It has been a crazy day so far, not in a great way. When we last saw our intrepid senior couple, they were packing their suitcases, weighing them with the portable luggage scale from Amazon, which works very well. It's a little challenging working in a small room -- only one of us could pack at a time. We also tried to balance things across our two big suitcases, so that if one of them doesn't arrive promptly, we'd still be ok, more or less. For example, I made sure to put half of my socks, underwear, short/long-sleeve shirts, and slacks in each suitcase, plus one suit in each one. Of course, if the suitcase with the toiletries bag gets lost, that's more difficult, but you get the idea.
my wife's cough kept getting worse, even after she took the Delsym cough syrup, which has always worked great to me, apparently not so much for her. Her Afrin spray bottle also seems to have gone bad, in the sense that it didn't let her breathe. We got to bed fairly early, knowing it would be a short night, but her coughing really didn't let her sleep much, if at all. Even though I had my earplugs in, I couldn't sleep well either. By about 2am it was getting to the point where we considered just postponing the trip, but of course that has all kinds of downsides. So, we got up at 2:30am, showered and dressed, then called the MTC security shuttle, which took us to a 24-hour CVS pharmacy in Provo. There we bought Tussin DM caplets, Afrin, cough drops, decongestants, face masks, etc. As senior missionaries we are always supposed to wear our name tags in public, but we joked that, if she was coughing constantly on the plane, we should take them off to not put the church in a bad light. 😉
Anyway, the drugs helped a bit, but there was no more sleep for the night. We finished packing and did some final shuffling of suitcase contents until all four were within half a pound of the 50-point limit. On the airport,scale, all four of them measured exactly 50 pounds -- no decimal point, so it was rounded. Are we good, or what?
We went out at 5:15am to meet the shuttle, which arrived promptly and amazingly could hold all six of our suitcases, plus two more small ones from other passengers. We arrived at the airport three hours ahead of time, fairly groggy. Fortunately, we were able to sleep some on the flight to Detroit, and my wife is doing a little better. I'm really feeling quite a bit better. Hopefully we can zonk out over the Atlantic. Our flight for Rome leaves in just over two hours, and we are parked at the gate.
I sent an email yesterday to the Thackers, the couple we are replacing at the Institute, telling them of our health woes and that we might not be in shape to do all (or any) of what they had on the program for tomorrow. Elder Thacker wrote back saying it was all cool, with a new beatitude: "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape."
Our next post will be from Rome!
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Final day at MTC
Today was our final day of classes at the MTC. We focused on how to work well with local leaders, instead of showing up and taking over. The CES Senior Missionary Coordinators also came and gave an inspirational message about how we will touch lives and be blessed for serving, using the story in Acts 9 about Saul's conversion as somewhat of an analogy. In the afternoon, we had a one hour presentation on the BYU-Idaho Pathway program, which is an online way to work toward a degree with very inexpensive tuition -- the hope is that we can point some of our YSA kids that way when appropriate.
By 2pm we were done, so we did laundry and called three of our kids (one more to go tonight) to say goodbye before leaving the US. The final shipment from Amazon was supposed to arrive today, but didn't; not a biggie, as it's an unimportant $7 item, but our fear is that they'll try to forward it to Italy somehow and we'll get stuck paying for it. My companion spent a bunch of time on the phone with two USPS offices trying to get it resolved.
Tonight we are packing and weighing suitcases again. So far, so good, but it will be a very early morning, getting up probably around 3am to shower, finalize packing, and be ready for the shuttle at 5:30am for our 9:30-ish flight. Getting up that early actually helps out, because we should be tired enough to sleep well on the overnight flight to Rome.
Dee has been really sick with a cold all day. As we say, she is "draggin' her wagon", but she's been a trooper, though she did skip most of the last hour to get some rest. At lunchtime we each got a Priesthood blessing to help us to be well enough to travel tomorrow. She feels a little better, and I feel much better tonight, though we aren't over it yet. Hopefully the very long day tomorrow will go ok for us, despite our colds.
We are really excited to take off for our destination. It's kinda scary to contemplate sometimes -- so many changes await us so quickly -- but this is what we've wanted to do for so long. We love serving the Lord.
By 2pm we were done, so we did laundry and called three of our kids (one more to go tonight) to say goodbye before leaving the US. The final shipment from Amazon was supposed to arrive today, but didn't; not a biggie, as it's an unimportant $7 item, but our fear is that they'll try to forward it to Italy somehow and we'll get stuck paying for it. My companion spent a bunch of time on the phone with two USPS offices trying to get it resolved.
