MTC Thanksgiving Service Project News

Here is a story written by Deseret News I borrowed one photo but there are others found at the link below from the Service Project the MTC did on Thanksgiving.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865667991/MTC-missionaries-spend-Thanksgiving-packing-meals-for-the-hungry.html

PROVO — Sister Sydney Harris spent her first Thanksgiving away from her family Thursday.

"I am missing the homemade pie," she laughed, thinking of back home in Rigby, Idaho.

But Sister Harris, who will leave the Missionary Training Center to serve a mission in Riverside, California for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was in high spirits, her hair tucked beneath a red hair net as she scooped lentils into a plastic bag.

"I've never felt the spirit so strong," she said.

Around her, about 1,500 other missionaries bustled about at the MTC, spending their Thanksgiving afternoon preparing more than 350,000 meal packs for Utah children in need.

Photo by Nick Wagner, Deseret News

The missionaries stood shoulder-to-shoulder at dozens of long tables in the training center's cafeteria, some singing upbeat gospel music as they hauled bags of rice, poured food into bags and stacked boxes.

Once prepared, the meals will require only water and heat to be eaten. Each boxed meal contained bags of rice, lentils, dried vegetables and salt.

All of the meals were to be distributed to low-income families with children through various food banks throughout the state.

It's the fourth service project of its kind — what's become the MTC's Thanksgiving tradition — through a partnership with the Florida-based nonprofit Feeding Children Everywhere.

David Green, CEO of Feeding Children Everywhere, said the meals packaged Thursday brought the total number of meals prepared by missionaries to more than 1 million.
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Green called it one of the church's largest humanitarian efforts that's not related to emergency disaster response.

"I feel like there's no better way of showing selflessness," said Elder Muaau Suaalii, who was preparing to serve a mission in Apia, Samoa.

Dean R. Burgess, president of the Missionary Training Center, said the service project is meant to encourage missionaries to "follow the Savior's example by serving others."

"There are a lot of thoughts about home, because Thanksgiving is really about family," President Burgess said. "But we help them think about others, to not be so homesick or concerned about what's happening at home. It really helps them stay focused on their mission's purpose."

Elder Jared Pena, of American Fork, who was preparing to go on a Spanish-speaking mission in Neuquen, Argentina, said it was one of his best Thanksgiving Days, despite being away from his family.

"I think my parents would want me to go out and do the same thing on Thanksgiving," he said.

Elder Suaalii said the work was making him eager to get into the mission field.

"It means a lot, to know we're making so many meals for families in need. I think it's really special," he said. "This is what I want. I want to be of service to others."

Sister Harris said she "gets emotional" every time she thinks about how many people the meals will be helping.

"This is what missionary work is all about — serving others and bringing them closer to Christ," she said. "I love being a missionary, and I can't wait to do more."


Katie McKellar covers local politics and community issues on city, county and state levels for Deseret News/KSL.

@KatieMcKellar1
kmckellar@deseretnews.com

Week 3 - Bonus Post from Mom

I have joined some Facebook groups with connections to the Stockholm Sweden Mission.  In Spencer's email this week he mentioned TRC - which means Teaching Resource Center.  I already knew he had done a great job because the person he was teaching posted to one of the groups I follow.  And he included photos! Thanks John Knecht!

"Today was TRC...where these Elders and one Sister teach in Swedish for the first time. They did great. I learned about 'Enduring to the End' and the 'Free Agency" from Elders Kim Christianson Ashford and Wade Beveridge. From Elders Cook and Hartin, ETTE. I also got a couple of group shots....Enjoy...and Tag your Elder or Sister."

Elder Ashford and Beveridge

Elder Cook and Elder Hartin 

Swedish Missionaries

Week 3 - Be Thankful For Your Trials

My P-day got moved back a day because of Thanksgiving, so it feels like forever since the last time I wrote, but here goes!

