These are the 81 of us who will be teaching all over the world. Mission assignments spanned every continent. The single sister was going to Poland to work in the family history program. There were couples going to Africa, Russia, Japan, Samoa, Figi, Brazil, New York, and many other places in the US and everywhere. I was in awe at some of the couples who were much older than we were and where they were going. What faith!

These are the young men, all returned missionaries, who taught all of our classes. They were amazing, dynamic young men. The tall one was our teacher, Brother Pynes.

This is our room. Not your typical missionary place. We were assigned to stay at the Super 8 Motel. It is used for overflow missionaries. We thought at first they had taken pitty on us because we were going to Mongolia. Later in the week, however, we were walking down the stairs and a voice behind the desk said, "Brother and Sister Ford." We looked at the person speaking and he looked slightly familiar but I couln't place him. He said, "You don't recognize me do you?" We said , "No." He said, "I am Greg Duerden." I was in shock. We hadn't seen him since Rifle days. His family had lived with us for about six weeks while he was out of work and out of a home. His wife was a dear friend. She died just a couple of years after they left Rife. They had six children. He told us about his family. He said he saw our names on the list and gave us the best room they had. I guess it was payback time. It is a beautiful room and we really enjoyed it.

Here we are at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Provo, Utah. We, along with 79 other folks headed out all over the world, learned about what it is to be a missionary. We had classes every day from 8-5 and then those of us who needed language training had class from 6-8 as well. Needless to say by the end of the day we were ready to crash.

Premission Training

Pictured from left to right: Brother Evans, Brother Anderson, Sister Ford, Elder Ford, Elder Wilson, Elder Jolley, Elder Huff and Elder Reeve


On Friday we spent the day at the MTC learning how to teach English in Mongolia. BYU has developed a program to help the missionaries teach English. Brother Anderson and Brother Evans are from the Linguistics department and they spent the entire day training us. They will also be available for technical support through the teaching process.

Any missionary who goes to Mongolia has to have a sponsor. These sponsors have to pay $200.a month per missionary. We are then required to teach English to their organziation. At this point, we have no idea who our sponsor is so we are going with lots of ideas as to what we will be doing.

These young elders have had their mission papers in some as early as last November. Three are still waiting for their visas. We were told that we should know this next Thursday if our visas are here. If they don't come we will be waiting a couple of weeks before we enter the MTC.

Our last view of a beautiful city. We leave behind our hearts and take with us wonderful memories. Goodbye, Istanbul.

Here we are at the airport unloading and saying "Goodbye". It was really hard to leave Matt. We know he will have a wonderful time with Jo and she is really glad to have him because S. is gone so much. J. needs someone to keep him in line and Matt does a really good job with him. We have loved being with this little family and pray for them every day that the Lord will keep them safe so far away.

Our highways have Olympic logo things on the side. This is the logo on all the highways. I have no idea what it means but they were fun to look at. They also have the year the highway project was completed on them.

Jo is heping with a baby shower for a friend. They don't do baby showers like we do baby showers. It will be at a restaurant...a very nice restaurant. She has made the centerpieces out of baby things. The rolled ones are a diaper that I made into burp cloths; (We looked all over the city for appropriate fabric and trims. They turned out cute) a baby wash cloth (she had to order from Target) and a pair of socks. The ones that look like suckers are onsies rolled with a baby spoon for the handle. This is what we did the day before I came home. But she got it all done.

These streets are just unbelievably steep and without any place to walk. Look at Matt. Only someone that skinny could stay on that sidewalk. Note where Blaine is walking. Jo walked down to meet them because they didn't have a pass key to get into the apartment complex. I think it is about a two mile walk up the hill from where we ate breakfast. They got their exercise after that lovely breakfast.