Tonight we are packing and weighing suitcases again. So far, so good, but it will be a very early morning, getting up probably around 3am to shower, finalize packing, and be ready for the shuttle at 5:30am for our 9:30-ish flight. Getting up that early actually helps out, because we should be tired enough to sleep well on the overnight flight to Rome.
Dee has been really sick with a cold all day. As we say, she is "draggin' her wagon", but she's been a trooper, though she did skip most of the last hour to get some rest. At lunchtime we each got a Priesthood blessing to help us to be well enough to travel tomorrow. She feels a little better, and I feel much better tonight, though we aren't over it yet. Hopefully the very long day tomorrow will go ok for us, despite our colds.
We are really excited to take off for our destination. It's kinda scary to contemplate sometimes -- so many changes await us so quickly -- but this is what we've wanted to do for so long. We love serving the Lord.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Second day of S&I training (on the mend?)
My cold is actually doing quite a bit better: breathing without meds, not using much kleenex, but my energy is still a bit low and there was one afternoon application of cough syrup. Meanwhile my companion seems to be coming down with it (again?). Perhaps we need to get out of Utah to get healthy!
One reader asked how we were able to obtain 18 months worth of prescriptions to take with us. It's a good question, so here goes. We really liked the idea of not having to figure out how to find a doctor and fill prescriptions over there. For senior missionaries serving abroad, the church offers a very reasonably priced international health insurance policy from Aetna, which pays for up to one year's worth of prescriptions before departing. Once the Aetna policy was in place (Aug 1 in our case), we asked our doctors to write one-year prescriptions and filled them via the Aetna card at our pharmacy of choice. Our doctors didn't give us any hassle about that, since we had explained what we were doing. Once we got one year's worth filled, we then asked our doctors to submit another six month's worth of prescriptions to be paid for out of pocket. Fortunately, Costco is really cheap for most prescriptions without insurance -- I've learned that over the years because I have one prescription not covered by insurance (it's about 10x cheaper at Costco than at CVS). Problem solved, fairly inexpensively. Note that this whole exercise wouldn't have been necessary if we were to serve in the US, as is true with a good portion of our mission preparations.
Today we spent the full day (8am - 3:30pm) in S&I training, talking about how to prepare lessons, make the classroom a welcoming and safe environment for our students, and even preparing and teaching a brief lesson from the scriptures to another couple. It's stuff we mostly know, but it's always good to get fresh ideas from other teachers.
At the end of our class time, we had someone from church security talk to us for an hour about how to be safe as missionaries. They covered lots of different topics, and we got some good pointers out of it.
Tonight was the weekly MTC devotional with a General Authority of the church. They don't announce ahead of time who it will be, but tonight it was Elder Quentin L. Cook, one of the twelve apostles of our church, and his wife -- kind of a big deal for us Mormons. He told several touching/funny stories about his mission companions in England in the early 1960s, then he challenged the missionaries to love their companions, the people, their mission president, and the Lord. At the end he bore a very strong testimony of the fact that Jesus Christ lives today. It was a spiritual feast.
One reader asked how we were able to obtain 18 months worth of prescriptions to take with us. It's a good question, so here goes. We really liked the idea of not having to figure out how to find a doctor and fill prescriptions over there. For senior missionaries serving abroad, the church offers a very reasonably priced international health insurance policy from Aetna, which pays for up to one year's worth of prescriptions before departing. Once the Aetna policy was in place (Aug 1 in our case), we asked our doctors to write one-year prescriptions and filled them via the Aetna card at our pharmacy of choice. Our doctors didn't give us any hassle about that, since we had explained what we were doing. Once we got one year's worth filled, we then asked our doctors to submit another six month's worth of prescriptions to be paid for out of pocket. Fortunately, Costco is really cheap for most prescriptions without insurance -- I've learned that over the years because I have one prescription not covered by insurance (it's about 10x cheaper at Costco than at CVS). Problem solved, fairly inexpensively. Note that this whole exercise wouldn't have been necessary if we were to serve in the US, as is true with a good portion of our mission preparations.
Today we spent the full day (8am - 3:30pm) in S&I training, talking about how to prepare lessons, make the classroom a welcoming and safe environment for our students, and even preparing and teaching a brief lesson from the scriptures to another couple. It's stuff we mostly know, but it's always good to get fresh ideas from other teachers.
At the end of our class time, we had someone from church security talk to us for an hour about how to be safe as missionaries. They covered lots of different topics, and we got some good pointers out of it.
