Missionary Training Center

Provo Utah Temple

The missionary training center is commonly known as the MTC and there is no other place like it on earth, except I suppose other missionary training centers.  There are now MTC's in several other continents, I can't remember the exact number, but it is something over 10.  Here you can find apostles and prophets walking the grounds, but that isn't what makes it special.  Here you can find over 1600 new missionaries, very happy and zealous and energized with anticipation and exictement, but that isn't what makes it special.  It  is a place unlike no other.  It is a place where the work of the Lord is going on in a very special way- the training of representatives of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Of course the specialness and the spirit of what is happening there is unlike anything else you will ever experience.  The Lord himself promises to be present where two or three gather, how much more when 1600 who have given up everything to follow him.  Now those of you who are not familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints may not quite "get" this next part, don't feel bad, I didn't fully understand it until I was a church member for two years.  The young men who have had the appropriate training, and who also receive the laying on of hands to receive the Holy Ghost, as we all do at Baptism, also have something else very special.  They carry the Priesthood of God.  You cannot know exactly what that means, but go into any Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on a Sunday and you will know.  You may not exactly know what it is that you know at first, but it is there.  I couldn't understand it at first either, but now I fully do. You can find out more from most members, but actually learning it seems to be more than just the facts about it, to understand it comes with time.   Anyway, not only was the place special because what was going on there and the attendance of the Holy Spirit but the combination of the above things work together to make this one special place.  I think I was "recouperating"  from the fabulousness of it all for at least two weeks after I left. Then I had more good things to get used too!