What Every Sister Should Know About the Missionary Training Center

First day

When you arrive, you will be greeted by a host who will help you with your bags and go with you to collect your name tag, MTC ID card (which lets you into the cafeteria), your study materials and books. Then you’ll drop off your bags in your room and take your study stuff to your classroom where you will meet your teacher, district and companion. Then you head to a big “Welcome to the MTC Meeting” with all of the new missionaries and the MTC presidency and the MTC Relief Society Presidency. It is great! Next, dinner. After dinner, you’ll have some time to unpack and then you’ll go to a teaching experience (in English) where in a group of 30ish missionaries you move from room to room teaching one investigator by just raising your hand if you have something to say. The first day is awesome! 

I literally COULD NOT STOP SMILING! It’s amazing.

What to bring to the MTC

·         Mints – not gum

·         Post it notes

·         White board markers

·         Lotion

·         Thank you cards

·         Watch

·         Basketball shorts for gym time

·         Headphones for gym time in 2M

·         Pictures of home, family, friends and good memories

·         Pens – in lots of colors. (They will brighten your day!)

·         Language notebook, personal scripture study notebook and journal

·         Laundry soap, dryer sheets and “delicates” bag (the washers here are super heavy duty!)

·         Pillow – I’m glad I brought my own pillow. They have pillows, sheets and blankets here, but I sleep so much better with my own pillow!

·         HEALTHY NON-PERISHABLE SNACKS.  Think trail mix, dried fruit, protein/granola bars, microwave popcorn (there are microwaves everywhere!)

·         A bag for bathroom stuff and a bag for shower stuff. My shower stuff bag is a mesh “delicates” laundry bag that has a loop on it that I can hang my stuff in the shower. It dries really fast, so it works well!

·         If you have musical talents, bring sheet music (church approved, of course)! People are always needed for special musical numbers. They have violins, cellos, flutes and pianos here for our use – so leave your instruments at home. :)

What to buy at the bookstore (you can go any day, not just p-day)

·         Stamps

·         MTC water bottle

·         Lanyard pull out thing to hold your ID card

·         Ring to attach your key to your lanyard

·         Flashcards on a ring that fit on your lanyard

A typical MTC P-day (at least for me) includes

·         6:30 wake up – NO SLEEPING IN

·         Laundry – go either EARLY morning or afternoon to avoid crowds

·         Email time – 1 hour. Use the computers in the laundry room because they send pictures. Bonus – you can get your laundry AND email done at the same time

·         Nap!

·         Temple visit (Eat in the cafeteria. I hear it’s amazing! I’ll try it this week)

·         Study time

·         P-day ends at 5 for dinner and you’ll have class at night

*If you want to wear P-day clothes all day…you can! You can’t wear them in the cafeteria, but you can get a sack breakfast and lunch which are great!

During the first week at the MTC, you have a lot of personal study time. And companion study time. And personal language study time. It’s tempting to walk over to the computer lab and check your email or to talk with your awesome district instead of working. Decide now to be a hardworking, exactly obedient missionary and it will make life at the MTC enjoyable and satisfying.  

The MTC is the HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH! Do everything you can to come with a humble, teachable heart, positive attitude and a determination to be obedient. You will quickly love the MTC!

My kasama (companion) Sister Golightly

The classic MTC photo

Happy (late) Veteran's Day!

We like to celebrate holidays. It jazzes up the MTC monotony a bit :)

Another week has flown by! During my first devotional at the MTC, I looked at those missionaries with their white usher badges helping people find their seats and I decided it was my dream to usher while at the MTC.

This week my dream was a reality. I ushered for the L. Tom Perry devotional this week, which also meant I got 3rd row seats and he TOTALLY made eye contact with me. He told us a super cool story about the missionaries evacuating the Philippines that I don't think has even hit church news yet, so I'll give y'all a summary:

There were 24 missionaries that still needed to evacuate, and they all gathered at a church building. They needed some way to get from the church to the airport. Somehow the stake president got a hold of a ***jeepney.*** All 24 missionaries crowded on and they made it to the airport. They all had plane tickets, but couldn't get on the plane because people were giving huge sums of money for seats on the planes at the airport. A US solider dropping off cargo from his cargo plane saw the missionaries and came over to ask what they were doing. They explained their predicament and he said they could sneak on his plane. Every single missionary in the area affected by the storm was safe. 

I know that this is the Lord’s work. I feel so blessed and humbled to be called to serve these wonderful people. I know that the Lord will guide and protect His missionaries. I hope I can learn how to truly become His missionary. 

