Dear family,

We thought you might enjoy seeing the senior missionaries that we are training with at the MTC. There are too many of us for one photo so they took three in order to get the entire group in. We are in the middle picture on the far right side. 

We are extremely busy with a very tight schedule and many assignments so have very little time. Our days here at the MTC begin at 5:30 a.m. when we get up and we are constantly busy until we retire about 10:30 p.m. You can ignore the following text if it is too much for you but because of my limited time, I thought it might be easier to just cut and paste a little bit from my journal entry on Wednesday to share with you so you can get a feeling for what we are doing and our life at the MTC.:

"We are in one of the largest senior missionary groups the MTC has ever had. They typically have between 70 and 80 senior missionaries who arrive each Monday morning but our group has 135. Many are assigned to the States but the missionaries in our group are also going to Finland, Kenya, Germany, London, Russia, Tonga, Marshall Islands, Peru, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Scotland, Indonesia, Mexico, Africa West, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, Hungary, Taiwan, and Asia Area (that's us!). 

The senior missionaries are wonderful! We all have the same desire and that is to serve the Lord and to give our all. There are many, many, many young missionaries. Just today, Wednesday, 600 more young missionaries arrived. These young missionaries are so filled with enthusiasm and joy. 

It is such a great privilege to be a senior missionary. We are treated with respect and deference everywhere we go. And it feels wonderful not only to be missionaries wearing the name tag but to walk around campus holding hands and feeling the joy of eternal companionship as we serve (I speak for all of us; not just Dave and me). It is a blessed thing to be a missionary at this season in our lives and Father in Heaven and His Son help us feel Their love as we do so.

In our daily Preach My Gospel training sessions, we learn principles, we practice skills, we are forced out of our comfort zones, we do role playing, and today we spent time teaching volunteers from the community first discussions as if it were in real time (we have no way to know if they will be receptive, antagonistic, etc. until we begin)...and we have to rely on the Spirit, have prayer, and do all of the things we would do in a normal discussion. It is very intimidating. We get critiqued and critique ourselves when we are done so that we can learn from our experience. We also have assignments every day that need to be done to prepare for the following day. There really aren't enough hours in the day to take care of everything that needs to be done but I suppose this is a good precursor for missionary life in the field. We go to bed very tired! But it is wonderful all the same. "

I hope that little bit of dialogue from my journal gives you some sense of what it is like to be a senior missionary here at the MTC. I have had my name tag on for four days now and I still can't stop looking in the mirror at that name tag over my heart! We will be able to send you better photos when I have time to download them but for now these pictures will do.

We love you dearly, our wonderful family, and thank you for being who you are and for your support as we serve. Please pray for us every day.

Mum and Dad/Elder and Sister Macbeth