Tonight was the weekly MTC devotional with a General Authority of the church. They don't announce ahead of time who it will be, but tonight it was Elder Quentin L. Cook, one of the twelve apostles of our church, and his wife -- kind of a big deal for us Mormons. He told several touching/funny stories about his mission companions in England in the early 1960s, then he challenged the missionaries to love their companions, the people, their mission president, and the Lord. At the end he bore a very strong testimony of the fact that Jesus Christ lives today. It was a spiritual feast.
Monday, September 18, 2017
First day of S&I training
It is a very small world. Today at breakfast we sat down next to a small group of young missionaries headed for the Philippines, learning Tagalog here. I started chatting with a couple of them. The first was from Washington state, and the second said he was from California. I then said that we were from the San Diego area, and he said that he was actually from San Marcos, which is right next door to Carlsbad. Then I looked at his name tag, and it turns out he's the son of ScottM, a long-time colleague and friend from work. I had known that Scott's son was in the MTC, but it wasn't likely to run into him out of thousands of missionaries. Here's a photo we took and sent to Scott:
I slept pretty well last night -- the cough syrup and Afrin did their job. Today I'm feeling quite a bit better, but still not close to 100%, going through lotion kleenex regularly. Hopefully I'm on the mend.
Today we spent all day doing S&I training for YSAs. For those of you not up on all the acronyms, that's Seminary & Institute training for Young Single Adults, which is basically our assignment in Rome. There were 21 couples with us, including the Military Relations couples for much of the day. The S&I trainers talked a lot about how to plan and deliver lessons that work well for YSAs, with a bunch of interaction from the crowd. At the end of the day, a senior couple returned from a YSA mission in Germany talked with us for an hour about activities and how to involve the YSAs. We have another day and a half of S&I training.
After dinner, we watched a wonderful video of Elder Bednar speaking at the MTC on Christmas morning in 2011. The title of the talk is "The Character of Christ", and it was just over an hour long. He talked about how to turn outward as Christ did, toward helping others, instead of turning inward, which is how we all normally roll. It really gave us some good things to ponder and think about. There were some amazing stories, plus very animated and fun impersonations of Cookie Monster -- unusual for an apostle (to say the least)! Apparently the video is not available to the general public, being reserved for the MTC. So, if you want to watch this phenomenal video, you'll have to come on a mission!
I slept pretty well last night -- the cough syrup and Afrin did their job. Today I'm feeling quite a bit better, but still not close to 100%, going through lotion kleenex regularly. Hopefully I'm on the mend.
Today we spent all day doing S&I training for YSAs. For those of you not up on all the acronyms, that's Seminary & Institute training for Young Single Adults, which is basically our assignment in Rome. There were 21 couples with us, including the Military Relations couples for much of the day. The S&I trainers talked a lot about how to plan and deliver lessons that work well for YSAs, with a bunch of interaction from the crowd. At the end of the day, a senior couple returned from a YSA mission in Germany talked with us for an hour about activities and how to involve the YSAs. We have another day and a half of S&I training.
After dinner, we watched a wonderful video of Elder Bednar speaking at the MTC on Christmas morning in 2011. The title of the talk is "The Character of Christ", and it was just over an hour long. He talked about how to turn outward as Christ did, toward helping others, instead of turning inward, which is how we all normally roll. It really gave us some good things to ponder and think about. There were some amazing stories, plus very animated and fun impersonations of Cookie Monster -- unusual for an apostle (to say the least)! Apparently the video is not available to the general public, being reserved for the MTC. So, if you want to watch this phenomenal video, you'll have to come on a mission!
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Final Sunday at the MTC
Today we had church starting at 8:30am -- a bit too early for my taste given how I'm feeling, but there was a wonderful spirit in our Sacrament meeting. One young sister brought her violin on her mission, and she played a lovely duet with another sister on the piano. Each week they assign all the young missionaries to prepare brief talks on two different topics, and then they call on a couple of them, with no notice, to come up and deliver their talks! The kids did great today, and then they have a member of the branch presidency and his wife (Provo residents for whom this is a calling) speak to finish the meeting. In the afternoon we got a bit of down time, with each of us taking a short, well-deserved nap.
