Today was another wonderful day at the MTC. We are already wanting to put in our papers for a second mission. Our District consists of two other couples: the Stevens going to the New Jersey Morristown Mission and the Jensens to the Italy Milan Mission. Both couples are a hoot:
Elder Stevens was a cattle farmer, and Elder Jensen was a Genetics professor at Weber State.

While all three of us couples are going on "Office Missions," we have learned these past three days that our primary mission is inviting and teaching the Gospel to those who don't have it. Our "Office" responsibility is an "Additional" assignment. So we are both learning to have role discussions with volunteer "investigators" and evaluating ourselves (and being evaluated by our trainers.) At lunch we sat with a couple who are being sent to work in the office in the Russia Moscow mission and a sister from Alaska who is going to the Puerto Rico San Juan Mission.

We still cannot shake hands or give hugs! Wednesdays at the MTC are normally very busy with missionaries and parents: but all we saw were missionaries! Anyway, it was a very spiritual day!

June 2: Our first two days at the Missionary Training Center are now behind us. They have been both exhausting and exhilarating, but we are learning much, thanks to some of the best teachers we've had in our entire lives! We didn't know that we would be spending so much time learning how to teach others about the Gospel. Apparently our office assignment is secondary to teaching. We've seen friends and former colleagues at the MTC, not to mention our oldest son Grant, who works full-time in the development office and who gave us a tour of his operation. (He records, videotapes, etc.) Tonight Elder Walter Gonzalez was the General Authority who spoke at the devotional. Grant was in his booth there.

It's also been an unprecedented week for the MTC. We entered yesterday morning with the instruction that we could not shake hands or hug anyone (except each other). Three missionaries in the MTC are under quarantine for swine flu, and another 15 are being carefully watched. Tomorrow the parents of 525 missionaries entering the MTC will not be able to go into the building with their sons or daughters because of the flu possibilities. When you consider that hundreds of people come into the MTC and hundreds go out every week, it's not surprising that the Church wants to be careful. In addition, the missionaries who were supposed to fly out this week will not fly out until next week. Finally, we senior missionaries are not allowed to have any contact with the younger missionaries: this is totally contrary to the usual policy!

We've been praying hard that we will have someone to rent our home during the 18 months we will be gone. Apparently our prayers have been answered, because we have four serious possibilities coming to look at our home during the next three days. Thank you for your prayers in our behalf.

We can't promise to have blogs as often as you might like them from us. Our trainer recommends that we use only our Preparation Days (Saturdays) for doing things like e-mail, blogs and SKYPE. So very likely our blog will be updated only once a week, except for the next few days while we're at the MTC.

By the way, the temple posted in this blog is the Newport Beach Temple, which is in our mission, and which we will probably serve in when we get the opportunity.

Gary & Signe's mission to the California Anaheim Mission

Hi all! Today, 1 June 2009, was our first day at the Missionary Training Center.