Final days at the MTC

Provo MTC

Well - we've finished all our training!!! Wow it has been a very busy two weeks with all kinds of training - spiritual, missionary, medical, computer, language. But we are ready to go!! We fly out on Monday night (9:30PM).

Here are the last of our MTC pictures.

{It may be a while before we get our internet up and running when we get to Manila -

so keep checking back - we'll post new pictures as soon as we can}

Our Tagalog language tutor - Sister Svedi. She was great!!

In front of a picture of Brigham Young

and Heber C. Kimball as they leave

for their mission to England. The

MTC has beautiful artwork everywhere.

Feeding 2600 hungry missionaries

The MTC cafeteria - a sea of

white shirts!!

Relaxing in the MTC lobby between classes and here come more missioanries!!

By the church office building and the Salt Lake Temple at our training in Salt Lake City

The Utah State Capital and the Conference Center - views from the

top of the Church Office Building - 26th Floor.

The Salt Lake Temple and Tabernacle and one of the beautiful

old homes in the "avenues".

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

On Sunday we were able to go to the one of the broadcasted sessions of the dedication for the Oquirrh Mt Temple in west Salt Lake Valley. We had gone to the open hosue when we were here in July - so it was special to go to the dedication. It is a beautiful temple set up on a hill not far off the highway. From this temple you can see the Jordon River Temple and the Draper Temple. You can see downtown Salt Lake but the temple there is blocked by the highrise buildings.

Pres. Monson presided at the session and Pres. Eyring read the dedicatory prayer. We attend with Alan's sister, Barbara Jean, her husband Jerry and their daughter, Charleen and her family. Charleen lives in that temple district. Her three kids also attended and did a great job sitting so long in the session. It was a great session!!

BUGS! (and language)

OK - Now I'm getting alittle worried...

We had an 8-hour class yesterday on parasites and bugs. Can I just say that if most parents had taken this class there would be no missionaries out in the field! But as we learned about all these gross things - we also learned out to prevent problems and treat them when we do encounter them. This was not my favorite class! Alan's seen it all before but I hadn't.

On a lighter note - our language classes are going well. We have our last two sessions on Friday and then we're on our own in the field. Tagalog is a very interesting language. I told the tutor that Yoda (of Star Wars fame) must have written it because the sentence structure is about the same - Store go I to, Sad today I am. And verbs are conjugated at the beginning, in the middle or at the end (or any combination of these) of the root. There are Spanish words pronounced the same but not spelled the same - school: in spanish esquela (I think that's right), tagalog eskewla. I can read it pretty well because the basic vowel and consonant sounds are like spanish but the accent is always on the second to the last syllable and there are words with 10-15 syllables. It's a challenge!!

Beautiful MTC

The MTC is just beautiful!! The grounds, the buildings, the classrooms - it's a wonderful facility! Here we are in front of one of the beautiful flower beds.

We made it through our first class in Tagalog. It was fun but very overwhelming. Lesson one: Ako po si Sister Jones. (can you translate?)

Here we are at the MTC!

We're here at the MTC and have made it throught the first two days!! It's been great!! Tonight we had a devotional with Elder Spencer Jones of the Second Quorum of Seventy. It was fantastic to be with over 2600 missionaries!!

We're officially Elder and Sister Jones! Tomorrow night we start our language classes - we get a crash course in Tagalog (6 hours). We'll share our first lessons with you.

BARRETT

I love this picture we took of Barrett at the plaza in Santa Fe in July.

He has such a sweet smile - his whole face smiles!

Kat and Bar

I realized I didn't post the pictures I wanted from Katalina's and Barrett's visit in July (so here they are). It was fun to have them here. Barrett insisted we go back to the Unser Racing Museum -we went there last year but this time HE was our tour guide. Then Alan, Barret and I rode the train to Santa Fe to go to the NM History Museum. We had a great day !!

We also went to Peter Piper Pizza one day with his maternal great grandmother - who he challenged to several games of air hockey (she won 2 out of 3).

Crazy Family...

Two of my three brothers recently visited me - Billy (turned 50 while he was here!) from Las Vegsa, NV and David (oldest sibling) from Madison, Wisconsin. David was here for a photo conference (in Santa Fe). It was good to visit with them both. I did some sewing for Billy while he was here - he is an entertainer with many talents. I've made costumes and props for him since high school. This time I made pants for his stilt walking. He wanted a pair of "jeans" with 65" inseam. Here he is towering over us.

We also did some "sight seeing" - went up on the Sandia Tram to the top of the mountain (10,000+ ft). Billy always has his juggling balls so he can get a picture (he has pix of him juggling all over the US and world).

No More Grass!! (or as the stone turns...)

Well, Alan decided after babying our front lawn for 13 years - it was time to go! We've worked harder in our yard here (with a smaller lot) than any other palce we have lived so he dug out the grass and gave in to the ROCK. Barrett would have loved being here when the dump truck came to deliver the rocks. Here's some before and in process pictures.