My cold is progressing: less sore throat, more runny nose, a froggy voice, low on energy. Fortunately I bought a couple of boxes of lotion kleenex which should get me through the weekend, barely. I'll be in line when the missionary store opens tomorrow to buy more! The tissues they provide in the rooms just don't cut it when you are going through them so quickly. The Gatorade we bought at the store yesterday has also been helpful in keeping me hydrated, and the Afrin got me through the night with a good sleep. I haven't used as many meds in a long time as I have this week, but I'm sure grateful for them.
As usually happens at altitude (Provo is at 4500 feet) after a few days, it is a bit difficult for me to get a deep breath. This will pass in a few days, right about the time we leave. I've only stayed above 5000 feet a few times in my life, and each time I got sick. GaryC and his wife want us to come to their house in Park City when we get back, but, since it's at 8500 feet altitude, wisdom dictates that I not even try to go there.
I haven't really had time to exercise, which is quite a change for me. For example, at home I spent an hour on my elliptical machine six days a week, but thus far I have only gotten 20 minutes on the treadmill down the hall. There is also a very nice gym in the basement, with lots of weights and bikes/elliptical machines. I miss the exercise, but between the busy schedule and not feeling great, it can't be helped -- we knew this was possibly one of the sacrifices we'd make by serving a mission. My wife does stretch and exercise some in the room before I wake up -- she's better than I am! We did at least start walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator to our third-floor apartment several times each day, which rather leaves us winded due to the altitude issue mentioned above. Hopefully in Rome we'll figure out a way to exercise more regularly once our schedule settles down there.
Those of you who know about my low-fat vegan diet may be wondering how that's working with the cafeteria food here. Four years ago I started the diet for long-term heart health, not for weight loss. Fortunately, they have a dietician on staff in the cafeteria to help missionaries with special dietary needs. I met with her Monday and asked for some beans and brown rice each night to give me some filling protein, which has worked well. They have a salad and fruit bar at each meal, so I get plenty of fruits/veggies. For breakfast, I have cold cereal with a banana and my choice or rice/almond/soy milk. Overall, I'm doing better at sticking to my diet here than I had feared, with plenty to eat, so I'm never hungry. Once I get to Italy, it'll be a different story, so stay tuned to see how that turns out!
One example of the kinds of things we have bought on Amazon is plastic coat hangers for our room. The room came with a few "loose" hangers, probably left over from prior couples, and a bunch of non-removable metal hangers, which are useless for taking to the laundry for example. There also weren't enough of them, so we bought 30 hangers for under $20 on Amazon, and now we have plenty. There's a "courtesy closet" down the hall where couples leave useful things when they depart, so you can "shop" for things like alarm clocks, nightlights, hair dryers, etc. We have taken advantage of that and will return the favor when we leave, including our coat hangers.
Small world department: at lunch today we were sitting with another senior couple on their way to serve in a mission office in Brazil. The wife mentioned the name of some dear friends of ours from Carlsbad, Linda/SteveO. Linda served her mission in Italy, which is how this came up, and it turns our that the two couples have been close friends for decades. Here is a photo, which we emailed to Linda/Steve:
Tonight after dinner we attended two devotionals. The first was the "departing" devotional, for the missionaries leaving this week. It was quite inspiring, with lots of advice mostly aimed at the kids and a bit of humor thrown in. For example, the MTC presidency and wives told them to behave and serve others while traveling to their destination -- not that young folks would ever need reminding of that! There were hundreds of us in the room. Several of the young missionaries got to stand for a minute and share something important that they had learned during their MTC stay. The second devotional was for the entire MTC group, several thousand missionaries, with the president and matron of the Provo temple speaking. The music was amazing, with several young missionaries performing vocally and on different instruments. Wow. I really love the "prelude" singing time where all the missionaries sing well-known hymns together with gusto, including a Primary song with two extra verses written just for the MTC missionaries.
Meanwhile, my cold kept getting worse, including the start of a cough which can only get worse during the night. Since I'd like some sleep tonight, we had an MTC shuttle run us out to a local pharmacy to get some cough syrup (Delsym) that works for me and a few other items since we were there, including more lotion kleenex. Mormons usually don't shop on Sunday, but this ox was definitely in the mire. My wife felt like she was coming down with the cold for a while too, but after her nap and dinner she felt fine. This always happens: she gets cold symptoms for a few hours and is done, while I suffer for at least a week. At least she can take care of me.
My cold is progressing: less sore throat, more runny nose, a froggy voice, low on energy. Fortunately I bought a couple of boxes of lotion kleenex which should get me through the weekend, barely. I'll be in line when the missionary store opens tomorrow to buy more! The tissues they provide in the rooms just don't cut it when you are going through them so quickly. The Gatorade we bought at the store yesterday has also been helpful in keeping me hydrated, and the Afrin got me through the night with a good sleep. I haven't used as many meds in a long time as I have this week, but I'm sure grateful for them.
