A week to remember at the Missionary Training Center

It is hard to describe arriving on a beautiful campus environment and be amongst 2,900 other missionaries from 19 years of age to some even older than us. The Spirit of the Lord was so strong and the food was amazing. The instructors were so spiritual yet we had fun also. The Tuesday night devotional speaker was Elder Neil L. Anderson from the quorum of the twelve apostles. As in Biblical times when the Savior appointed men to be his apostles, likewise today we have a Prophet and twelve apostles called by the Lord to serve in His church. We met senior couple missionaries who were going to serve in a large variety of missions.  Our leaders broke us down into groups called districts.  There were four couples in our district and  each couple were heading to a different area.  One couple, Elder and Sister Gunther, we're going to the east coast to serve a temple mission. The Muensings were headed to New Mexico and the Baumans were going to Berlin, Germany.  Although we were not required to learn Marshalleise since we are working with Saints from the Marshall Islands, we had a wonderful opportunity to get four hours of instruction in that language from a return missionary who served in the Marshall Islands.  We learned the basic greetings and how to bear our testimony of the Savior and his restored church.  We've got the basics down but need a "cheat sheet" to get through our testimonies.  Most of the folks in the branch of the church we are serving in Sacramento do speak English on some level.  We are most anxious to start meeting with the members and building a close relationship with them.  We will be arriving in Sacramento on Tuesday a.m. And will be settling into our apartment.  It has been many years since we have lived in an apartment so this will be like we did some odd 45 years ago.  The brother in charge of housing for the missionaries called Saturday and said we would be getting a new mattress and two new chairs and a love seat.  Yeaaaaaaa!  It's always nice to know that we will have a good nights sleep which is often rare between the two of us.  So now it is off to see the other part of our family in Walnut Creek, CA and enjoy spending a few days with them.  Amy's home is always a delightful, busy place to be but we look forward to sharing our MTC experiences with them and encouraging their children to look forward to the day that they can enter the MTC and prepare to serve the Lord.