Last Friday We had Teaching Resource Center (TRC), and it was an absolute blast!  We got to meet members who spoke Swedish and talk to them for 20 minutes and give them a spiritual thought, in Swedish.  It was awesome, we even got to do it twice!  It's amazing how we prepped one thought and then followed the Spirit, because the two discussions went completely differently.  Friday I also finally got the mission shirt I ordered that says Sweden Stockholm Mission 2016 - 2018 with a map of Sweden in the flag colors.  Although they originally gave me the wrong one.  I opened it up at first and noticed the country shape was wrong.  And the colors.  And the fact that it said Costa Rica.  They mixed my shirt up but they found after 10 or 15 minutes.  My shirt had accidentally been swapped.  Me and my companion were laughing though, we joked that I almost got sent to Costa Rica instead of Sweden.

Saturday was really cool.  Sister Pickett has been sick for awhile and Saturday she had absolutely no voice.  Elder Beveridge and I got to give her a blessing.  It's amazing how the Priesthood really is the power of God.  When you give bless​​ings, you end up telling people what they needed to hear, even when you had absolutely no idea what that was!  This led to my study of the Priesthood during my personal study.  I started off in Doctrine and Covenants section 20 reading about the roles of the priesthood, but I ended up studying Melchizedek and why he was the one to have the priesthood called after him.  It was really interesting and I highly recommend you study it.  

Sunday was also an interesting day.  It was the older Finns last day.  We were sad to see these friends we made leave, but we were excited and they were excited that they were finally leaving for the mission field.  But, with the Finns leaving, we were also losing our zone leaders, which leads me to something else cool.  Elder Beveridge and I are the new Zone Leaders!  We now are in charge of taking care of our zone which consists of our district and the new Finnish District.  We have a phone, but it's essentially a brick because it's a flip phone and password protected so we can't do anything but receive phone calls and call the information desk.  But it's cool.  

Monday morning we saw the old Finns off.  It feels weird that was only this week.  Unfortunately, unlike the other Swedes we won't see them in the mission field.  Monday our phone also kept buzzing a lot.  The new Finns had to fly out to the embassy in California for their visas on Tuesday so we had to send them down to the travel office to verify some info.  Monday was quiet with only one set of Finns left, and Tuesday felt like a temporary Ghost town while the others had their day trip.  Our zone went from taking 6 rooms when we came to now only 3.

Tuesday was also our Devotional.  We heard from Brent H. Neilson, who is a general seventy and the head of the Mission Department.  He gave an awesome talk about how people always say that "Oh it was better in ___ time".  He assured us that this is the best time to live and that these are our days, particularly as missionaries.  The church has never grown faster, had higher membership, had more temples, or reached as far across the world as it does now.  He also showed us the video from the Peter Whitmer farm of the growth of the church.  That video is only supposed to be shown at the farm, but he begged and received permission to show it here at the MTC this one time.  It was awesome!  I feel like a lot of the missionaries were really excited after that talk.  He also told us what Thomas S Monson always tells the General Authorities.

1: "He who the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies"

2: "Whenever you are on the Lord's errand you are entitled to His Help"

Wednesday was relatively normal, the MTC didn't get any new missionaries because of Thanksgiving, and our zone won't get any until after my district leaves.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and it was amazing.  We started with a morning devotional from Neil L Anderson.  I sang in the choir and we sang Mack Wilberg's  arrangement of 'Come thou Fount' to start the meeting.  I loved it!  Elder Anderson then gave a wonderful talk on how much we have to be thankful for.  God has given us literally everything, including our bodies and the ability to breathe and walk.  So nothing is really ours in this life, and we have so much to be thankful for.  He also told us to be thankful for our trials, as they help us grow and can be a blessing in the long run.  I believe he quoted 2 Nephi as he talked about how the Lord would consecrate our trials to our gain.  This was a great reminder to me that when we have struggles in life that there must be blessings in plenty in store down the road.  