As usually happens at altitude (Provo is at 4500 feet) after a few days, it is a bit difficult for me to get a deep breath. This will pass in a few days, right about the time we leave. I've only stayed above 5000 feet a few times in my life, and each time I got sick. GaryC and his wife want us to come to their house in Park City when we get back, but, since it's at 8500 feet altitude, wisdom dictates that I not even try to go there.
I haven't really had time to exercise, which is quite a change for me. For example, at home I spent an hour on my elliptical machine six days a week, but thus far I have only gotten 20 minutes on the treadmill down the hall. There is also a very nice gym in the basement, with lots of weights and bikes/elliptical machines. I miss the exercise, but between the busy schedule and not feeling great, it can't be helped -- we knew this was possibly one of the sacrifices we'd make by serving a mission. My wife does stretch and exercise some in the room before I wake up -- she's better than I am! We did at least start walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator to our third-floor apartment several times each day, which rather leaves us winded due to the altitude issue mentioned above. Hopefully in Rome we'll figure out a way to exercise more regularly once our schedule settles down there.
Those of you who know about my low-fat vegan diet may be wondering how that's working with the cafeteria food here. Four years ago I started the diet for long-term heart health, not for weight loss. Fortunately, they have a dietician on staff in the cafeteria to help missionaries with special dietary needs. I met with her Monday and asked for some beans and brown rice each night to give me some filling protein, which has worked well. They have a salad and fruit bar at each meal, so I get plenty of fruits/veggies. For breakfast, I have cold cereal with a banana and my choice or rice/almond/soy milk. Overall, I'm doing better at sticking to my diet here than I had feared, with plenty to eat, so I'm never hungry. Once I get to Italy, it'll be a different story, so stay tuned to see how that turns out!
One example of the kinds of things we have bought on Amazon is plastic coat hangers for our room. The room came with a few "loose" hangers, probably left over from prior couples, and a bunch of non-removable metal hangers, which are useless for taking to the laundry for example. There also weren't enough of them, so we bought 30 hangers for under $20 on Amazon, and now we have plenty. There's a "courtesy closet" down the hall where couples leave useful things when they depart, so you can "shop" for things like alarm clocks, nightlights, hair dryers, etc. We have taken advantage of that and will return the favor when we leave, including our coat hangers.
Small world department: at lunch today we were sitting with another senior couple on their way to serve in a mission office in Brazil. The wife mentioned the name of some dear friends of ours from Carlsbad, Linda/SteveO. Linda served her mission in Italy, which is how this came up, and it turns our that the two couples have been close friends for decades. Here is a photo, which we emailed to Linda/Steve:
Meanwhile, my cold kept getting worse, including the start of a cough which can only get worse during the night. Since I'd like some sleep tonight, we had an MTC shuttle run us out to a local pharmacy to get some cough syrup (Delsym) that works for me and a few other items since we were there, including more lotion kleenex. Mormons usually don't shop on Sunday, but this ox was definitely in the mire. My wife felt like she was coming down with the cold for a while too, but after her nap and dinner she felt fine. This always happens: she gets cold symptoms for a few hours and is done, while I suffer for at least a week. At least she can take care of me.
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Saturday off
Saturdays are off days for senior couples, and the rest is welcome because it's been so busy. Unfortunately, we couldn't really sleep in late because breakfast runs from 7-8am, and entering the cafeteria requires missionary dress code. 😞 No biggie.
Here are photos of our mag-stripe missionary cards, which open exterior doors and get us into the cafeteria. We also each have a physical key for our room.
After some welcome down time in the morning, we went to lunch at Guru's Cafe in downtown Provo, with my sister Marilyn, who drove down from Ogden, and my long-time friend/business partner/boss, GaryC, and his wife Roxanna. They just moved from Florida to Park City, which I hadn't known. It had been a few years since I had seen Gary, so it really great that everyone was willing to drive to see us. Here are some photos:
I seem to be coming down with a mild cold, so Marilyn took us to a market on the way back where we bought a few things including cold meds. Hopefully it will stay mild, particularly with the big trip coming up. We continue to place small Amazon orders for things we'll need during or before the trip. Thank goodness for Prime shipping! Sorella Whiting inadvertently had one of them shipped to our home in Carlsbad, then we were puzzled why it wasn't here at the mailroom after Amazon said it had been delivered, until our son asked via email what we wanted him to do with the items 😕. So we re-ordered it to be delivered here.
