The First Three Days at the Missionary Training Center

Before I can go to Brazil to serve, I need training at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. It is a beautiful complex of buildings that has about 2000 missionaries there right now.

Some only stay for short training, about a week, while others may stay for 6 weeks to learn a new language. It is one of the largest language training centers in the world.

Of course, I had to have my photo taken at the famous map – and I have my new name tag in Portuguese!

I met my new companion, Sister Brown, who in her pre-missionary life was an emergency room nurse. She is going as a medical advisor to San Bernardino, California. She is very nice, as are all the sisters in my district. Because we are all sisters, we are jokingly called a “sistrict”.

This is my sistrict – we really like being with each other and spend a lot of time together.

We have devotionals and learn about how to listen to people. One lesson took us WAY outside our comfort zone! We had to take a gospel principle and boil down everything we knew about it to one sentence that someone who knew nothing about church would understand. Then, we needed to stop three people walking by and explain it to them. Now, the people walking by at the MTC were all missionaries, so they understood what we were doing, but it was scary! I was given the topic of the final judgment and the three degrees of glory – try explaining that in one sentence to someone with no background understanding! I said that the more we try to be like God and Jesus Christ, the closer we will feel to them in this life and the closer we will be to them after we die.  I stopped three elders and told them this – then I got REALLY brave and found some Spanish-speaking missionaries and told them in Portuguese (They pretty well understood me – no missionaries going to Brazil here. They are all being trained in São Paulo). It was scary but fun and the Spanish-speaking missionaries and I laughed at our attempts to understand each other!