Elder Anderson also brought a friend who quoted the title of one of Elder Anderson's talks "It’s True, Isn’t It? Then What Else Matters?".  If we have faith in God and that He is real, then what else matters.  Our afflictions become meaningless when we know that we are driven by truth.  We also had a wonderful zone review after the devotional.  The Spirit was strong as we testified of what we thought and felt during the devotional.  We then had lunch, which was our Thanksgiving meal.  

We then had another devotional about the service and the Church.  We got to see the video for the Church's new 'Light the World' service initiative a day early as it actually was launched today.  My district then watched the movie 'Ephraim's Rescue' about the people who went and saved the Martin Handcart Company.  I loved it and it's testimony of faith and enduring through hard times.  It's a great movie and I highly recommend it.  We then had dinner and did a service project, bagging food for Feeding Children Everywhere, which is a company much like Feed My Starving Children but works mostly with children in the US.  We then had a musical Thanksgiving tribute with a lot of different musical contributions from various groups in the MTC.  One was even one of those western/cowboy style bands with two string basses, two violins, several guitars, and even a mandolin and banjo!  At the end they let us walk outside and they finally turned on the Christmas lights everywhere!  It was great, we have been waiting for the last week for them to finally turn them on at night.

I am sorry this email was so long but so much has happened this week, especially with P-day being pushed back and Thanksgiving.  I am so grateful to be here at the MTC and to have this opportunity to serve the Lord after He has given me so much.  Every time we try to obey Him and make up for all the blessings he has given us, He simply blesses us more.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

-Elder Ashford

Provo Temple

Provo Temple

This is something that Swedish Elder going to Finland showed us, it's 9 different words that all sound virtually the same but mean completely different things.

Elder Beveridge and I rocking our hairnets after our service project.

Week 2 - Teach with the Spirit

I am going to have to use my journal to help me write this.  It is ridiculous how time both freezes and flies at the same time here.  The day seems forever and you can't wait until P-day and the next thing you know it's already here.

       We are learning a lot now, we are finally learning Swedish grammar instead of just chaining whatever vocabulary we know together and hoping it makes sense.  We also have been taking to go over how to teach.  A big part of that is learning how to teach with the Spirit of God.  As missionaries we aren't really the ones teaching.  God is the one who truly teaches people through their feelings and thoughts, we simply get to help.  Last night, Elder Beveridge and I tried that and didn't use a script, we simply followed an outline and said what we felt we were supposed to say.  It works so much better!  The Spirit knows what every person needs to here, so if we follow it, we can't go wrong.

       On the other hand, the Finnish missionary from Sweden has also been teaching us all sorts of funny things he can think of.  Last week he told us a lot of puns and jokes and the Swedish equivalent of 'see you later alligator' which is 'Tack och hey, leverpastej!'  (for those of you who are curious that means 'thanks and hello, liver patte')

       A lot of the days feel pretty similar here but there's always something interesting that happens.  Saturday we were outside for class and we could hear the BYU football game all the way from the stadium.  We thought it was kind of funny.

       Sunday was pretty cool.  In priesthood meeting we talked about how we always talk about repenting as if it's only for sin and is a negative thing.  But we talked about how in a lot of the languages we are learning it translates as to turn, to convert, or to improve.  So even when we don't sin seriously we can still repent as we not only try to stop doing wrong, but improve ourselves and do more right.  It doesn't have to be such a scary thing as we turn ourselves to God.  I also taught our district meeting on the Book of Mormon.  We discussed the power of the Book of Mormon and why it is that it is the keystone of our religion.  Everything comes back to whether or not the Book of Mormon is true.  It testifies of Jesus Christ and does so powerfully, our Branch President mentioned to us that if we could get Scandanaviens to actively read the Book of Mormon, they would be golden investigators.  The Book of Mormon is that central to our religion.  It was a wonderful discussion.

