MTC Experience Continues, November 6 - 10, 2023

      Our class work starts at 8 am on day 2 at the MTC.  We have a different teacher in the morning than we have in the afternoon.  Sister Lunt is our amazing morning teacher.

You can see she is pretty tall.  I think she said she was 5' 11" inches tall. 

     After teaching us some concepts out of Preach My Gospel, we had an opportunity to apply what we were taught in a getting to know you activity. We were paired with another couple from a different district where we were told to spend about 30 minutes getting to know each other.  Remember the couple standing next to us in the big group picture in my first post, the sister in the yellow jacket and her husband? That is the couple we were paired with- crazy huh?  Meet the Rollins - Kevin and Susan. They 

are from southern Utah near Brian Head. We found out that it's their second marriage for both of them.  They both have one son from their first marriage.  They own their own business.  While visiting with them, we found out that Elder Rollins son had passed away and they both talked about some spiritual experiences they had at that time that helped them come to terms with that tragic event.  

      In our afternoon class with Sister Barlow and Benson, we learned that with the information we learned about our new friends, we would need to challenge them with a "will you" question, identify and testify of the promised blessings if they accept our "will you " challenge, and share testimony.  Well, all of us in our district were a little dismayed that we were not told this objective before we started the getting to know you activity because we could have been more intentional in our learning things about our couple.  But luckily for us, both Elder Rappleye and I had the same prompting on what we should challenge the Rollins to do. We felt they needed to write down their spiritual experiences they told us about when Elder Rollin's son died and share it with his son's children.  The problem was the "will you" challenge had to be something they could do by the next day. So, we decided to have them commit to a time deadline of when they would have it written down and shared with their grandchildren. 

     After class was over for the day, we skipped dinner and headed to the snack room to grab a quick bite to eat before we had to be at choir rehearsal for the devotional that night.  Class got over at 5pm and we had to be at rehearsal by 5:30pm, so it didn't leave us a lot of time.   When we arrived at the rehearsal, they directed us to fill in the seats from the bottom up, so Sister Rappleye ended up on the second row and Elder Rappleye ended up on the 4th row. We were so excited to find out that we were singing "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing ", one of our favorite songs.  Elder Rappleye decided to sing baritone. Doesn't he stand with his white hair among all those young Elders! They were all very nice young men and enjoyable to be around.  Sister Rappleye sang 2nd Alto and sat next to a senior sister going to serve in Santa Rosa, CA and a Jr. Sister missionary from Colorado Springs, CO (where we lived for 5 years).  We rehearsed for an hour and then had a short break. After we were back in our seats before the devotional started, they announced that Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf and his wife, Harriet was going to be the speakers for the devotional.  All the young Elders and Sisters let out an excited shout that sounded like they were cheering because the BYU Cougars football team had just scored a touchdown. The excitement was electric. 

We found out the next day that this picture above was in the church news online article.
about the MTC devotional.  Sister Rappleye is on the second row in black next to the other senior missionary that was singing the opening song, "Called to Serve" with gusto. 

     Sister Uchtdorf encouraged the missionaries to be courageous, be kind, be an example, be a light, be temple worthy, have a plan - make the plan of happiness your plan, find joy in serving, and make sure the power of prayer is available to you. 

     Elder Uchtdorf talked about how our missionary name tags are our badge of honor to represent Jesus Christ, and we will succeed because Jesus Christ is our strength. He talked about two attributes of Christ - faith and hope. Faith is a principle of power, it produces miracles. Hope is like an anchor, helps us to press forward, and endure to the end.  It was a great experience to be a part of.

Elder Rappleye was loving that there was spam and BYU chocolate milk in the cafeteria. 

     Wednesday, day 3 at the MTC was all about learning to share the gospel on social media and presenting our challenge to the Rollins.  And the Rollins had to give us a challenge.  They challenged us to listen to Elder Brock P. Hales, April 2019 conference talk about answers to prayer. We did listen to it after dinner before the devotional that night.

     We attended the Character of Christ devotional in the evening with all the new missionaries that entered the MTC that week. The presentation was based on Elder Bedar's devotional given at the MTC about 10 years ago.  I read that devotional several years ago, but it was a great refresher. It was very good. Here are just a few highlights - the character of Christ turns outward in love, compassion, and service, so remember it's not about you! The challenge is to increasingly turn outward in your life instead of inward.  Only through the atonement of Jesus Christ can we obtain the character of Christ and become like him.

Here is a sculpture on the MTC campus depicting the calling of the apostles.  It's the actual boat used in the church's Bible videos.