After a bit of relaxed time in the afternoon, this evening we went to visit a district of young missionaries destined for Italy. The instructor is a recently returned young sister missionary who is the niece of a long-time friend of ours, BradC, so we had asked if we could come meet them. We worked up a fun little program where we taught them some Italian culture issues that they will find useful; e.g., not making the "sign of the cross" when two missionaries shake hands with two Italians by crossing hands over each other (definitely verboten), and how to count with your fingers (a thumb is "one", thumb and index finger is "two", etc). We then gave a spiritual thought from Mosiah 16:1, which is on our mission plaque. Finally, we encouraged them to serve missions in 40+ years, explaining that the rules are different for seniors: we can hold hands, and then we got a big giggle from them when my wife "unexpectedly" gave me a peck on the cheek (I said "fantastico!"). We took turns: one of us spoke first in English, and the other then translated each phrase into Italian. They got to ask us some questions, and we had a lot of fun together. Here is a photo, with the instructor on the far right:
Here are photos of our mag-stripe missionary cards, which open exterior doors and get us into the cafeteria. We also each have a physical key for our room.
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| Elder Whiting and Gary |
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| Whitings, Marilyn, Gary, Roxanna |
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| Marilyn with the Whitings |
After a bit of relaxed time in the afternoon, this evening we went to visit a district of young missionaries destined for Italy. The instructor is a recently returned young sister missionary who is the niece of a long-time friend of ours, BradC, so we had asked if we could come meet them. We worked up a fun little program where we taught them some Italian culture issues that they will find useful; e.g., not making the "sign of the cross" when two missionaries shake hands with two Italians by crossing hands over each other (definitely verboten), and how to count with your fingers (a thumb is "one", thumb and index finger is "two", etc). We then gave a spiritual thought from Mosiah 16:1, which is on our mission plaque. Finally, we encouraged them to serve missions in 40+ years, explaining that the rules are different for seniors: we can hold hands, and then we got a big giggle from them when my wife "unexpectedly" gave me a peck on the cheek (I said "fantastico!"). We took turns: one of us spoke first in English, and the other then translated each phrase into Italian. They got to ask us some questions, and we had a lot of fun together. Here is a photo, with the instructor on the far right:
Friday, September 15, 2017
Final day of general training
Today was our final day of general missionary training, so we said goodbye to our two wonderful trainers, Sister Anderson (who is getting married tomorrow!) and Sister Lewis, with photos below:
And here we are with the Painters, the couple with whom we practiced teaching each and hung out a lot.
We also got a chance to do a practice gospel lesson with Sister Read, an LDS volunteer from the community. She was a very sweet lady. We met with her for 15 minutes to get to know her, then had 10 minutes to prepare a 20-minute lesson of our choice. Our lesson started with the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, explaining how the story illustrates spirit is as real as physical things. We then talked about how the spirit encourages us to look for our weaknesses and strive to become more like Jesus Christ.
In the afternoon we had a final gathering and instruction as a large group, including a fun skit by the young trainers in which they made a bit of fun of us older folks but also said how much we had to offer.
Here is a photo of us in front of the "famous" world map in the MTC, pointing to where we will be serving:
At dinner we met an Elder Conger from Logandale, Nevada, who knows our niece Mandi and her husband Brandon. Small world.
Now we are off for the weekend, which is nice, because we are pretty tired. Tonight we are doing laundry in the basement of the "main" building. There are lots and lots of washer and dryers! Here is just a part of it:
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| Sister Anderson with our district |
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| Sister Lewis with our district |
We also got a chance to do a practice gospel lesson with Sister Read, an LDS volunteer from the community. She was a very sweet lady. We met with her for 15 minutes to get to know her, then had 10 minutes to prepare a 20-minute lesson of our choice. Our lesson started with the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, explaining how the story illustrates spirit is as real as physical things. We then talked about how the spirit encourages us to look for our weaknesses and strive to become more like Jesus Christ.
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| Sister Read with the Whitings |
Here is a photo of us in front of the "famous" world map in the MTC, pointing to where we will be serving:
At dinner we met an Elder Conger from Logandale, Nevada, who knows our niece Mandi and her husband Brandon. Small world.
Now we are off for the weekend, which is nice, because we are pretty tired. Tonight we are doing laundry in the basement of the "main" building. There are lots and lots of washer and dryers! Here is just a part of it:
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