       Tuesday was the day we had devotional and it was by an apostle!  Gary E. Stevenson spoke, and it was amazing the spirit that an apostle brings into the room with him.  You can feel the difference.  He  went through a lot of Preach My Gospel and essentially said that every chapter was his favorite.  We also saw two pictures of the same couple, before and after they started coming to church again.  You could see the difference and the light in their eyes and I am so excited to see that in people as we teach in Sweden.  One of my favorite quotes from Elder Stevenson was when he spoke of when he was in the MTC and trying to learn Japanese and that he prayed so much for help that "I wore my knees out".  On a similar note to what we have learned in class he mentioned that it is important to have the Spirit because in the Armour of God, as we learn about in the Book of Mormon, the Spirit is our Sword.  It was an amazing experience!

       To wrap thing up, as of yesterday, our district is no longer the Greenie district in the zone.  We got 7 new Finnish missionaries and the old Finns leave on Monday.  They have 6 Elders and 1 sister, the sister in our district is excited to finally have an actual companion as she has been solo for the last two weeks.  As of Monday our district will have been here the longest and our zone will have gone from about 40 to merely 20.  I hope we get more missionaries in our Scandinavian zone in the coming weeks.

       I can't wait to share with you what happens and what I learn in the coming week, it's crazy how fast they blow by.

-Elder Ashford

Provo, UT Temple - across the street from the MTC

The picture is from this morning, it snowed for the first time last night and the temple looks absolutely beautiful.

Thanks to his district leader we also got a bonus email with some additional photos. :)  

 This is from my first Sunday.  We did a temple walk and took a picture of our zone and all of our countries.

This one is of our class, and needless to say, was not really planned, 

as evidenced by me not looking at the camera.   

 This is of our zone this last Sunday with just us and the Finns.

This is a picture of our district when the Norwegian teacher subbed for us because our teacher was sick.  

(We were kind of cramped if you couldn't tell)

Week 1 - A New Language

​​​​Hej Hej!

       The last week has been a blur.  The common phrase around here is that "the days are weeks and the weeks are days", it is so true.  We are busy all the time but we are learning so much and there is such an awesome spirit here!  By the second day we already had to teach an "investigator" our first lesson, entirely in Swedish!  He's really one of our teachers acting as someone who wants us to teach him but it feels surprisingly real.  That first lesson went well.  We were reading a lot from our notes but it went well.  We have taught him almost every day now, and every day my companion and I's Swedish improve.  Every time we teach we need notes less and less.  In only a week I can probably speak as much as it took me a year or two of German to learn.  God truly does give his missionaries the Gift of Tongues.  

       It has definitely been different having a companion and never really being alone, but I am getting used to it.  My companion, Elder Beveridge and I get along really well.  We are 2 of the 13 missionaries in our district.  We have 10 Swedish Elders, a Swedish Sister, and 2 Norwegian Elders.  All of us get along great!  We overlapped for a few days with the Swedish district who just left Monday for Sweden.  One of them, Elder Shanks, his sister served in my home ward recently so we made sure to get a picture.  I also saw Elder Young here from my home stake, he just left yesterday for the Philippines but it was great to see him briefly.  

       On Tuesday we had a devotional from Joy D. Jones, the Primary General President for the Church.  She gave an awesome talk about loving others and being obedient as missionaries.  I sang in the choir for that devotional.  We sang 'Hurrah for Israel' and it was awesome.  I would highly recommend that you look it up and it's backstory.  It is a favorite here at the MTC.

       There have been so many things to do and learn here I can´t even think of them all.  But I know that there have already been so many small miracles.  The most evident one to me was that there were 2 Swedish Missionaries who didn´t leave with the rest of their district.  They had originally been called to Russia, then they were switched to Sweden.  Then they were told that their visas might not come in time.  They were told that on Wednesday they would be temporarily assigned to Fresno, California until the visas came, but then on Monday their Visas came and they left for Sweden on Wednesday.  I feel like it wasn´t an accident their visas arrived when they did.  The Branch Presidency for our zone even told us that they could tell by the missionaries coming in that something is happening in Sweden.  One of the Finnish Elders who is actually from Sweden said during testimony meeting that he heard from the mission president there this summer that Scandanavia is currently using only a tenth of it´s current temple capacity and that the Lord does not make mistakes.  That hit me really hard and really helped make it clear why I need to go to Sweden.  Missionary work is growing there and I get to be a part of it.

