When the young women leaders in our ward announced that this week’s activity would be a tour of the MTC, the timing seemed providential. Matthew is in the middle of his home MTC time and will head to the physical MTC next week. Malia is struggling with the thought of Matthew leaving as well as being the only child left at home, and we are trying to find ways to help her work through all these changes. She has been pretty reluctant to attend the activities as of late due to the social difficulties she has encountered in this ward, so I was hoping that she would be willing to go to this one. Not only was she willing, but when asked by someone in the young women, she promptly responded in the affirmative with no coaxing on my part. And so this evening, she was off to the MTC. Which was confusing for Nathan when he happened to check in with the “Find My” app!
Malia felt like her time was well spent. She got to see the gym, the cafeteria, the murals that are part of the new addition that was built a few years ago, etc. When asked, she felt like it helped a bit to know here Matthew would be and to have a bit of an idea what his life will be like for the week he is there. I suspect that means that we will be googling a variety of locations in Arkansas and Missouri as he moves around the mission so that Malia can have a more solid idea of where he is and what he is doing.
And now that I think about it, we used to do that exact thing years ago when Matthew was tiny and Kevin was doing a lot of traveling while he worked at Adobe. So, let’s harness the power of the internet to bring the mission a bit closer to home. Along with Matthew’s weekly video chats with the fam, maybe that will help Malia feel like he is not so very far away after all.
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