Jan. 31 - Our first official day as Missionaries!!!

After spending a couple of fun days with Mom & Dad Reese (Janet & Jonah too!) we arrived at the Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah. We were greeted with smiles by everyone and we were directed to the dorm building to unload our luggage into our room on the second floor. When we drove to the dorm we were greeted by the young missionaries who carried all our heavy luggage up to our room. Wow, such royal treatment! Next we went to the main center to check in. As we entered there were lots of other senior couple missionaries there, the question everyone asks is "Where are you going? and where are you from?" It was fun to hear all the places everyone was going. Check-in was very efficient and organized. We went to the bookstore to pick up a supply packet there for us. They have everything a missionary would need in there. Next we went to lunch. Wow, very large room as we had been told about, it would have been hard to see Peter in that room. There was a sea of young Elder and Sister Missionaries! The food was very good, with lots of variety. They have Salads, Wraps, and all the Fast Food type things, plus several main courses to choose from. It all looked very good. We were told that Senior Missionaries always get to go to the front of the line, but there were no lines. (We did notice them at dinner, but we never had to wait , we must have timed it right as we walked up each time and got our food. Everything we ate was very good.
Next we went to an orientation meeting, lots of information on how the week would go and a talk from the Mission Training President and his wife. Very inspiring. They also had a special musical number by a young missionary sister who played a violin solo, it was very good. Also everyone got to tell about themselves and about their mission calls. Very interesting, there are about 30 couples in our group and they are going all over the world doing all kinds of different missions. One couple was going to Nepal! (And he likes trekking! How lucky is that!) Another couple was going to a part of Turkey to open that area. They are sent there as the first missionaries in that area, interesting thing is they go there and just live, no suits! Just go and live as if they had moved there. We had the rest of the day free to unpack and get settled in, (plus our reading assignments for tomorrow-two chapters in "Preach My Gospel"! Glad we had studied that book before we left!) We have email but no Skype in our dorm room. So you can email any questions we didn't answer in our blog!
Here is our glamorous apartment for the next 2 weeks - we are living at the MTC dorms - some couples had to go to the Marriott Hotel. Even though the dorm is not as nice, we are only a few steps away from everything, it would be a pain to have to drive back and forth from the hotel.