We completed our time in the MTC yesterday.  On our way home we stopped at Les (Reed's brother) and Carol's home in Cedar Hills, Utah.  They were kind enough to take us to breakfast.  Afterwards, we travelled to Bountiful, Utah where we attended an extended family reunion of Reed's great great grandfather's (Peter Anton Nielsen) descendants.  Les and Carol had come up and Patti (Reed's sister) and her husband David had come down from Garland.  It was great to be able to talk with them and to briefly meet with relatives with whom we have not had any contact.  We completed our trip to Rexburg without difficulty and will spend a week here getting ready to make the long trip to Belem.

Here are two fotos of the members of our senior mission district.  The first is with our morning instructor, Brother Hickmott and the second is with Brother Roberts.  Both are students at BYU and have returned within the past two years from their missions.

From left to right, Brother and Sister Denton, Reed and Donna Nielsen, Brother and Sister Hanson, Brother Hickmott, Brother and Sister Hanson and Brother and Sister Johnson

Brother Roberts is in the middle

Reed pointing to Rexburg and Donna pointing to Belem, Brasil

Thursday we also met our granddaughter, Roya at the MTC.  She is now teaching Croatian to missionaries going to that part of the world.

Roya with Donna and Reed

We have continued our training here in Provo.  The time goes by quickly and we are being taught out of the Church's, Preach My Gospel booklet.  Even though it is highly unlikely that we will be asked to formally teach anyone about the Church.  We are in class for about 7 hours each day.

We have been paired up with a wonderful sister missionary (see foto below taken with Sister Siders) from Colorado who is going to St. George to work in Records Preservation.  She will be travelling to Salt Lake to the Church Family History Library to learn more about her specific tasks before she leaves for St. George sometime next week.  We hope to be able to stay in touch with her and help each other as we serve our respective missions.

We continue to look for Roya (our grand daughter) who is supposed to be teaching Croatian here in the MTC, but haven't seen her yet.

We have also met at least two couples with whom we have some type of connection.  An Elder and Sister Butler.  He was a missionary in the Brazil North mission at the same time as mother and I.  He arrive about a month before me but we never worked in the same areas.  We were talking with a couple from Arizona, Elder and Sister Favreau, who are friends with Pat and Shelley Huish from when Pat and Shelley lived in Arizona.  Favreau's are going to France to serve with young special interests (YSA) individuals and say hello to the Huish's.

Those in our district are Elder and Sister Hansen who are from Eagle Mountain they are going to Ohio to teach institute at Ohio State.  Elder and Sister Johnson are going to Mesa where they will work with the Church Education System (CES).  Elder and Sister Denton are going to France assigned to work with YSA.

Yesterday we managed a successful drive from Rexburg, Idaho to my sister's (Heidi) home in Riverton.  This morning, after making a quick stop at the Church Office Building (COB) in Salt Lake City to pick up name tags we drove to the Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC).

Interesting note:  The first package of name tags that we picked up two weeks ago were in English when they should have been printed in Portuguese.  When we looked at the name tags received today, the printing group had misspelled our assignment (working with the special projects group) and misspelled irmã (the term for sister in Portuguese).  On mine, in addition to misspelling the Portuguese word for special projects, instead of using the title of Elder on my name tag, someone translated Elder into the Portuguese words that translate to "mais velho" Nielsen instead of Elder Nielsen which means the oldest one.

The MTC has an efficient method of handling incoming missionaries.  Today, they oriented approximately 90 senior missionaries and currently have around 2,000 young men and women in training living here.

We were introduced to our room for 5 days (bedroom, closet, desk and bathroom, etc.) for 5 days and then shuttled through the complex being introduced to many people.  It is a good thing there is not going to be a quiz on all of their names.  Donna would probably pass with flying colors but I imagine that I would probably fail, at best receive a C+.

We were divided into missionary districts.  Our district consists of a district leader, Elder Hansen, and his wife (going to Ohio); Elder and Sister Johnson (going to Mesa, Arizona); Elder and Sister Denton (going to France to work with young adults) and us.  We were also introduced to Sister Sider (from north of Denver) who will make up our three-some.  She is going to St. George to work in genealogical records.  For those unfamiliar with vernacular of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder is the title used to refer to men who are serving missions.  Sister is for the women.

We then had a group discussion (all 90 of us) on the purpose of our individual missions.

The balance of the week will consist of discussions on how we can share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others.  Our primary focus will be explaining to the people of Belém (by the way, Belém translates to Bethlehem in Portuguese) why we are building a temple in their city, in addition to preparing a booklet that describes the construction of the temple and ancillary buildings and assisting the site manager where necessary.

Well, the Visas made it several weeks ago! yea.  I think that is record time.  We will report this coming Monday to the MTC in Provo for one week of missionary training.  Our trip to Brasil will begin on 7/29/2019 when we leave for a just after midnight flight to Charlotte, NC.  From there we travel to Miami and then on to Belem, Brasil arriving there at 3:25AM.  I would imagine we'll need to recover a bit after this trip.