Leaving the MTC

Our second week in the MTC consisted of two days of training with CES (Church Educational System), preparing to teach Seminary and Institute classes to youth and young adults -- which we may or may not be asked to do in Japan. We learned to study the scriptures in a systematic, even analytical way, and then prepare to teach them focusing on identifying, understanding, and finally applying principles and doctrines. It reminds me a lot of Elder Bednar's "learn, act, become" pattern, which has been discussed at length in our North Logan stake for the past year.

On Wednesday we said goodbye to our missionary couple friends serving in CES or Young Single Adult assignments (Caldwells going to Tahiti, Nuttalls going to Lithuania, etc...) and began our Military Relations training. We learned so much Wednesday and Thursday -- all of our MTC training and experiences were powerful, but the Military Relations portion directly answered so many of our specific questions about what we would actually be doing (and generated even more questions that will depend on the direction we get from our mission president!). We may be directing Addiction Recovery meetings, so we got some training on that. We may teach new member lessons, we will certainly have Family Home Evenings with members and investigators. We may be teaching a new course on being a resilient, self-reliant family, which originated out of concern for military families facing separation, but would be useful for any family. The book is currently in editing, they hope to have it out to us later this spring. We're excited about that and hope we have opportunities to share it with families facing deployments and other stresses of military life. Bruce traveled a lot in his military career and we dealt with many of the issues addressed here -- but these folks now are going to war zones, which creates a huge new level of anxiety and concern. I thought a lot about Dave and Angela as we went through this material -- it's really good and we hope it will be a blessing to families who are going through this.

Friday morning we left the MTC. When you put this sign on your door, it's the real deal --

We then spent Friday morning at the church office building in Salt Lake City in the Military Relations office -- more inspiration and direction, I'll write more about that later. We had lunch at the cafeteria there, did a little shopping at Deseret Book and walked through Temple Square (beautiful with spring blossoms), and then headed out for Logan. We commented frequently on the familiarity of the drive, it just felt so normal (!) and how surreal it is that we're actually flying to Japan on Monday!  Maybe it'll hit us once we're actually on the plane!