Happiest place on Earth

We walked through the doors of the MTC one week ago, and discovered an amazing place full of unbelievable people. Everyone smiles and says "hello" and "how are you doing?" and "how can I help?" It is a far cry from the "h" words one might hear on the "outside." We have really felt the spirit here constantly, except when I was learning to blog and I drove it away temporarily.

 Dinner at Sam Hawk Restaurant with the Armitages

Hello Kitty car seats out side the restaurant. Who would think that a white kitten could drive?

Taking a study break at a BYU-Santa Clara basketball game.

We have a lovely small apartment with an excercise room across the hall, no TV, but all the peace and quiet we need to read and study and get ready for each day. The cafeteria serves three squares a day with great variety and much more than you can or should eat. They even serve a catered buffet lunch at the chapel where we take our classes.

On our first day we met missionary couples from all over the world, heading to various places all over the world. There are also marvelous couples who are here to train who will serve in there local area. They have all been called to serve in various capacities from office work and "car czars" to member support, genealogy, overseeing humanitarian efforts of water projects in thirds world countries, and even dental welfare services. Missionaries come and go on various time schedules depending on the nature and language of their calling. Every week more missionaries come as if they are being trained and packed into a very large fireworks display that eventually fires off and drops smoking hot good people (in a spiritual way) all over the globe.

We had a small glitch in our program training assignment that turned into several small miracles. We basically started Humanitarian training a day late and they were condensing it by one day because one of the couples needed to catch a plane for Sierra Leone in Africa. This caused one of the other couples to nudge us to meet with a man who was instrumental in creating the Clinic we are going to in Guatemala. He gave us an overview of how things came to be that really added to our testimony and left our jaws dropping. Then we had to take a train to Salt Lake the next day to visit the Welfare Square as part of our training. When we got off of the train we walked up to the Trax Station to catch a commuter to the airport to rent a car for the next week. On the platform we started to talk to this couple about our age and come to find out that she is the sister of Roger Lyman, our friend and former bishop in Salem. The other part of the story is that Diana and this Sister have great grand mothers who were best friends in Legrande Oregon. Very Small World!  We would not have had either of these encounters if our schedule had not been in "error".

The Following are pictures in and around the MTC.

The mountains behind BYU looking over the Law School

This is the Provo Temple in Spring time.

This is the chapel where we take classes

Our new corner of the world.

This photo was taken of the Great Salt Lake on a very "Good" day!

Office staff trying to track the missionaries.

Hermana Milne and Sister Weeks in class.

One fourth of the world's largest laudromat.    

Diana studying in that laundromat.

Missionary Training Center

As we arrived in Utah we were greeted by Brenda and Tom Armitage and they graciously took us into their home in Payson and to Church on Sunday so we could be ready to enter the MTC on Monday the 3rd of February, 2014. They accommodated our excessive luggage by filling up Tom's camping trailer. We enjoyed dinner at Tucano's on Saturday night and a marvelous family dinner at Shane and Jessica Armitage's on Sunday night. ( The green sauce was to die for.)

At this point I have to give a shout out to our son Kevin who set up our blog and to our daughter in law Sarah who helped me navigate it. Without those two, I would have pulled the rest of my hair out by now!

On Monday it was time to reload those bags and head for Provo. We stopped for a few photos on the way before we tested the system of the Lord's Training facility.

Seriously, would you take the missionary discussions from these two?

Notice the long wool coats? We will send these back to Oregon before we board the plane for Central America, but they sure feel good in Utah.

There is nothing like having the young Elders come out to help you
get those bags to your room. I hope they will be around when we
leave,

And the field is white already to harvest

So Longs and Fare Wells

Before we get too far along on our journey, we need to acknowledge the many great get-togethers we enjoyed with family and friends at various locations that for us were a chance to be with people that we will only be able to communicate with via technology for awhile. I am going to list the major events here and then try my skills at posting some photos that should jog our memories of the good times.

Office "retirement" ( change of venue) party
Family Temple Sealing trip
Farewell Talks at Cedar Creek Ward and Family Dinner
Oldest 4 granddaughters at El Gaucho's ( Almost Spanish Dinner)
John's Incredible Pizza Party and Sleep Over
Stake Conference and Open House at Chris and Lennae Bishop's House
Newport Days
Gotcha Kacie at Fudruckers
Setting Apart by President Doty

 Friends/ Staff

Family

Another view of staff











The nineteenth hole