October 17, 2017

Preston England Temple

Hello Everyone!

This week we went to Manchester and proselyted. It was insane. Elder R. is a monster at it. I gave away one Book of Mormon. He gave away five or six, I think.

The temple is amazing, and we are going in an hour. (To learn more about temples, see here: Why Mormons Build Temples)

We are the most popular district in the MTC! 

Classes are fine—long and very hard. 

Not much has happened this week besides going to Manchester. We have a devotional tonight with an Area Seventy*.  

We are teaching five lessons this week. Four in total are in Greek, and one is in English. 

Greek is crazy hard and is coming very slow.

Please tell everyone hello!

With love,

Elder Müller

*An Area Seventy is a higher level ecclesiastical leader; each Area Seventy is assigned to a certain geographic region. For more information about the organization of leadership in the LDS church, please see the following website: General Authorities. For information specifically about Area Seventies, see here: Area Seventies.

Proselyting in Manchester

Background on the England MTC

Since Elder Müller was unable to write a long letter this week, the following is some information about the purpose and history of the England Missionary Training Center (MTC), where Elder Müller is currently serving.

The purpose of missionary training centers is to help prepare missionaries before they depart to serve in their specific missions. Missionaries learn how to effectively share the gospel and learn the language for where they will be serving. 

Each missionary will spend at least a few weeks in a missionary training center, but how long they spend there depends on the mission field they are specifically assigned to. Most missionaries spend around two weeks if they are serving in an area with their native tongue, but foreign language missionaries can spend up to nine weeks in the MTC, depending on which language they are learning. 

The most well-known MTC is in Provo, Utah, but there are training centers throughout the world. The England MTC serves as a training center for many missionaries who will serve in the British Isles or Europe (“About”). The current programs the England MTC has are as follows: English, English as a Second Language, German, German as a Second Language, and Greek (“England”).

The England MTC was originally located in the London England Temple Complex, when it opened in 1985. However, it was moved to its current location in the Preston England Temple Complex in 1998 (“About”).

The location of the MTC here is particularly significant to LDS history:

The first overseas missions of the Church began in Preston, England, shortly after Elders Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde arrived in Liverpool in 1837. The first baptisms were performed in the River Ribble in March of 1837, and in the next few months, in spite of much persecution and difficult challenges, nearly 1,800 people from the surrounding villages accepted baptism. (“About”)

Most of the people baptized in this area eventually traveled to the American West and were a large part of the pioneer settlements in Utah and the surrounding LDS communities. Because of the devoted missionaries and faithful saints from this area, the Church was able to grow and thrive, and their legacy is still celebrated today. Thus, the missionaries training in this center can literally walk in the footsteps of the early church missionaries who came before them. What an amazing opportunity to have, and the spirit and history of missionary work here gives our current missionaries a wonderful beginning in their service to the Lord.

References

About the England MTC. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.lds.org/callings/missionary/missionary-training-centers/england/about?lang=eng

England Missionary Training Center. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.lds.org/callings/missionary/missionary-training-centers/england?lang=eng

Pictures from Elder Müller 

Editor's note: To enlarge any of the images, just click on an image, and you can scroll through all of the full-size images at once.

Manchester

Autumn in England

Chapel in England

Reflecting Pool at the Preston England Temple

Elder N., Elder Z., and Sister S.

Study Time!

The Grounds of the Preston England Temple