Being Taught To "Do Good"

These last weeks have been an intense study of the "Doctrine of Christ."

 

I have taken many notes that do not do justice to what I have learned by listening, reading, pondering, and experiencing by the whisperings of the Holy Ghost.

This one diagram is interesting since just prior to sketching it, the note I wrote was "you cannot diagram the gospel or the plan of happiness".

When I was a young missionary in 1966 in northern England, the emphasis was all about the restoration of Christ's church with a modern prophet to help guide us.  I carried around the book, "Meet the Mormons" and a photo of the then current prophet, David O. McKay.

The Church is continuing in the restoration.  However, just like what was revealed to Joseph Smith, the name of the Church has been re-emphasized.  We belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We have always studied and been in awe of the atonement of Christ but now we tend to emphasize Him and His ministry in both the old world and the new.  As we studied about the Doctrine of Christ, I was reminded of the Lectures On Faith that was taught at the school of the prophets by Joseph Smith.  As young missionary, I think we lost sight of that for a while.

Below is our classroom for this last week.  Two other couples are like us, "visa waiters".

The rest have been assigned to the Utah Salt Lake City Headquarters Mission permanently for as long as they signed up for.

The Headquarters Mission office is housed in the NOB or north office building just north of the main church office building.

Folks called to this mission serve in this building, the Family Search building, the Ensign College building or the Church History Library building.

There is another mission located here.  It is the Utah Temple Square mission.  It only utilizes young sisters who contact visitors on Temple Square and the Conference Center.

The Church Museum comes under the Visitor Center and Historical Sites category and the couples who serve there are different from the other two missions.  Of course outside of the SLC church buildings there are proselyting missionaries who have there own mission leaders.

I have been taught to do some "good", but without visas to North Macedonia we will learn a new task.  We have been assigned to work in the Church History Library.  Next week we will start our training so that we can help record the history but hopefully not create the history.

Our days have been mostly 8 to 5 each day but we don't have homework so we have enjoyed ourselves checking out Salt Lake City and meeting many new friends.

We walked around the Capitol building and the cherry trees.  I hope I am not here to see them bloom!

We ran into Debbie Faires, an old friend from our Clayton days.  She also works in the Church History Library.

We randomly ran into a new missionary.  In our conversation we realized her mother is good friends with our daughter Rachel, in Texas.

We stopped in to visit Emily Snyder.  She was a young women in our Clayton Ward.

Emily now works for the Church.  Her apartment is small but extremely efficient.  This is the view from her apartment looking north towards where we will be working.

Wednesday evening I went to a book signing at Benchmark Books.  This has been my favorite bookstore since before Curt moved to this place from Deseret book in the 80's to Union Station and then to 3300 South in Salt Lake City.  That is Chris Bench, Curt's son.  Sadly, Curt passed away recently and left many, many friends and a legacy of book knowledge that is hard to beat.  Chris is doing a great job stepping into his Dad's shoes.

So, I don't feel like I've done much good this week, but I have managed to keep my spirits up while trying to cheer up others along the way.  Senior missionaries are needed badly and I am amazed how willing everyone is to accommodate you to your needs and desires.

 

MTC - Week #2 and No Visas

The young missionaries are a delight at the MTC.  

The weeks we were there was the first time that young Sisters outnumbered the young Elders.  This district just seemed to be getting along so I snapped a photo.

We had classes all week on how the Humanitarian program of the Church functions.

We can do projects that are 100% started and funded by us.  However, the model most used currently is that the Church partners with other NGOs (non-government organizations for charitable purposes).  Everything is tracked in an unbelievable software program.  Every penny is accounted for and every supplier, contractor and partner is vetted to ensure success.  Every project is tracked to learn from successes and those that might fall short of the original goals.  This was our classroom for the second week.

I was surprised at the many different levels of global participation and tracking that takes place.

These were the missionary couples leaving this week.  Each couple was going to a different country.  I believe there is a group like this going out each month of the year.

Sometimes, you can tell the young missionaries are trying to be creative.

This was Valentine Day and some were passing out napkin roses to the senior missionaries.

Finally our second week was finished and we left an atmosphere that is truly unique.

I would recommend serving a mission just for the MTC experience.

Back to our hotel where we had stayed off campus for two weeks since the space for senior missionaries was full.

Our visas have not shown up yet.  We are hopeful.  One week into the MTC we were still signing new forms in the travel office.  Most forms were in sets of seven for each of the ministries of North Macedonia.  The last forms were only one each.  We hope we haven't signed away our house as they are all in Macedonian.

