October 29, 2013

Day 2 at the MTC has been good & bad....mostly good.  Spent the day in classes and practiced teaching investigators with those in our district.  One couple in our district, Elder & Sister Wiscombe are going to Spain.  Elder & Sister Gardner are going to Kirtland and Elder & Sister Funaki are going to Tonga.  Classes have been good and fun.  What great people are here at the MTC!  Tomorrow we as individual couples we  will teach actual investigators that they are bringing in from off campus.  Hope we don't damage them too much!  Tonight we have a devotional with a General Authority.  We don't know who yet.  We are looking forward to it.

They feed us a lot!  And there are lots of choices.  But we are trying to eat wisely and are exercising each evening.  There is an exercise room just across the hall from us.

Now for the not so good part.  Our afternoon class was interrupted when they brought us an "Important Message" from the Travel Office.  We were told that they had just had a call from the travel office in SLC and that our visas had not arrived yet and we would be delayed.  (Remember my big fear that they would lose our visas?)  However, we  knew that they had given them to us upon our arrival at the MTC.  They were signed and sitting in our room, along with our passports and flight plans.  We left class and picked them up and took them to the travel office here at the MTC.  They verified that we did indeed have our visas and placed some calls to the Church Travel Office in SLC.  It seems that they have had some personnel changes.  Plus right at the time we were trying to call, the SLC office was having a fire drill.  We had a few scary moments.  Evidently someone was looking at an old list of delays and called by mistake.  But it left us feeling a little unsettled.  We think that even when we are in Brazil, we will still be getting "sorry, but you are delayed" calls.   We will be nervous until we are actually in Brazil.  Neal says that he is going to kiss the ground when he gets there.

We miss and love you all and are so grateful for your support!  As "privileged" senior couples, we can use the internet and facebook.  It is so fun and uplifting to see all your postings.  It helps us not miss family quite so much! 

Love you bunches,

Elder & Sister Shirley