On Wednesday, June 18, 2025 we drove from our home in Draper to Provo to attend the 2025 New Mission Leader Seminar at the Missionary Training Center (MTC). The MTC is located by the campus of Brigham Young University and thousands of missionaries are trained there each year prior to going out to their assigned mission location. For missionaries assigned to serve in a country speaking their native language, or with a demonstrated high proficiency in the language of their mission, they are trained for a period of 3 weeks at the MTC. For missionaries needing to learn their mission language, they are trained for 6 or 9 weeks, depending on the level of difficulty of the given language. As mission leaders, we have had the opportunity to get one-on-one language training from MTC tutors via zoom over the past 6 months, so they decided we only needed 4.5 days at the MTC 😉.
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| Got our name tags - it's finally starting to feel real! |
Each June each year, all the newly called mission leaders gather for a New Mission Leader Seminar where we are taught and trained by various leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was an incredible, spiritual, and enlightening experience to hear from the most senior leaders of our church, including our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, and the rest of the members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Several other general authorities and leaders of the church, specifically those that have responsibilities and assignments over missionary work were also in attendance and participated in training us.
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| Elder Renlund (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostoles) & Sister Renlund. |
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| Elder Bednar (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostoles) & Sister Bednar. |
Each day during the seminar we had the chance to listen to messages from church leaders in both large group meetings and small group breakouts with other mission leaders serving in South America with us. We also had the chance to meet with and teach several small groups of missionaries (known as districts), to practice how we might teach and lead the missionaries in Chile. One special highlight was getting to meet with the one sister missionary, Sister Pratt, who is going to be coming to our mission who was currently being trained herself at the Provo MTC. We are excited to see her again soon in Chile!
| Meeting Sister Pratt - she'll be heading to Chile on July 16th. |
Throughout our time at the MTC, we made countless connections to other mission leaders, young missionaries and employees that made our experience even more special. The first occurred on our first evening at the seminar, before we even had begun our meetings. After arriving at the MTC we had time to mingle with the other new mission leaders and quickly one couple caught my eye and approached me with the husband asking, "Do you remember me?" I felt bad at first not recognizing his face, but after glancing at his name tag and seeing his last name, it all clicked. Standing in front of me was my own MTC teacher from 36 years ago, Brother Gregory Neher. Back then, Brother Neher had recently returned from serving his mission in Argentina and he worked as a teacher for new missionaries at the MTC. One of my other teachers was Sister Isabel Lindheimer, and funny enough, these 2 teachers of mine ended up getting married (after my MTC district and I suggested to them that they should meet and go on a date I might add) and there she was standing next to him as well. It was such an incredible reunion for us all, filled with reminiscing and joy! The Nehers will be serving as mission leaders in the Peru Lima West mission. This was just the first of many "coincidences" we had seeing and interacting with people that were clear indications of God being aware of us and placing people in our path to help us feel of His love and awareness of us. I imagine that the type of reunion that I had with these dear friends of mine will be similar to the types of reunions we'll get to have in heaven one day with loved ones who have passed on.
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| Reunion with Brent's MTC teachers from 1989 - President & Sister Neher. |
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| Young Elder Bartholomew (left) and Brother Neher (right) at the MTC in 1989. |
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| Brent (far right) and his MTC district in 1989 - Sister Lindheimer (now Neher) is in the middle in the blue dress. |
A couple last highlights we'll mention were on Saturday & Sunday. First, on Saturday night we got to gather together with all the missionaries at the MTC - both the new mission leaders, and the young missionaries (1,400 of us in total) - for a devotional given by Elder Soares of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. We enjoyed feeling the power and spirit of missionary as we gathered all together with one purpose. The culmination of our time at the MTC occured on Sunday, when we had the chance to gather for a special sacrament meeting with President Oaks (first counselor in the First Presidency) and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in person. Due to the age and health of President Nelson, he didn't join us in person, but he recorded a special message for us to watch specifically about the power of the Book of Mormon and how it can help us grow closer to Jesus Christ. We are so grateful for the amazing instruction we received this week to help us prepare to help the missionaries we are assigned to work with in the Chile Santiago South mission. We can't wait to get started!
In addition to all the exciting experiences we had at the seminar, our family was extremely blessed this week with the exciting (and early) arrival of our third granddaughter, Ava Rae, who was born to our oldest daughter, Jessica and her husband Chance on Thursday, June 19th. Monica was excused from the seminar that day to be able to join them at the hospital for the birth. While it was hard for her to leave the seminar, we knew it was being recorded and it was more important for her to go be with Jessica's family. Everything went well with the delivery and Monica was grateful to spend the rest of the day with with them. That evening after dinner, I was able to go and join her and the rest of our kids as we all met at the hospital and welcomed sweet little Ava to our family. We felt so fortunate to have her come a few days early so we could spend some extra time with her before heading off to Chile.
Jessica & Chance Blackman with their two daughters, Lily & Ava.
 | | Proud abuelos ♡ |
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