Mission President Training

Okay, the first thing that I have to post is that I AM ECSTATIC!!!!! I guess that somebody somewhere knew that it would literally kill me to wear stockings every day for the next three years, and as of June 16, 2010, the dress code for sister missionaries has been modified! I haven't even been to my area yet, and we already had our first miracle! They announced it in a wives' session of the conference, and I asked if I could please have a hard copy of the policy change, because I knew that my husband would never believe me if I just told him. I was not, however, the only happy camper among the wives. There was quite a reserved cheer that went up from the audience. The new policy says that "requiring sisters to wear nylons was removed from the handbook, missions may make exceptions depending on climate and local customs." Another favorite part of the changes says "Skirts that are mid-calf or longer are generally no longer available. They are not in style and are difficult, if not impossible, to purchase. Skirts should be modest and cover the knee when sitting." Well wahoo and yipidee! My mission just got a whole lot more fun!

All that inconsequencial fluff aside, and getting down to what really matters, the past four days we have been sunup to sundown at the Missionary Training Center. We've had classes and workshops and breakout groups with the 113 other couples who are in our freshman class of 2010. The MTC is a well-oiled machine. The first morning that we pulled up, a volunteer reached into our car and shook hands with Bruce. "Welcome, President Winn and Sister Winn," he said. Many of the volunteers who helped out with the mission president training seminar this week had taken the time to study pictures and memorize names and faces ahead of time of all 228 people who attended. The staff and volunteers had fresh flowers in every room, refreshments available during every break, guides posted at every corner to help you when you were lost and couldn't find your room (which was me ALL the time, surprise, surprise!) The place was like Disneyworld - everyone who worked there was pleasant and smiling and happy to be alive! We were fed breakfast, lunch and dinner daily, and the food was delicious! Fortunately, we were only here for four days, or you would have had to roll us all out the door. And meeting the other couples who will also be serving as mission presidents was just the best! They are all the nicest people you'd ever want to meet. It kind of made me sad that we can't all go to the same place and just be friends for the next three years. The things that other people had to sacrifice to come here, the couples who are uprooting families and taking children with them, the couples who are going to far, far places that are very third world, those who had to try and sell their houses when there is no market for selling houses, so they just locked the front door and left....all these amazing people who are giving up so much and every one of them just smiles and says what a blessing it is to be able to serve this way. I repent for any murmuring that I may have done. Our mission is a piece of cake.

Hands down the best part of this week was feeling the spiritual atmosphere all around us. Many of the apostles were with us all week, teaching us and bearing testimony to us. It was a constant round of learning how to teach young missionaries to be missionaries, and learning more about our Savior. Elder Packer spoke to us this morning. He is getting along in years, and seeing him was sort of like seeing my dad - you know, you've looked up to them and learned from them your whole life, and you think they are going to be young and strong forever, and suddenly they're not - and it makes you stop and think. But he came and spoke to us, taught us and promised us that Heavenly Father would bless our families while we were away from them. He never said a single word about it, but we found out later that his grandson died yesterday, and still he came to speak to us and comfort us in our insecurities as we are about to begin our missions. How much we have to learn from examples like that!

Equally inspiring to us as the apostles were, there were also 2, 500 young men and women at the MTC at the same time as us. They are each so bright and eager, so anxious to go to Russia, or Kenya or Texas or the Philappines or France or Mexico and teach the gospel to people there, and serve their fellow men in any way they can. Each of them volunteered to give up 18 months to two years of their life, pay their own way, and serve a mission. Each one of them has the light of Christ in their countenance. We attended one combined meeting with them, and as their voices joined together to sing the opening hymn, I couldn't even sing through the tears that fell as I listened to them. A Royal Army indeed. There was only one lonely Sister Missionary among them headed for the Utah, Salt Lake City Mission. We met her, a beautiful young woman named Sister Tan from Singapore. She has been in the MTC since March, and should have been on her way to her mission already, but she developed some medical problems after she arrived in the MTC, so the doctor is going to keep her under his care until her medication is adjusted correctly. We hope that she can join us in Salt Lake City soon.

Tomorrow is our last day. Elder Holland will speak to us in the morning, and then our Prophet, President Monson will address us. Then they will feed us lunch, and they turn us lose. Anything we haven't learned by then will just have to become a trial and error experiment once we arrive in Salt Lake City. I can only imagine there will be plenty of those!

Tomorrow evening we'll get to have dinner with Kristi, Jolene, Rob, some of their friends and Perry, Justin and Coralie. We're looking forward to that! Monday morning at 9:00 we will be in Salt Lake. We have about an hour to spend with the current mission president and his wife, then ready or not, here we come!