January 10-16, 2022

 Week two at the MTC.  The days were filled with seminars and classroom activities.  We had a teaching exercise with an "investigator" that went alright but felt a bit too rehearsed to us.  They provide a short bio of the person we will be teaching so we can prepare a lesson on what we feel would be appropriate or the most beneficial to the person.  This person must do the same scenario week after week and it felt a little plastic to us.  Or it could have been our bad attitude about role playing and making senior couples pretend to be doing something useful.

One of our assignments this week was to approach a missionary companionship at random and interview them.  We went straight to the laundry and found some Elders heading to the Netherlands to talk to.  We asked why they decided to serve a mission and to tell us about a time when they felt they had to rely on the Lord for guidance.  Then we asked what they thought senior missionaries do?  We loved their responses: "I guess look out for us and keep the mission running smoothly."  That sounds more like your mission president's job.  Did they know what MLS (member, leader, support) is?  No idea.  Would it surprise you to know that our purpose is the same as yours (to invite other to Christ)?  "Yeah, we didn't know what senior couples do."

We were told several times that teachers are no longer allowed to provide paper copies of their presentations but that we were welcome to take pictures of the slides.  We think sharing paper copies is Covid related.  We mostly just took notes but there were a couple slides I wanted to share.


Don't you love Elder Holland?  Loving, compassionate, funny and to the point!


And Elder Bednar, always the great teacher.

The Tuesday evening devotional was a World Wide Missionary Devotional broadcast from the Provo MTC to all the other MTCs around the world.  All the missionaries serving will watch it at some point.  Elder and Sister Soares spoke to us, via Zoom.  They both gave wonderful talks and provided sweet council for the missionaries.


There were two additional murals outside our classroom I wanted to share.


Peter:  the resurrected Savior visits his disciples and directs Peter to feed his sheep.  

John 21:15 "Lovest thou me more than these?"  

How will I show the Lord I love Him?


Esther:  Queen Esther, at the peril of her life, goes in unto the king to save her people.

Esther 4:14 "Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"

What can I accomplish with the Lord's help?

On Thursday all missionaries departing that week had to take a Covid test.  It was a swab up the nose test that we all enjoyed.  At least we got to torture ourselves with the swab and not have someone else trying to locate our brains.  John's didn't get into the test packet correctly so he had to repeat it.  We were sitting in a room of 20 seniors waiting for results.  The doctor came back in after 15 minutes and said "Elder Cooper, yours is still cooking.  All the rest of you can go except Elder XXX".  We all turned to look at him, knowing he had tested positive.  They were sent straight to their dorm room with instructions not to leave until someone came to talk to them.  They are from Brigham City, UT so I'm sure they were sent home to isolate before driving to their assigned area.

That evening we took advantage of the MTC laundry again.  We provide our own laundry soap and other supplies but the machines are no charge.  Doing the laundry there was one less thing to take care of while packing Friday night.



There are two long aisles of machines.  The missionaries come on their P-Day to do laundry.  Some use the time to talk with their families, others study or read.  It is amazingly quiet and clean.

Friday morning was our last session at the MTC.  We snuck away about 11:00 am and headed back to Salt Lake City.  We both had haircuts, then went home to pack the car.  We had a lot of things set aside but not everything made it into the car.  I had my second shingles shot on the way to my sister's home.  

Our niece's husband Bob came over to help us repack the car so everything fit in better and we could see out the rear window.  We considered using one of his soft roof top carriers but opted not to.  Barbara fed us a nice dinner and we turned in early.

We left my sister's house about 7:00 am Saturday morning and drove all the way to Sidney, Nebraska.  It took us a little more than 8 hours to drive the 543 miles.  I was achy and tired all day; a little nervous about getting Covid again, which would delay our crossing the border into Canada.  At the hotel I took my temperature and was surprised to discover I really was sick!  101.6 temp.  I took a handful of Tylenol and crawled into bed.

Sunday morning I felt fine and realized that I must have had a slight reaction to the shingles shot.  That eased my mind a lot - now if the weather would improve, I would be even happier.  The big storm was one day ahead of us and we worried about catching up to it.  We had a personal Sacrament meeting in the hotel room before leaving for Omaha.

Omaha was a 6 hour drive; 400 miles.  The roads were dry and clear all the way.  My brother Pat and sister-in-law Donna drove up from Topeka, Kansas to spend the evening with us.  We had dinner and a great visit with them.




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