       I am so glad for the opportunity I have to serve the Lord.  While it is not always easy I know that he provides a way and he blesses us as we obey his commandments.  God gives us the power to do His will beyond our own abilities.  He loves and knows us each individually and what our needs are.

I´ll attach a few pictures as well.  The one with me and the really tall elder is me and Elder Young.  The one indoors with a lot of guys is me and the Elders in my district.  The one with me and the Elder in the jacket is me and Elder Shanks.  The one of me and another Elder outside the Provo Temple is me and my companion.  and the one on the steps is my entire district except for Elders Domino and Wilkinson, which really just means that we added Sister Pyckett.

I will be sure to email you all next week.

Elder Ashford​​

Elder Young and Äldste Ashford - Minnesota Reunion

Äldste Ashford and the other Swedish Elders (what is the plural of Äldste?)  A question for a future email.
There are also 2 Elders heading for Norway in this group.

Äldste Ashford and Äldste Shanks.  Äldste Shanks is now is Sweden (he is one transfer ahead of the current MTC group) but his sister, Sister Gotchy is a missionary in Minnesota and before she was transferred to a different area, had dinner at our home several times.

Äldste Ashford and his companion Äldste Beveridge.

Most of his district at the Provo Temple.

First Email!

We got our first email last night.! I can't promise that I will publish all of the ones that he sends to just us.  But it was so nice to hear from him.  He will probably send out a group email beginning next week.  But as you will see he didn't get a lot of free time yesterday.

Hej Hej! 

       The MTC is great!  Learning Swedish is a lot of work, but there is a great
spirit here.  My MTC Companion is Elder Beveridge, (yes like a drink).  We have a great district with 10 Swedish elders and a solo sister, and then we have 2 Norwegian elders as well.  By the way Dad, there is an Elder Berlin here, his Dad also served in Frankfurt, but neither of us know if you two overlapped.  (Sorry if this is email is scatterbrained, I only have 15 minutes to write and the days are long here, they aren't kidding when they say the days are weeks and the weeks are days)  I am also supposed to remind you about Dear Elder if you want me to get letters throughout the week.  Our Preparation Days are Thursdays so anticipate my emails then.  I am still trying to get the hang of the schedule here but it's getting easier already.  Tomorrow we are already supposed to teach a lesson in Swedish so that's going to be... interesting, to say the least.   

Love you guys, I'll be sure to email next week. 

-Elder Ashford

 A note: DearElder is a website that allows you to send letters to the MTC (Missionary Training Center) for free.   They can also arrange package delivery from local places in Provo, I think.

I had forgotten about it and sent him a letter last night.  They print out and deliver the mail daily to the MTC if you get it there before noon (MST) I think it will make it the same day (Monday-Friday)!

Just be sure to follow the instructions to enter his mission as Provo MTC for now.  His address can be found on the right side bar of this blog.

Can I go already?

While this week was a little emotional for those left behind, this missionary was just ready to go.  All smiles and tired of waiting.

Here are a few photos - ok a lot of photos but knowing my son as I do, I will be pleasantly surprised if I get many photos from him during the next two years.  I may need to use my social networking skills to collect bonus photos from the other missionary moms.

So enjoy them while you can.

Spencer left Minnesota on Tuesday Nov 1st and headed to Utah.

One last family photo at the airport.

Hard to see the big smile and wave but they are there.

He got to spend Tuesday and Wednesday with the Walkers and got to chill with his smallest cousin.

Wednesday - MTC day.

Was able to catch lunch that included his oldest cousin.

Off for Provo Temple photos prior to the drop off.

Payback is only fair, right?

At the MTC they have a lot of Hosts (missionary guides) outside ready to help the new missionaries get their stuff settled.  There isn't much time to say goodbye at the curb - but he had taken care of that ahead of time.

Time to get started!