Yesterday our teacher challenged us to bear our testimony to 5 different sets of elders or sisters around campus. In the bookstore, we asked if we could bear our testimonies in Tagalog to some sisters there and one said she was from the Philippines! After we finished, she told us (in Tagalog so I might have missed some stuff) that we were great at speaking the language, and had strong testimonies. She said we would bring such a strong spirit to the Philippines, and she was so excited for us to serve there. She said she knew we would do many good things. Just talking to her, and feeling her kindness and encouragement made me so happy to serve in the Philippines. She was such a kind sister! I'm so grateful we were blessed talk to her, and that I was able to get a glimpse of the Filipino people. I can't wait!

  

This week’s laughs: 

-Today a sister stopped my Kasama and me in the laundry room and told us, "It’s so different to see you two normally and like... this!" Yeah, it looks like I just rolled out of bed and came to the laundry room to wash my clothes because that’s exactly what I did. My Kasama and I were a little taken a back. But, hey, we both have a good sense of humor so we just laughed about it. 

-Last night while studying, I looked at a list of scriptures in Preach My Gospel (textbook missionaries use to teach lessons from) and said to my Kasama, "Oh we already read those, right? They were no good." She said, "Yeah, they were dumb." Then we both realized what we just said! We are the worst missionaries ever! The scriptures listed were fantastic; they just didn't apply to what we were teaching. :)

-This week’s item of men’s clothing that I found in my laundry was a sock (much better than last week). Why does this keep happening to me??

-I am missing like half the socks that I came here with. I have no idea how, because I am so careful to put them in my dirty clothes bag, and get everything out of my washers and dryers. It’s a mystery. We joke that the cafeteria workers come down to the laundry room and get socks out of the washers and dryers, chop them up and put them in the food. That solves the missing sock mystery and explains why the food is so strange sometimes. :)

  

Love y'all so much! I am so blessed to have all of your support. Write me a letter or Dear Elder and let me know how life is for ya. I'd love to hear from you!

Mahal Kita!

Sister J

Filipino sister we met in the bookstore 

***Definition of a jeepney  (added by Sis. Jackson’s mom)

Jeepneys are the most popular means of public transportation in the Philippines. They are known for their crowded seating and flamboyant decorations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeepney

Love, Laughter and Learning

This week has been amazing! For the last two weeks I think I was drowning in a sea of Tagalog, but this week I started treading water! I can feel the Lord’s help all the time. I am so grateful for the growth we have had this week!

We are teaching new investigators. (By the way, these are teachers pretending to be people they interacted with when they served their missions in the Philippines. The life stories are true; our interactions with them are not staged.) One is named Lester and the other is Kenneth. Lester is great; he is just not interested in what we have to say AT ALL! His wife is working in China and she met the missionaries and loved them. She is the one who gave us the referral. But our other investigator, Kenneth, is amazing! We have had great progress this week, even though we only taught two lessons.

When Kenneth was in college he was in a motorcycle accident and is now paralyzed. Shortly after (or right before...language barrier) his dad passed away. He just found out that surgery will never make him walk again. He told us that he doesn't believe that God loves him, because of all the terrible things that have happened to him. And the one time he prayed was to ask God to save his dad, and God didn't answer his prayer. My heart just goes out to him! I know that the gospel will help him so much! We were a little over whelmed by all this in our first lesson, but our second lesson went so well! It was amazing! In our first lesson we challenged him to pray. We followed up on this challenge in our second lesson. He told us he prayed and didn't feel anything. I asked him why he thought he didn't feel anything. He said he doesn't think God will answer him, but he wishes he could have faith. I asked him to read Alma 32:21-22. I told him that his desire for faith will grow into faith with the help of the Lord. I promised that if he prayed again and had faith that he could receive an answer to know if God loved him, that he would get that answer. Then, the pamphlet I had been searching for earlier LITERALLY fell out of Sister Golightly's scriptures into her hands. It was amazing - such an inspired lesson.

The teacher that acts out Kenneth is also the teacher that acted out Roy, our very first investigator. So, he has pretty much seen all of our mistakes. He told us he was super proud of how far we have come, and that Kenneth can feel our love for him. And that is what is helping us teach by the spirit. No wonder why Christ said, "By this shall man know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." I am so grateful that the Lord has blessed us with love for Kenneth, and continues to bless us with guidance in our lessons, and with the spirit.

This week my favorite personal study time was reading about Humility in True to the Faith and reading all the scriptures referenced. It would be an awesome Family Home Evening discussion topic, if you get a chance. It was great to dissect this virtue.

The funnies this week are pretty long:

Our teacher told us that the MTC is making us "loco" because our whole district laughs at the dumbest things now :)

-Nagsisipagsisinungasinungalinyah is the longest word in Tagalog. It means "to tell fake lies," which doesn't make much sense to me. How would one “tell a true lie"?

