Group 21 Report - The Tail lights

We have watched this happen 21 times. It is an early morning ritual of waving a “Hurrah For Israel” shout as the tail lights leave the MTC on the way to the airport carrying a very precious cargo of young, mostly African, missionaries. It is an experience of which we will never tire, but will only get to witness eight more times before they also banish us from “The Garden”.

This group was even more difficult than most to ‘cast out’ (and each group has been difficult) because of the superior quality of the ‘product’ we were ‘shipping’. We have had ‘good’ groups before with scores of outstanding future African leaders but this ‘gang of twenty’ had a mark of excellence flowing in the entire genetic structure.

They came from Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, South Africa and The Democratic Republic of Congo, five in our French Program and fifteen in the English: two Sisters and eighteen Elders.
The two Sisters were companions but each spoke only one language which forced a common ‘sign language’ to appear - we have nicknamed it the Language of Love as it has surfaced many times in the past and the two sisters became fast friends even though they spent the majority of their time with their respective Elders who were in training in their given language. They roomed, ate and studied as companions and hugged for the pictures as if they were biological twins – even though they were socially and culturally worlds apart.

A few statistics will demonstrate how African “Mormon Advanced” they were. Remember, we began this assignment eighteen months ago with most groups usually comprising a 1st generation representation of membership and, effectively, inexperienced latter day saints. Very few parents are in the church and very few have ever read the Book of Mormon and more often than not they would struggle with English. The experience and quality of the missionaries has seemed to improve with each new group. Consider some facts with this group of twenty.

1) Four were sealed to parents.
2) Thirteen had two living parents.
3) Six had two living parents where both were active in the church.
4) Nine had returned missionary siblings - 45%.
5) Nineteen siblings had served missions from those nine homes.
6) Three had Bishop fathers.
7) Five had Relief Society mothers.
8) Eight came from homes with semi-or traditional LDS backgrounds.
9) Four had parents with university degrees.
10) Only eleven of them were the first missionary from their family.

For Africa and what we have been used too these numbers were very suggestive of the high quality young person who has been preserved to come forth at this special time in Africa’s history.
Two of our missionaries were sealed to their parents during their stay with us. We went to the temple twice and on each trip parents had arranged to meet them at the temple to be sealed to their family. In one case, Elder Addo, the father had died and this young Elder was proxy for his father endowment and then he met his mother in the sealing room and they were sealed together as a family. Elder Tandoh was sealed to his family and then his parents drove him back to the MTC for all of us to congratulate them and take some pictures.

Elder Tandoh and family on Temple sealing day.

Five of us had the privilege of entertaining Malaria during our time together - two missionaries, two of our staff and the mission president. With modern medicine and early diagnosis it is not the killer nor the ‘wipe out’ disease that it was- and still can be – but all five of us were very lucky and only spent a small portion of our time in ‘down time’ but were able to bounce back quickly with limited ‘porcelain’ time.
The Triplets in recovery.

WE hired two new teachers – Brothers Badioo and Koomson - both former AP’s in their respective missions and very highly recommended by their mission presidents. We retired our most senior teacher, Brother Aidoo who pre-dates the Ritchie’s – and maybe Adam. He was really an institution here at the MTC - hard to see him go but our teaching positions were not intended to be a career, only a stop over on their way through life to bigger - but perhaps not better things.
Brother Jacob Aidoo is pictured here.

We celebrated our 39th anniversary during this cycle.

Elder and Sister Child, our Area President and his wife, came to speak with us in our General Authority fireside. Everyone looks forward to this day. The missionaries gave them a ‘show and tell’ where they taught all five discussions complete with all commitments and promises in twelve minutes. It is always a highlight of the MTC experience to witness these amazing young people so full of confidence teach the gospel with such clarity and power. President and Sister Child remained and had lunch with us following the Devotional.

We don’t do a lot of P-Day playing due to our course being shortened by a few days so our outdoor time is limited to between 5:30 and 6:30 AM two days each week. But they do enjoy this time to ‘run’. We promise them plenty of exercise time when they leave ‘the garden’...


Some of their personal exit reports will be added to this report by separate document.