On our way!

After two weeks, our time at the MTC had come to a close. Hoping that we would remember everything we had been taught and making sure we had the emails of new friends, we were on our way. Before heading to Oregon we spent a few days in Salt Lake visiting Elder Terry's parents and watching General Conference. We also went to the Provo City Cemetery. I have a great love for family history and knew that some of my ancestors were buried there. So it was a mission for me to find out where.

These are my great great grandparents David White Rogers and his wife Martha Collins Rogers. They were the first of the Rogers family to join the church. They were taught and baptized by Parley P. Pratt. They joined the church in their 50's and went through many hardships and trials but always remained faithful to the Gospel.

We also had the chance to attend the temple and chose the Draper Temple which neither of us had been to before.

We are so grateful that we were able to attend especiallly when we found out that the nearest temple in Oregon is about six hours away from us!

At last we were on our way to Oregon. What a nice trip with beautiful scenery.

After about a 9 hour drive we finally arrived in Burns, which would be our first area. We unloaded our stuff and got a good night's sleep because the next day we would start off on another journey...to meet our Mission President. Stay tuned!

The MTC

We entered the MTC on March 19th. As we walked through the doors someone came right over to us to show us where we needed to go. Everyone was so kind and helpful. The first day was mostly an introduction. It was pretty neat to put these on:

Starting the second day, we started our missionary training. We have become very familiar with this book:

Preach My Gospel teaches everything we need to know about missionary work. We learned so much that week from our teachers who were all returned missionaries in their 20's. They were very helpful and patient with us senior missionaries.

We were kept pretty busy during the time we spent at the MTC. During the times we weren't in class or eating in the extremely yummy cafeteria, we would go and sit in the main lobby and study  the PMG manual.

This was our favorite spot, a comfortable couch out of the way where we could sit and read quietly or just watch the people coming in and out. On Tuesday nights a devotional is held. As we sat up in the lobby we were surprised when Elder Dallin H. Oakes and his wife came in! He was the main speaker for the evening. We just sat and watched him shaking hands with the MTC President and his wife and felt the great Spirit that accompanied him. And that Spirit continued on that evening when we were able to hear him speak and also to see a few thousand young missionaries singing "Called to Serve." I will never forget that experience.

In a short period of time we became close to different couples. We were divided up into districts which consisted of four couples who attended classes together all week.

Here is our district: Us, Elder and Sister Oscarson, Elder and Sister Wilde, Elder and Sister Young and our favorite instructor Brother Keepman









And here are all of the senior couples who were with us in the MTC!

We ended up staying an extra four days at the MTC to receive office training. We received a call from President Young, our mission president, the second day we were there. He asked us to take this training in case we will be needed in the office somewhere down the road. We agreed to this and learned all about the IMOS program which is what the mission office uses and also alot of things about Word Perfect that I never even knew existed. We don't know if we will ever need to use this training, but at least we are prepared in case we do!

We so enjoyed our time at the MTC. It is such a spiritual place. There is beautiful artwork in every hall. Here are some of our favorites:

And we can't ever forget the reason we are on a mission in the first place:

So long, farewell...for now

We had six weeks to finish up our mission preparations. Before we knew it, the time had come for us to leave. We spent as much time as we could with our family. Much to our surprise, we found out that Heather and Blake would be moving to Iowa and their departure date was the day before we would speak in Sacrament Meeting! That was the first goodbye.

The evening after we spoke, our children put on an open house for us to be able to say goodbye to our family and friends. And I was so surprised to receive a special gift.

This is a quilt made for me by the women of our ward Relief Society. They all signed their names on a fabric squre and then my friend Nita Iverson pieced it all together and another friend Brenda Morris quilted it on her longarm machine. It is here with me on the back of the couch and every time I see it I think of my sweet friends.

Too soon it came time to say goodbye. You can bet it was hard to say goodbye to these guys:

To the MTC in Provo and beyond!



Opening the Mission call!

It was quite a process getting everything done that we needed to in order to send off our mission application and wait for the call. Doctor appointments, immunizations, interviews with local church leaders just to name  a few. But at last it was all done and the papers were in. Then the waiting began. For senior couples it takes about one to two months to get a call back unlike the younger missionaries who usually get them within a few weeks. To help the time go by and make it a little fun, we decided to have people guess where they thought we would go and put flags on a world map to represent all of the guesses.

At the bottom of the picture of the map you can see the envelope we had been waiting for! The day finally came when we would find out where we would be going! We invited our children and their families and my brother in law Scott who was in town for the day. We all gathered around in anticipation!

(Note Scott trying to not show up in the picture!)
We finally opened up the envelope. Inside were letters to each of us individually from President Thomas S. Monson calling us to serve in the Oregon Euguene Mission. We would report to the MTC on March 19, 2012. A new and exciting adventure ahead!

And, the winner of our Where in the World are we going on our Mission contest was Nate Anderson who used to be in our ward. He was the only one who guessed Oregon and received a plate of yummy brownies for a prize.

My first blog post!

Welcome to the blog of Elder and Sister Terry! We are serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Oregon Eugene Mission. The name of the blog comes from a scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants which says: "And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father! And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me in the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!"
Doctrine and Covenants 18: 15-16