Saturday, March 15, 2014

Our mission began early the morning of Monday, March 10, 2014.  Our son Spencer, his sweet wife Stephanie and Nathen (6), Tyler (4) and Kaylee (almost 2) came to see us off at the airport at 6:00 am.  We got to have hugs one more time from some of our favorite people!

We flew to Salt Lake City, took a shuttle to the Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC) and entered the doors of a wonderful place where our lives changed.  Within thirty minutes of arriving we had a place to stay, we had our agenda, had our missionary badges, and we were escorted to a quick lunch before our classes started.  We joined about 120 other senior missionaries for the weeks' activities (the picture above only shows half the group).  There were many missionaries that were called to serve in their own stakes.  There were about fifteen couples preparing to go to Nauvoo.  There were missionaries called in many different capacities to serve around the world.  There was even a couple preparing to serve in the Tucson Arizona mission and another couple planning to serve in the Ukraine!

The week quickly went by and when our classes ended Friday afternoon, we had fond memories of many wonderful people we had the opportunity of spending a short time with.  Our instructors were young and the spirit was strong and when we left, our last instructor said, "now go give them Heaven".

This morning several of us were brought to Salt Lake City, where we will spend the next week in additional training.  Our first stop was to drop a couple off at the airport headed for Samoa.  The sweet sister said when they put in their papers for this mission, they said they would like to go anywhere, but Samoa.  They received their call and their call is to Samoa.  This will be their fifth mission to Samoa!

We loved being with the young missionaries.  Young people from many places preparing to serve in many places.