-Last Saturday Sister Golightly and I were standing outside the gym waiting for it to open. I saw a cute little bird, chirping and flying across the sky, toward the gym. It kept going, flying really fast, then, SPLAT into the brick wall! It fell to the ground and Sister Golightly and I ran over. She said a tender prayer for it, and we watched it take its last shallow breaths, feet twitching as it died. 

A few days later we found out 

the word for wall in Tagalog is "dingding." 

-My roommates and companion are so cool! 

We have picnics on the floor at night and chat. 

It’s the little things in life that count here at the MTC.

-Last preparation-day doing laundry guess what I found in my dryer. Men’s underwear. Yuck! Super unexpected.

-Our first lesson with Lester, he asked us if we could speak Tagalog. We said a little bit. Then literally right after that we asked him to read a section of a pamphlet we brought. He started reading, and then looked up very confused and said, "This is Sebwanu, not Tagalog." I have no idea how we got a Sebwanu pamplet, but how ironic was that?!

-While teaching her lesson to an investigator, my roommate introduced "The First Vision" as "The First Ugly Poop." 

Language mistakes are the best!

Mahal po ako ninyo! Magbabasbas ang Diyos!

T-shirt Thursday with my roommates. 

(T-shirt Tuesday would have sounded better, but I thought of the idea on Tuesday night, 

and we all really liked it so, we couldn't wait!)

The first snow fall! We were so cold. 

We took a picture with a previous missionary who starred in "The District" (reality show on BYU-TV).

#mtccelebstatus

My kasama and I with our Sister Training Leaders. They left the MTC on Monday. They were fantastic!

Happy (and hard) Days in the MTC

This week was amazing! And exhausting. Hard in a super great way. I learned so much and I am excited to share! While my companion and I were preparing our fourth lesson for our investigator I felt such a huge impression that I needed to learn how to ask him to be baptized in Tagalog. Crazy, right?!  It was only our fourth lesson! But I followed the prompting and when I asked him to be baptized he said yes!! It was amazing. The spirit is so strong. They tell us as missionaries that we need to teach by the spirit, but we definitely are taught by the spirit as well. Every day.

So when I asked our investigator to be baptized, he told us he was already baptized. I quickly looked for a scripture that told about baptism by immersion. Turns out the one that I had him read was about baptism for the dead! After he read it he asked us (in Tagalog), "Am I going to die if I get baptized?" or something like that. I don't really speak the language, but that's what my companion and I are pretty sure he said! We quickly tried to clear that misunderstanding up in our broken Tagalog. Oh man! At least we understood what he was saying this time :) Baby steps!

The next morning in class our teacher told us that we were done teaching Roy. :( So sad. But then.... PLOT TWIST!! ROY IS OUR NEW AFTERNOON TEACHER!! It was SO weird to walk in after lunch and see Roy. In church clothes. Teaching us Tagalog now. During a break my kasama and I asked him for some personalized feedback. He said we gave him some of the most memorable lessons, not just because every single one was hilarious, but because he also felt the spirit really strongly during our lessons. :)

Oh, also.... Happy Halloween!! My Kasama and I have way too much fun together. We are always laughing at our mistakes, and having a great time. We decided to dress up like twins for Halloween! (pictured below) Chambray shirts, glasses, orange white and black chevron shirts... Awe, totes presh! But we do work really hard too! We balance fun and work well. We have a clip full of flash cards that we carry around all day and quiz each other any spare moment we get. I love Sister Golightly! It's hard to imaginge going to the Philippines and getting separated from each other by what she calls, "The Reaping" (hunger games:).
 

My favorite scripture study sequence from this week:

Matt 7:7-11

Nephi 1:5

Prayer in the Bible Dictionary, paragraph 4
 

Check it out if you get a chance. I know that prayer in behalf of Gods children is so much more powerful than praying for yourself. Praying for help is not the easy way out-- it is a form of work. Once we pray for rightous desires, God will bless us with things that he already wants to give us. I am trying to pray for my language ability. Not for my own benefit, but so I can benefit God's children and share His message with them. I know that I cannot learn Tagalog on my own. I pray that He will bless me with the knowledge that I need in order to teach what he needs me to teach the people in the Philippines.
 

Here are this weeks funny highlights:
 

-While practicing "getting to know you" in Tagalog with some Elders, I was playing the role of investigator. They asked me if I was married. I said no. They asked, "Why not?" I wanted to say, "Because I am a child!" Instead I said, "Because I am a book!" My Kasama had no idea what I was trying to say and she looked at me for a couple secconds and asked, "Why did you say you are a book?" Haha good times!
 

-My teacher told my kasama and I not to worry about our mistakes that we made with him. In the field he told an investigator, "Jesus kills for you." Oh man, that's pretty bad!

-Our district leader was giving us a little devotional one night. He told us (and this was in English) "You are all tools, whether you like it or not!" People still make mistakes, even in English. I love that our district is close enough that we can all laugh together at that.

