Welcome to Our Blog

As an introduction to our blog, we thought it would be helpful to provide some background on what lies ahead for us over the next 18 months. On July 4, 2023, we received a letter from the leader of our church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) to serve as missionaries in the Peru Arequipa mission. We will be serving in Arequipa for 18 months and have the opportunity to meet local church members as well as those who are not familiar with our faith and invite all to come unto Jesus Christ. We will start our mission by spending two weeks in Provo, Utah where we will receive some training and then we will travel to Arequipa on February 5th. The Peru Arequipa mission consists of approximately 146 missionaries from all parts of the world. Most of the missionaries are young single men and women (typically 18-21 years old). Jalene and I will be one of three married couples serving in the mission. We will be speaking Spanish (I am relearning the language and Jalene is learning for the first time). We are excited to have this opportunity at this time in our lives and grateful for your interest and support. Hopefully, this blog will give you some feel for what we are experiencing.

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Second (and last) Week at MTC

Our time at the MTC has come to an end.  We will miss the Spirit that is felt there and the friends that we made.  Thought I'd share a couple of impressions.

1. Receiving our visas when we did was nothing short of miraculous.  When we received our mission call we were told that it could take about 8 months for our visa applications to be approved.  We submitted our applications the first half of September and they were approved just before Christmas.  In the MTC, we tried to meet the young missionaries assigned to our mission in Peru, only to miss them by a day.  They had just left to begin their missions.  We did learn, however, that out of their district, only one received his visa in time.  The others had to be reassigned to other missions in the states.  Then we learned of another missionary assigned to Peru, whose visa application was rained on and ruined.  How does that happen?  He had to start the application process all over again.  It's plain to us that we are supposed to be going to this mission at this time.

2.  In class yesterday, we were asked to fill out a self evaluation worksheet.  We needed to determine our strengths in the categories of Spiritual Strength; Education; Employment; Physical, Social, Emotional Health; Preparation for Emergencies; and Talents.  Then we needed to write down "What Can I Improve?" and "What Resources Can Help?"  I became very discouraged and then distraught as I couldn't think of anything to write, except under "What Can I Improve" under Spiritual Strength - "recognize the Spirit."

I prayed to know what my strengths are and didn't get any indication of what I should write.  Then later into the class, the thought came to me - you have faith.  When you have faith, it doesn't matter the talents you have.  You know that whatever comes your way, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, you will be strengthened and lead to know how to best deal with any situation.  And the bonus is - I recognized the Spirit.  I also realize that our talents are gifts from God and we should do what we can to develop our talents, but this impression at this time brought great peace.

There are over 1,000 young missionaries in the MTC being sent all over the world. They are amazing, friendly, high energy, and excited to serve.  We really enjoyed our time with them.  Our teachers had recently returned from their own missions and they were amazing as well.

Here is a photo of our district with our instructors for the second week, Sister Barlow and Sister Rodriguez:

Tim, Jalene, Bry Christensen, Cheri Christensen, Ainsley Barlow,
Nilda Rodriguez, Lynell Findlay, Russ Findlay, Kris Denison, Neil Denison

The mural behind us is a smaller replica of several murals in the new MTC building.  We were given a pdf of all the murals and a study guide that I have included below.  The murals are very beautiful.



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