Typical Day in the MTC

General Conference. The first time I stayed awake for the majority, only fell asleep twice. But also the first time I actually enjoyed watching it. And the first time I was watching it surrounded by people my age, which made it much more enjoyable. All 2,100 missionaries crammed into one space. It was pretty grand. The trend we all had noticed was about the Atonement of Jesus, repentance, and faith. There were other topics, yes, but those ones stood out the most.

I also have a very good record of the ties each of the brethren wore that spoke. Elder Manly and Sister Foote were a great help at times on determining what colors and what patterns there were. I also get to be the fake weather director in Elder Manly's wedding. All of us sisters have different jobs. S. Smith is the best man who has to wear a red leather suit. S. Richey, my comp, gets the wedding bouquet, S. Zeller mans the food bar, S. Foote mans the punch, and S. Blocker gets to be the minister at the reception. At first, when the note was passed, S. Zeller, Foote, Blocker, and I were going to end up his wives, but we don't practice polygamy. So he had to change it. I passed out all of the mints that mom had sent me during conference. I enjoy sharing! For those of you that watched, I was not in the choir. Sad, I know, but two of the elders, E. Nettesheim (net-tes-hime) and E. Morin were. Our teachers took pictures of them on the TV screen and showed us.

Our typical schedule is wake up at 6:30, either eat, exercise, or do personal or comp study. For the past while it has been exercise then breakfast. We then go and teach at the TRC (Teaching Resource Center) at 11. We have and "investigator," we don’t know whether they are a non-member or a member, and we teach the gospel to their needs for about 25 minutes. Very enjoyable, I have always gotten nice, open people to teach. The elders in our district seem to have more challenging people.

After TRC, we go to our classroom in a different building and we read and discuss things as a class that is on our schedules. That is with no teacher. We eat lunch, then return to class where we have a teacher. Either S. Davis or S. Seegmiller. S. Seegmiller is out of town currently, so Bro. Lovell is our sub. Every one that works at the MTC has served a mission before. Bro. Lovell is from Washington, closer to Olympia. 

Our Elders leave us Monday at 4am! :’( Then us sisters move to the 5th floor for our visitor center training. We have to climb so many stairs. 

Our original dorm was Elder’s dorm. Sisters were moved into there because there was a bat infestation in the dorm we were supposed to be in. Today we moved into those dorms, all nice, clean, and bat free! You can really tell the difference between the two dorms. Sister’s rooms are bigger, a ladder on each bunk bed, and closer to our classroom building. We were in the furthest building away. Our walking time is cut down a lot, and we are away from all the construction. 

So at about 2:30 we go to the referral center and make calls and contacts to people who may have requested a free Bible or Book or Mormon. Wednesday, a contact I had found, who S. Richey had called, called us back! It was amazing to listen to her teach him over the phone. She taught him how to pray. She also talked to him about why he was interested in receiving a Book of Mormon. He is too shy to meet with the missionaries in his area just yet, but I sent them an email about him, hoping soon he would contact them on his own. We gave him their number. 

After the referral center, we return to our classroom for a bit, are taught, then left alone for study and planning, then dinner, then straight back to the classroom to be taught again by our other teacher until 9:30. We teach the teacher, a role-play where they are an investigator or a less active member. S. Richey is an excellent teacher, and I am great moral support! My goals have always been to talk/teach more and testify more. Some days are better than others. 

We then head back to our dorms. Sometimes our elders will walk all the way back with us, and sometimes they wont. But they do every time now because our building is so much closer! Closer than theirs even! But they have fewer and fewer days with us, just twoish more. We are supposed to have quiet time at 10:15 and lights off at 10:30. We try, but six people in one room, who have a lot to talk about, it is hard at times. 

On our p-days, we sisters go and play four square with our whole branch. Just today, the elders were having lots of fun. But S. Richey stayed in for a long while, in the queen square. 

I won’t be getting my electronic device until I am in my mission. Which will be fantastic. I will be able to take pictures on that and upload them, instead of going to three different computer rooms to find one computer out of 50 that works well to upload pictures. I know of one that is perfect, but my comp doesn’t want to go there and she doesn’t really let me make those kinds of decisions. I may be Sr. comp, but I am just too much of a push over in this sense. Bothersome at times, but oh well. I still enjoy her.

We sisters in 13m, our dorm, have been moved to a true sisters' dorm, 18m. They had put sisters' in an elders' dorm because there was a bat infestation. But now it is clean and we don’t have to walk the whole length of the campus to get to class. I'll take a picture of the map to explain later. I got agitated and just wanted to move everything in one go, but it took two long trips. I also helped sisters bring their luggage down the stairs while I waited for my comp to finish up her last packing. I was just ready to get a move on, literally! 

I took a lot of pictures of Elder Lip! Elder Lip is tube of Vaseline lip stuff that my two-year-old nephew, Gus, just loves and is obsessed with. He is dressed in his missionary attire. Gus can see his grand adventure, but I am running out of time and my comp is getting antsy with me. I feel like I am missing so much to tell.

Peace out y’all

Sister Glanzer

Adventures of Elder Lip at the MTC

Elder Lip and Sister Smith have become quite good friends

Shortest missionary at the MTC

All the Sisters!

Elder Lip testifying with power

Elder Lip and a few of his friends from back home

Elder Lip at the temple

Elder Lip finishing up his planning session.

I'm Very Glad for this Experience at the MTC

Where to start? It is hard to keep track of days here because we don’t have an actual date calendar, but E. Manly in our district, the youngest of us all, thought for all of his life there were only 29 days in September. This was revealed to us last night.

The first few days with my comp, Sister Zeller was very difficult socially wise, our personalities clashed and we couldn’t hold a conversation. Most everything she did got on my nerves, she would talk to me like a child at times and she told me not to whistle, which was like nuh uh sista, but I tried to respect her request, I wanted us to work well together. On the spiritual level and teaching lessons we did very well, just everything else sucked, terribly. She was also having some personal troubles. She had talked to our Branch president who suggested she see a counselor here, and he asked me to see one as well to maybe learn some ways to help her.... remember this, I will come back to it. 

I enjoyed Sunday, it felt like any other day here, which is good because that means we are constantly on that spiritual high and doing what the Lord wants us to do.

Our teachers, Sister Seegmiller and Sister Davis have us practice giving the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration lessons simple and in a minute which is very extremely hard. The Plan of Salvation is one of my very favorite things about the gospel. We were practicing giving it in a minute. We weren’t with our companions, I was with Sister Blocker and I was able to do it in the minutes, talking super-fast. I crushed it, super excited! Then Sister Blocker was able to as well, talking a mile in a minute, she was able to finish and I was so enthused for her! awesome! I am learning so much here at the MTC!

Tuesday is devotional where a general authority talks to us missionaries. I along with all of my district and over half the MTC was in the choir, they say the biggest Choir ever. Bro. Egget is the choir director and he is so awesome. the song was about baptism and he would pause and tell us stuff and have us ponder questions that he had asked us, which helped give a whole new insight on why we are baptized and why Jesus had to be baptized. 

After the devotional we went back to our districts and talked in our district about what we had learned which “teach and discus” is something I am really enjoying here. Fantastic to see how the spirit affects us differently or similarly when we all hear the same message.

On this night, because our Branch Presidency met with us and lead the discussion, the answer to my prayer of how to adjust to Sister Zeller came. We got a companion switch! I was so thankful. So now I am comps with Sister Richey, from Chimacum, WA. It is way easier for us to hold a conversation and relate. Sister Zeller is with Sister Foote now, who got a letter yesterday from her grandma saying that, "she has a sister that knows a missionary going to the temple square mission and entered the MTC at the same time I did." That sister is Julia Thompson from our ward! That is super cool! 

Now back to the story.... Sister Zeller was stilling going to see the counselor on Wednesday, after we got our companion switch. I wasn't planning on going anymore because I wasn't her companion, but she must have really wanted me too. So I go.............My branch president expressed the inquiry to the counselor to see if I had ADHD.... BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I laughed.  After the visit I laughed. It was just hilarious to me! But then the rest of the day and Thursday I had this paranoia that I just might be! But I don't think I have it and the counselor doesn’t either, that maybe I was just anxious. I haven’t been around people my own age for a long period of time for over a year. I still think about the ADHD thing and chuckle to myself. Sillies. 

Sister Richey warned us that she yells in her sleep and she yelled Tuesday night and Freaked Sisters Foote, Zeller and I out! It went right along with my dream a bit what she yelled. So I was awake for a while, listening to some sister in the other room, sisters leaving to go out into the field, meaning it was after 3 am. I went to the bathroom, in a daze said good bye to the two sisters, went again. In hobbled Sister Brady who had surgery while she was here on her knee on her meniscus so she has to stay another two weeks here. But that meant she was sleeping alone. I thought to ask her, are you alone in your room? I was all nah. I climbed into bed, and thoughts came to me to go see if Sister Brady is alone, go sleep in her room. What if she is in bed and the door is closed, she can’t get out very well to let me in. Go check just in case. I am very sad to say I didn't act upon this prompting. She had left the door open a bit. She slept alone, I had been awake at the time her district left her and I could have stayed with her. I will be trying harder to act on promptings from now on. She is in the district of Sisters that came the same day as me and they are going to temple square also! 

Sister Richey and I got separated fro out district of sister and joined a different district for a service project. We restocked the toilet paper and vacuumed the mail room in 2M! it was funny because the rest of our district went to 17M to clean. I get so turned around referring the to the buildings as 17M or 9M or 13M.

I rather enjoy my district very much, the elders are very fun, and funny, and some of them I can't look at or I’ll just laugh because they'll communicate to each other silently or make funny faces or just something funny will happen, and it is easy for me to laugh and lose focus! Geewhilikers!

I am very glad for this experience here in the MTC. I am slightly envious of the missionaries that get to stay here longer than me, but at the same time I am sometimes ready to be out in the field, it is crazy to think our elders leave in a little over a week, and we sisters leave in about two!

Catch y'all on the flip side!

Sis. Allison Jo Glanzer!

ALSO! Erica Good sent me a little package full of candy and a joke, which I love jokes, and I was just so surprised and glad she did! 

And today when Sister Richey and I went to the temple there was a woman standing outside that asked us to do some names for her! we will have them and are going to talk about it with the rest of the sisters if we want to do an endowment session next week for these names.

From left to right are Sisters Blocker, Foote, Smith, me Richey, Zeller.​

On a Temple walk on Saturday with President and Sister Williams in the middle

My comp, Sister Richey and I trying and failing at taking selfies with regular cameras