-We found a tree that smells like pink starburst. For real.
 

Mahal Kito! Mahal po tayo ng Diyos!

 

Happy Halloween!

 

Our district

 

My roommates. Love these ladies!

 

The starburst tree

I'm in MAHAL (LOVE)!!!

I love the MTC! I love my kasama (companion)! I love my teacher and I love my district! I love my "residence hall" and roommates and Sister Training Leaders! Everything about this place is absolutely amazing!!! I am so excited and blessed to be here.

On our first day at the MTC, after we got our name tags (so amazing!!), our books, dropped our stuff off, met our teacher, met our companion, and learned some Tagalog, the mission presidency and their wives talked to us. I loved what one counselor’s wife shared. She told us to smile, because the Light of Christ comes out through the puffiness of our cheeks. Good thing my cheeks are so puffy you can’t even see my eyes when I smile - all people can see is the Light of Christ! I seriously couldn't stop smiling all day.

The Mission President’s wife talked about Jacob 5 and the Parable of the Vineyard. Every time the master commands the servant to destroy or to work in the vineyard, the servant asks for more time. But then the last time the master commands the servant to work in the vineyard, the servant (the prophet) asks for more workers (missionaries) and then the master (the Lord) comes down and works with all of them. HOW COOL IS THAT!?! I am so grateful that the Lord has blessed us with more workers and that I get to be one of those workers. But you can be too! The Lord needs everyone to be a missionary! AND I love that the Savior, Jesus Christ will work with us every step of the way. I know that this work (especially the language) would not be possible without him.

On our first night, we were placed in a room with about 30 other missionaries and an actor investigator. We were all supposed to role play, and just raise our hands when we have something to say. I learned that it is really important to take the time to ask the investigators questions- about themselves and if they have any questions for us- and learn about what his happening in their lives so that we can better help them. Also, we need to keep our message happy! The gospel is good news after all!

Another really amazing thought from my second day in the MTC: if the children of God do not repent and be baptized, how important/ useful is the atonement of Jesus Christ? It is our job to make sure the atonement wasn’t for nothing. We each need to make Christ’s sacrifice mean something by repenting of our sins and mistakes every day. 

We taught our first investigator yesterday. In only Tagalog. It was really hard. Sister Golightly said a prayer and bore her testimony, and then I was just going to say, "The gospel is important" but I ended up saying "the gospel is love." Sister Golightly and I are just saying that the spirit decided to speak through me and tell our investigator that the gospel is love. It totally wasn't just my terrible Tagalog ;)

Sister Golightly and I are BFF kasamas! I love her! We get along really well and both of us are trying hard to learn the language and obey with exactness. Our branch motto is “obedience brings blessings, but strict obedience brings miracles!” I love that motto, and Sister Golightly and I both agree that we need a miracle very much if we want to be able to learn Tagolog. I feel so blessed with my kasama. I am so grateful also that the Lord gave her the gift of tongues so that I can be blessed through her.

List of humorous mistakes that Sister Golightly and I made on the first day:

1. To get into doors at the MTC you have to slide your MTC ID card through a scanner. There are doors to get into the stairs to our residence hall. We tried all six stairwells and none of the scanners were even working! No red lights, no green lights. So we finally just took the elevator even though we didn’t have suitcases. Our roommates told us that we can just open the door to the stairwell- they aren’t locked.

2. We forgot scriptures to
"Learning How to Teach an Investigator" night. Duh!

3. All four roommates locked ourselves out of the room. We needed to go to the help desk to borrow the spare key. BUT no PJs allowed and you have to be wearing closed toed shoes outside the residence hall. I was in PJs, Sister Golightly and Sister Morral had yoga pants on (also not allowed) and Sister Smith had basketball shorts on, so we voted on her to retrieve the key. She didn't have any shoes on, and since Sister Golightly and I were both wearing flipflops, she had to borrow Sister Morral’s slippers. Hahahaha!!! Another Sister went with her and all was well. :)

Malhal Kito!!!

Goodbye Vancouver, Hello MTC

October 20

I'm so grateful that so many family and friends

 were able to come over to say goodbye. 

Sunday was a fun celebration for my departure. 

This is starting to feel real!

October 23

Holy Guacamole! 3:45am start to my day. 

I'm excited this day is finally here... 

but sad to say goodbye to these guys.

Salt Lake City airport arrival. I'm almost there!

My grandma and grandpa live about 15 minutes from the Missionary Training Center. They picked me up at the airport, provided a much needed nap, and brought me to my new home for the next 6 weeks.

Sister Matheson was my official greeter when I arrived. 

She is from Australia, and will be serving her mission in Korea. 

This place is awesome!