Thursday, June 19, 2008

MTC 6-18-08

MTC
Wednesday June 18, 2008
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Now for
today. Wednesday is "New Missionary Day" and it is a wonderful sight. The following are some pictures that I took coming back to the main entry about noon after our morning Office Skills class. Many families were dropping off luggage and missionaries, taking pictures of one another, getting directions, separating to get the missionary registered, and going in for the farewell meeting. What a joy.
Each time we leave the campus we must sign out so they know where we are at. We are pretty free to come and go as we wish, but they want to know what we are doing, presumably because they are responsible to our kids for their parent's welfare. 

Today Norm & Joann Challburg came down from Morgan to have lunch with us and I got these pictures on the way to meet them at the front entry. As you might expect, Norm parked in a space reserved for MTC Branch Presidents, but he can get away with anything and everyone loves him; as we do. Trisha met us at TGI Friday's and we had a fun time bragging about our kids and reminiscing. After lunch we gave Trisha our last load of laundry which she will bring to us this evening. She has done everything we could ask while we were here. What a choice, beautiful woman.
While at lunch, Cindy wanted some free medical advice. She had found a crease in her skull just above the hair line and in line with her nose a few weeks age. A couple of nights ago, in our cozy double bed, she asked me to feel this place on her head; this was just after prayers and getting into bed. I thought she was getting friendly and somehow this made her feel warm and fuzzy, but it was not the case. She was worried about this crease in her skull and wanted to know if I knew what it was. Well, she got Norm to feel it and he explained that it was the place where the cranial bones come together and was very normal. I told her it was an expansion joint and was stretching apart as her brain was expanding with all of this learning at the MTC. Well, she believed Norm and ignored my explanation. Isn't that just how it goes.

When w
e got back and signed in we passed many parents, red-eyed, heading for their cars after the farewell meeting. Boy do I remember those three times we experienced it. You think you won't cry and bang, there you are with the rest of them.

Our office training today focused on the MOS program and the finances of the mission for the men and doing the mission newsletter for the women. The finances are really a complex job, more than I had imagin
ed. Especially in Russia where much is done in cash without receipts and that does not fit well into the Church's bookkeeping protocols. I'm sure I'll get it eventually and I'll try hard to keep the president (and me) out of jail.

Tonight was our last Russian lesson with Katya. She is a sweet 26 year old Ukrainian girl here to go to graduate school in America. We have had a lot of fun with her and learned the alphabet pretty well by the end of th
e session. We also learned a simple prayer and testimony. From now on it will be practice, practice, practice.

After class we got our clean laundry from Trisha, & gang. Those granddaughters must be experiencing whiplash from all the goodbyes with us. Tomorrow night it will be final for two years.

Now we are trying to pack and we said goodbye to the Masons who are leaving early tomorrow for Chile as the office couple there. What nice people we have met here.


Tomorrow Cindy goes (with me) to the dentist to get a small filling replaced before we leave for Russia. We have seen videos of medical procedures there and decided it was best to get the work done here before we left.

Time to sleep. Good night
Elder Doug

2 comments:

Trisha said...

What a great recap. Thanks for the compliment. I love you guys.

Shannon Simmons said...

Hola to my parents! Right now you are on your way to Russia. Are your papers in order? It was great to talk to you last night. I love you!