Since no visas yet, we have been reassigned to the Salt Lake City, Headquarters Mission.

This is our new digs.  I hope for not too long.  Our predecessors waited ten months for their visas.  We were aware of this and everyone involved on our end was confident it would not take so long.  That is one of the reasons our call came last July.

From our new digs we can look out to temple square and watch the progress of the Salt Lake Temple.

We are borrowing our Ogden son's car.  This week a Texas son and grandson were here snowboarding and dropped in to see us.

Saturday we got permission from our granddaughter's Mission President to take her and her companion out to lunch since she will be heading home in two weeks.  She has been serving in the Layton, Utah Mission.  After a quick lunch we had time to find our great, great, great, grandmother's grave.  Patty Sessions was born in 1795, was in the first Relief Society in Nauvoo, got to SLC in September, 1847, and didn't die until 1892.  Her life and example of faithfulness is an inspiration to her voluminous posterity.

The Headquarters mission used to go to church in the Joseph Smith building.  That building is also being renovated.  The decision was made to scatter the senior missionaries who are working at Headquarters to many different wards in the Salt Lake Valley.  We have been assigned to attend the Sugarhouse Ward.  The building is very striking inside with lots of fine woodwork and details.

It was was built in 1924 and I found out that LeGrand Richards had been one of the Bishops who had served there.  I was always intrigued by his style of testimony.

Have I done any good this week?  Not much, but I hope I am more focused, better prepared, and ready to do some good here while waiting for a visa.

 

Leaving Home and MTC (missionary training center) - Week 1

We have been called to the Albania Tirana mission and to live in North Macedonia.

The first thing I googled was to see what golf courses were there.

It turns out that none of the three countries in the mission have a golf course.  Clearly, the Lord knew I needed to concentrate on the task we are sent to do.

Wednesday before departure I played my last game with the Wednesday group.  I will miss their association for a while.  I hope I don't have to start over, learning to swing on my return.

Thursday, Kristi and I were set apart to accomplish humanitarian relief in Kosovo and North Macedonia by our Stake President,  Pres. Todd Victor.  Blessings were pronounced to help with our success.

Friday morning we took our good friends, Don and Yvonne Rogers to visit the open house for the new Red Cliffs Temple in Washington, Utah.  The decor was stunning and very harmonious.

Friday night we finally started to pack for eighteen months.

There was no room for Abby, the cat.  She is sort of a loner and we have left her many times before.  She knew something was a little different because the suitcases had been sitting around empty for some time.

Fortunately for Abby and Kristi, she will be well cared for.

We dropped our RV off at our son Josh's home and he will try to sell it this coming spring.

This is what eighteen months of luggage looks like.

While at the MTC we are borrowing Josh's car because we are staying at a local hotel since there is a large group of senior missionaries this week.  (139 couples headed all over the world).

We first got new badges in Albanian but after a couple of days our North Macedonian language badges showed up.  I am amazed at the efficiency of taking care of 1500 people at the MTC this week.
That top line says "Elder Skidmore"

We were interested to see a new group of incoming missionaries.  Headed all over the world.

The MTC campus us beautiful, efficient and honestly feels like a temple of learning.

Two or three times a week a devotional is held with a visiting authority.

After one devotional we saw the Albanian flag being held up and we found a group of Sisters and Elders who had been at the MTC for nine weeks.  They were flying out the next day to Tirana, Albania.  They were excited to see our badges and let us photo bomb their photo.  We will get to know some of them a lot better once we have our visas for N. Macedonia.

In September 1969, Kristi and I and a good friend from my mission to England, Bea Mander, attended the groundbreaking for the Provo Temple.  It is scheduled to close for demolition after Saturday the 17th of this month.  We felt privileged to attend there one more time and feel the spirit and be taught.

After one week our heads are spinning with information and all the new friends we have made.

It is a very real privilege to be here among such motivated, focused and charitable folks.

The Adventure Begins

A year ago we decided to serve another mission.  We decided that we shouldn't leave until after the new year and we finished up some family events.  So about May we turned in our paper work and finally in July we received a call to go to the Albania Tirana Mission.  We learned we were to live in North Macedonia and be humanitarian missionaries in both North Macedonia and Kosovo.

 We will be living in the capital of North Macedonia, Skopje.  North Macedonia is in orange and Kosovo is in green.  The grey country between N. Macedonia and the Adriatic Sea is Albania.

We are headed to the Missionary Training Center in Provo for two weeks starting the 5th of February.