Monday, March 28, 2016 – Salt Lake City Visitor’s Center 

This morning we drove up to the SLC Visitor’s Center. We met there with all of the other couples and single sisters that are assigned to Visitor’s Centers all around the world. There were about 45 to 50 of us. We got to watch the Salt Lake Visitor’s Center missionaries as they did their job. We broke into small groups of 10 and they gave us the tour just like they would any other guests. 

Sis. Johnson really enjoyed the conversion stories of the Sister Missionary from Mongolia. She was 14 when her parents got divorced. She said she was looking for stability in her youth. She found the church and really liked Mutual. In order to attend and be baptized she had to get her father's permission. She was very happy he said yes.

 

Sis. Johnson really enjoyed the conversion stories of the Sister Missionary from Mongolia. She was 14 when her parents got divorced. She said she was looking for stability in her youth. She found the church and really liked Mutual. In order to attend and be baptized she had to get her father's permission. She was very happy he said yes.

 

The Sister Missionaries also gave us a tour of their Mission Office and the phone center. I was fascinated to learn that there are about 180 Sister Missionaries on Temple Square and they come from countries all over the globe. The Temple Square missionaries have multiple missionaries that speak every language on the planet where the church has full time missionaries.

They have a room called the “Teaching Center” full of dozens of phone & computer stations where the sisters answer calls from all over the world 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They also log onto LDS chat rooms on the internet and link up with people that are interested in learning about the gospel. They take referrals and pass them along to missionaries where ever the person is in the world. But, until the local missionaries find the person, the sister teaches them lessons on the phone or through the chat room. Then, even after the local missionaries take over the lessons, the “Teaching Center” sister keeps in touch with the investigator clear through to their baptism. I was very impressed with these sisters from all over the world.

 

Another fascinating thing about these wonderful Sister Missionaries is that they all are bilingual. Every one of them speaks very good English in addition to their native language. I talked to several of them and asked if they had lived in the US to learn such good English. None of them had, they all said that before their missions they only knew the English they were taught in school, the rest they learned since they arrived in SLC.  Wow, they are good.