Russell and Eileen's Church Missions: LANGUAGE TRAINING

By the latter part of February, I (Eileen) had spent 5 1/2 weeks at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah learning the Indonesian language. It made me feel kind of old at times as I remember French and Spanish coming to me pretty easily and it seemed like a crash course in Indonesian wasn't quite the same as a high school language course. After Russell retired from Huntsman in the middle of February he spent the next 3 weeks at the MTC trying to relearn the language.We made some great friends at the MTC. In addition to teaching basic grammar and conversational language skills, Scott, my tutor told/taught me all about his engagement plans in the Indonesian language. In addition to our MTC hired tutor there were several people who volunteered their time to supplement our language training. Bianca, a BYU student from Indonesia, volunteered frequently to tutor me. Russell knew her grandmother when he served in Indonesia 36 years ago. Several former missionaries from Russell's era also assisted in volunteered in our training. One, Ralph was actually Russell's companion for 3 months in Semarang. We also made dear friends with Elder and Sister Welch. They are serving their 9th mission, as office volunteers. Elder Welch made me a beautiful handwoven rug that I plan on bringing with me to Indonesia and I will kneel on it each night to pray.

 It was amazing to see the young (19-21 year old) missionaries being dropped off every Wednesday. The cars would line up each week and I could see the anxiety in the young missionaries faces and in the parents faces, knowing that they wouldn't see each other for 18 months-2 years. Then as they pulled their suitcases out of the cars and were lined up to go into their respective dorms and were greeted, my heart went out to them. I wanted to go hug each one of them and tell them it will be ok. You can imagine what the cafeteria is like with 2200 young and old missionaries trying to eat a meal. It can get pretty crazy at times. I think Wednesday is ice cream day to help the new missionaries feel more comfortable.