June 8, 2013

We had a wonderful opportunity to be the group of missionaries who were shown off to visiting Baptist ministers. I guess it is fairly common for groups of non-LDS people to come tour the MTC and hear a little bit about what goes on here. It is less common for those visitors to be leaders of other faiths. Anyway, they came to the MTC, met with the MTC President, Elder Hinckley and a whole bunch of HR people here at the MTC and talked about our church and the missionary program. I guess there was a bit of tension about why our church is trying to "steal away" their members. In their opinion, we should be happy that they are good people who have come unto Christ and we don't need to be stealing them for our church. Anyway, after that tension, they came to our classroom. We were the 1 district of missionaries in the MTC they chose to show off. They came in and asked us questions..

"What would you say to me if you met me on the street?"

"Why are you serving a mission, paying for it, and delaying your education?"

"Why are you different than other young people your age?"

"What can we say to the youth in our congregation to help them be like you guys?"

"What do you do when you aren't in school?" (With further clarification, we found that he was asking what we did on Preparation Day.)

 

We answered all of the questions superbly of course! And basically the general answer, was that because we love Jesus Christ and we know he loves us, we want to make sacrifices to serve him. They were really impressed with us. (Our teacher was very proud and so were the MTC people). There was such a spirit of love in our teeny little classroom with tons and tons of people (more than were in the picture). We didn't even know until later that there had been some tension about the whole converting people thing. They also had us recite our missionary purpose, which was interesting because we don't really know it in English because we always recite it in Spanish. We struggled through it in English. We got the gist because we know it so well in Spanish, but the words weren't exactly the same. Then luckily they let us recite it in Spanish, and we did that really well. (Our teacher about had a heart-attack when they asked us to do it in English. hahaha. ) Every time one of those ministers opened his mouth it was to praise us for how much we loved God and how much they loved what we were doing for Christ.  It was pretty awesome. One of the guys was really sweet and he said a prayer and blessed us before they left. It was funny because he put his arms around the people next to him, and we all folded our arms and looked down. It was a little awkward for the Elder next to one of them, because they guy grabbed his hand, but then he was standing next to a Sister, so he obviously couldn't grab her hand. Also, after we took the picture, one of the guys wanted to hug each of us, including the sisters. We felt a little awkward, so we made it into a group hug kind of thing. We are pretty sure it was better than refusing to hug the guy. And since the President of the MTC was there, I think we are OK. Haha. (President Nally is in the bottom right corner of the picture). I am right in the middle, but I am standing between the two tallest guys in our district and I look really short.
Anyway, that was a really cool experience. I am very grateful for it. We got a little taste of what it will be like to be a real missionary who frequently gets to share their love of Jesus Christ with others.