Friday, May 25, 2007

Remember your MTC companion?

As a brand new missionary in the MTC I didn't think I got along very well with my companion. It wasn't that we fought or argued, we just didn't know how to relate to each other. He was from eastern Oregon where he had grown up on a ranch. My high school extracurricular activities were things like drama, choir, and Science Olympiad. The extracurricular activity he told me about was competing in logging competitions. He was a true country boy with lots of fun stories about hunting, working on construction crews and four-wheeling. I thought we didn't have a lot in common, and it was probably true. He was the slowest at learning Korean in our district and, in hindsight, I recognize how intimidating and sometimes lonely the whole experience was for him; not that he ever would have let on about it much. He was comfortable when it was time to work. Whenever we had cleaning duty I could barely keep up with him as we raced through all of the bathrooms washing sinks and emptying trash.

In spite of differences I tried my best to be encouraging. I remember sharing a scripture with him to help him with his feelings of inadequacy, which seemed to help, and once I was able to give him a blessing for a severe cold. Because we served in different missions I never got to see him as a missionary, but I have no doubt he did a good job. I would love to talk to him someday about his memories of the MTC and me.

So for those of you who have served missions, what was your MTC comp like?

2 comments:

  1. My MTC comp and I were reasonably similar -- close enough that we could joke around, and didn't have any major personality conflicts. The differences revealed themselves in the mission field, though: he became AP while I got shingles and was transferred to a city in another mission.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My MTC comp was THE comp. The one that never showed up again. The one to whom I compared everyone else and to whom everyone else lost.

    I got close with Josh Dunn, but we did more to keep eachother sane than actually bring souls to salvation. I could have served all 24 months with Anziano Dyer.

    ReplyDelete