Final MTC update!

On Tuesday May 12, Elder Kenison and his companions will fly to Santiago via Dallas. Their 9 weeks of preparation have ended, and now the real work begins! It's hard to get much of a feel for how Matt is dealing with this impending dramatic change. In his letter today, he was more concerned about fitting things in his suitcase and understanding the airline regulations for luggage.

He continues to love talking to people when he works in the "referral center" — a good warmup for his missionary service, though it will be very different once he starts teaching in Spanish! And he reported this experience from the week:

Elder M Russel Ballard came to talk to us on Tuesday. haha his talk was amazing. he spoke about desire. Just the desire to follow Jesus Christ and the Desire to carry his gospel to the world. One thing he said that really got me was "The missionaries today have to be the best missionaries this church has ever seen, in order to kindle that desire in the hearts of their investigators." so yeah...

Since we won't be able to have the traditional Mother's Day phone call which missionaries are allowed to make, we are really looking forward to a phone call from the airport on Tuesday.

While we believe Matt has had tremendous spiritual growth during his MTC experience, much of his personality is unchanged. Some of these photos will demonstrate that: