Thursday, September 16, 2010

Dropping Your Missionary Off at the MTC

About a week before your missionary is scheduled to report to the MTC, they will receive an email directing them to a posting that will list their reporting time. Typically, the report date is a Wednesday and reporting times begin at approximately 12 noon and run until 2 pm. Missionaries report in groups based on the first letter of their last name. For instance being a "Z", our missionary reported at 2 pm on his scheduled Wednesday last June.

I recommend that you get to the Provo/Orem early especially during peak reporting season-summer and college breaks. We arrived about 11 am, had a leisurely "last meal" at the Creamery on 9th and then drove up to the MTC. The 9th East corridor was very busy with traffic and pedestrians trying to take pictures. You could spot new Elders and Sisters everywhere in the crowds. We figured that possibly over 140 new missionaries reported on the same day as our son. 

Gone are the days when parents and missionaries met together, cried and sobbed, hugged goodbye and then exited out separate doors. Now there is much less emoting, but it is still heart wrenching.

We parked above the MTC near the Provo Temple about half an hour before our missionary was supposed to report. We were directed to leave his luggage in the car, take pictures, hug and say our goodbyes, and then return to our vehicle. Then we drove into the MTC complex and pulled up to the curb  at a numbered space where several elders met us. The elders took our missionary's luggage, and then he went one way, without looking back, and his luggage went another.

We weren't even out of the MTC parking lot before our younger son said, "Okay, that was fun...now let's go back and get him."


  

No comments:

Post a Comment