     Thursday, day 4 was more talking about sharing the gospel through social media, this time using messenger. Plus, we had our follow up with the Rollins where each couple had a chance to find out if the challenge we proposed was accepted and if not to reinvite them to try to compete their challenge.  Our afternoon teachers also taught about adjusting to missionary life, senior style and we did an activity in the PMG book to evaluate ourselves in 10 different Christlike attributes. It's the first time I've seen a way to evaluate myself on something like that.  We are always being encouraged to become Christlike, but this evaluation helped me see how it translates into everyday life.  After dinner, we got the opportunity to attend a session at the Provo temple with all the couples in our district. That was very nice because that was an activity where we were back in our comfort zone, something we were familiar with doing.

     Friday, day 5 at the MTC was our last day. It was my favorite day. It was less time in the classroom and more time engaged in activities.  We had our last activity with the Rollins. They called it the help activity, but I can't remember why (senior brain). We just got to decide between us what we wanted to do on campus to bond more. We all wanted to go view and discuss the beautiful murals they have in the T4 building. There are 2 murals on each of the 6 floors in the building.  All are amazing.  I'll just post a few of them. 

     Elder Rappleye is standing by a huge visual display which is in the T4 building as well.

This is a mural of the sons of Mosiah.

     The top picture is a picture of young Joseph Smith.  

     The picture to the right is a picture of the brother of Jared molting the white stones that the Lord touched and caused them to give light to use in the barges as they crossed the ocean. 

     The bottom picture is Moses parting the Red Sea.

Sister Lunt also talked to us about how much we as senior missionaries can help the younger missionaries in encouraging and uplifting them when they are discouraged, struggling, or homesick. Then they gave us an opportunity to go outside and find some younger missionaries and talk to them and find ways to encourage and uplift them.  The first set of Elders we talked to were going to South Korea and had been at the MTC for 8 weeks, so they were leaving the MTC soon. We had them practice their Korean on us. Sounded pretty good to us, so we told them we were impressed and great job! We also had time to talk to another Elder who had just come into the MTC that week.  He was going to in Thailand.  He was in good spirits and claimed he was adjusting well to the MTC.  We just told him that he was in the right place and would be awesome.

     This was our last time with our district. Here is a picture of our district.  From left to right - Elder and Sister Killpack (from Firth, ID), welfare and self-reliance mission to London, England; Elder and Sister Clark (from Henderson, Nevada), CES seminaries and institute mission to South Africa; Elder and Sister Vester (from West Valley City, UT), humanitarian mission to Spain; Elder and Sister Mickleberry (from Denver, CO), humanitarian mission to Thailand/Laos; us, and Elder and Sister Frodsham (from Newcastle, CA), welfare and self-reliance mission to Lyon, France.  Missing was the Coopers (from Roy, UT), humanitarian mission to Dominican Republic.  They had to leave the MTC early and return home because Sister Cooper got covid.  They had to finish their MTC experience through zoom.

     We headed to our last meal in the MTC cafeteria.  As we sat eating our lunch, we were facing the missionaries that were still waiting in line for lunch.  It was an extremely long line, the longest line I had seen the whole week.  Most of the missionaries were visiting with each other, but then we spied one sister missionary between a group of missionaries.  As we watched, we noticed that no one was paying any attention to her or talking to her.  She had her head down and kept looking at her phone.  Both Elder Rappleye and I agreed that she looked lost and maybe feeling like she didn't belong.  Elder Rappleye said, "She looks like she could use some encouragement."  I said, "I wonder if I could go to the front of the line and get her lunch."  Then the spirit whispered, "Why don't you?"  So, I got up, walked over to her, and asked Sister Johnson where her companion was.  Shoe pointed to a table where her companion was already eating lunch, apparently, she had gotten something different for lunch that didn't have as long a line. I told Sister Johnson that I could get her lunch for her so she wouldn't have to wait in line anymore.  She perked up.  I told her to follow me, and we walked around to the front of the line.  I had her wait at the condiment station while I walked over and said, "excuse me" to the missionaries at the front of the line, grabbed a plate of chicken tenders and fries, walked over to Sister Johnson and handed the plate to her.  She was so thankful, and I could see that her spirit had been lifted.  I certainly hope she felt God's love for her at that moment.  I just wished I talked to her for a little bit after that instead of walking away.  I knew she was anxious to eat her lunch, so I didn't want to detain her. Also, I wish I had gotten a picture of her, but I didn't have my phone. I wish I had the inspiration to look for a missionary to take to the front of the line at every meal at the MTC.

     The last meeting of the day was a safety and security meeting for all the senior missionaries.  They just gave us advise on staying safe and telling us certain things to watch out for while out in the mission. field.

     Then we were saying our goodbyes to everyone in our district.  All of them were staying in the MTC for one more week of training.  We were the only ones finished with our MTC experience.  We headed home to have one more weekend to do a little more last-minute preparations and spend a little more time with family.