class of not-so-young adults–ok, let's say it:  OLDer people (I’m not going to say OLD this time though!) to teach them what they need to be doing, but not so!! These teachers are so prepared, so committed, so confident and so engaging!  They have been wonderful and we absolutely love and admire them–and have learned so much. (who says you can’t teach oldER dogs new tricks?!)

With so many people here, you can imagine what the cafeteria scene is like.  It’s hard to fathom the amount of work required to feed so many 3 times a day.  There are various choices of foods; for some choices, the lines can get long but I guess the young missionaries have been told to let the seniors cut in because they have been quite polite in letting us go ahead of them.  (We’ve only taken advantage of this a couple times!).   But it’s funny seeing what some of these young guys (Elders) eat…a stack of donuts for breakfast along with what they think is a healthy item:  a giant waffle and glasses of chocolate milk.  Seems like the young women (Sisters) are little more into the salad bar.  Different meals but you get the drift . . .

We've run into Elder Perez from our home ward a few times....eating a plateful of salad! Yay Elder Perez!

Sitting and talking with these young missionaries as we eat is so fun.  For example, we had lunch with a sister missionary and her companion–one who was from Papua New Guinea and the other from Tonga. The sister from Papua New Guinea is the only person in her family who is a member of the church and she got baptized about 18 months ago. She is off to Samoa on her mission. I can only imagine being a fairly new member, coming from a small, developing country, flying 24 hours and being thrown into the middle of the MTC experience. That must be overwhelming, but she seemed to be happy and very excited to be here. She’s such a sweet young lady and there are so many great things going on in Papua New Guinea–check out this link:

https://www.thechurchnews.com/living-faith/2025/06/25/papua-new-guinea-temple-focused-many-baptized-new-stake/?utm_campaign=churchnews-en&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social_share 

Just a sample of one of the 2500+ people here…truly an inspired work!!

There have been several scriptures shared and read this week.  One that has impacted us over the years and continues to is found in the Book of Mormon, Alma 37:6, “By small and simple things are great things brought to pass.” Each person here has a story as to the why they are here — which is continued attention to the small things that ultimately lead to miracles.  We have seen this throughout our life!  We look forward to engaging with others in the Albania Tirana Mission and helping them on their spiritual journey. 

As senior missionaries, we've been able to visit our daughter and her family (our son and his wife are in Ecuador visiting her parents), attend the temple and even get together lots of friends, including Michelle's old college group from BYU!

Our experience has been awesome so far! We finish up this week and fly out Thursday to Albania!  AHHH!!!! We appreciate all the support and prayers.  We love you all!