Missionary Training Center

Missionary Training Centers (or "MTCs") are centers devoted to training missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The flagship MTC is located in Provo, Utah, USA, adjacent to the campus of Brigham Young University.

At the beginning of their service, LDS missionaries usually spend 3-12 weeks at an MTC where they receive training in doctrine, conduct, proselytizing methods, and when required, a foreign language. There are 17 MTCs located in nations throughout the world including Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.

New missionaries assigned to the Provo MTC arrive on Wednesdays. Missionaries, referred to by their titles of "Elder" (for the young men) and "Sister" (for the young women), are assigned companions and are organized into districts and branches. During their training, the elders and sisters will spend the majority of their time in class, with breaks for meals, church services, temple attendance, fitness activities, and personal preparation time (for laundry, letter writing, etc.).

All missionaries are given at least three weeks of training in proselytizing methods. This includes lessons on church doctrine and teaching, mission rules, and proper comportment and interactions with proselytes and local members. Missionaries are also encouraged to use their time outside class to actively study Church doctrine.

Missionaries who already speak the language of their assigned area are sent to their mission after just three weeks. Other missionaries may spend as much as an additional nine weeks in language training. The Missionary Training Center language programs encourage a full immersion experience with the motto "SYL" for "Speak Your Language". In some cases, missionaries learning foreign languages go directly to the MTC in the country where they are called to serve. This depends on the capacity of the MTC in the area.

Each MTC is directed by a mission president, just like any of the 335 missions worldwide (this number is ever changing). Classes in the MTC are typically taught by returned (former) missionaries. Branches are led by local church members called to serve in the MTC.

History of the MTC

The Missionary Training Center was originally started by the LDS Church after some of its missionaries were stranded in the United States due to difficulties in obtaining passport visas to other countries. Diplomatic relations between the United States and other countries where LDS missionaries served often became strained, limiting the number of missionaries serving in those areas. Often these missionaries would simply be reassigned to another area, but as the number of missionaries grew this became more of a problem.

Salt Lake Mission Home

The missionary experience prior to the establishment of the MTC was in some ways quite different from what would happen later on. In 1925, a small building adjacent to Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City had a dormitory for brand new missionaries. Missionaries arriving here would then be set apart, like an ordination, to their missionary service by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Often they would even be interviewed by these Apostles during this time and attend a service in the Salt Lake Temple, staying just a day or two before leaving to their assigned areas. Missionaries who had difficulty trying to get to their assigned areas would then either serve as tour guides on Temple Square or do clerical tasks at the LDS Church headquarters. Discipline problems arose from the missionaries who were doing these tasks, and often they would simply be released from their missionary service and allowed to return home.

Brigham Young University

In part to keep the missionaries occupied while they were waiting for their visas, many of these missionaries were enrolled in courses at the Church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. As language instruction was considered essential, most of these missionaries were enrolled in courses to learn the languages of the areas where they would be serving.

This proved to be problematic, however, as missionaries would arrive and depart at random intervals throughout the year as they accepted missionary assignments or as the visa paperwork was completed and approved by the country they were trying to get into. This certainly didn't fit well within the semester system for the rest of the BYU students, and eventually required professors that were dedicated strictly to teaching missionaries instead of the traditional university students.

There were also problems with missionaries fraternizing with the BYU co-eds when they were not attending classes, as well as a fairly large amount of free-time that missionaries also spent doing things that were considered unbecoming for full-time missionaries. Even being assigned to companionships was not enough to keep missionaries from pulling pranks or engaging in activities that proved embarrassing to the leadership of the LDS church. A more permanent organization was needed to cope with the needs of these missionaries.

Language Training Mission

By November, 1961, Missionaries gathered at Hotel Roberts in downtown Provo under the direction of Ernest J. Wilkins, a professor of Spanish in the BYU Languages department. Later on the activities were moved to the Amanda Knight Hall, one of the buildings on the lower campus of BYU, and was reserved exclusively for the training of missionaries. A new LDS mission, the Language Training Mission (LTM) was created with its own mission presidency and mission organization, with the geographic extent of the mission to be the perimeter of the building. This building included dormitories as well as classrooms for the missionaries. Eventually, other buildings on the campus of BYU were also used for missionary training activities.

Instructors for the LTM were employed by Brigham Young University. Sometimes, these were full-time professors from the university, but more often these were teaching assistants or simply university students who had skills in the languages being taught. In many cases, these were former missionaries who had just returned from the areas that the missionaries in the LTM were going to be soon leaving to. Curriculum was still planned directly by the Foreign Language departments at BYU, in coordination with the LTM mission presidency.

In the beginning, the LTM was intended to be a temporary place for those missionaries who were having visa difficulties. However, mission presidents who received visa-delayed missionaries started to notice a significant improvement in their prosletyzing skills over similar missionaries who were able to get their visas almost immediately. It was estimated that even after just a few weeks of intensive language training at the beginning could save almost a full year's worth of effort of trying to learn the language "on the streets" without this language training. Mission presidents soon asked the church headquarters to have all of the missionaries who were going to their areas, regardless of their visa status, to attend this language training before their departure.

It was during this expansion of the role of the LTM that additional types of instruction were also added to the curriculum, including leadership training and basic instructor training as well. After several years of doing this language and general missionary skills training, the mission presidents serving in English-speaking areas were requesting that their missionaries also have this same opportunity to have some of these additional classes taught at the LTM. As the growth of the number of missionaries serving overall as well as the number of missionaries who would be attending the LTM due to program changes was becoming so large, plans were made to move the whole mission to another location.

Provo Campus of the MTC

At about the same time the Provo Temple was built, some nearby land was acquired, originally for expansion of the campus of BYU. At this time four dormitories were built together with a gymnasium and a language training building. The name of the LTM was changed to the Missionary Training Center in 1978, to note that it was for more than just language training, although language training would continue to be a significant feature of this facility. The Salt Lake Mission Home was shut down permanently as well, and all remaining functions of that facility were also merged into the MTC, including administrative functions that were not otherwise handled directly by the LDS Church headquarters.

Due to the growth of the LDS church, the number of buildings and the size of the main administrative building were expanded to cope with the increased activity at this campus. Ultimately even this growth could no longer be accommodated and a need to build training centers in places other that Provo soon became apparent.

MTC campuses around the world

With the growth of the LDS Church outside the United States, it soon became almost impossible for LDS missionaries living outside the USA to be able to come to Provo and attend the MTC, both for financial reasons as well as for visa difficulties. Just as it had been a problem for American LDS to obtain visas to go abroad, it became difficult for foreign church members without American citizenship to come to Utah, often for the same reasons.

After the development of the Area Presidencies as a level of administration in the church ecclesiastical hierarchy, Area Presidents outside of North America were authorized to establish independent Missionary Training Centers for the members living within their area. This removed most international travel requirements for many missionaries, especially for missionaries who spoke the language of their own country as a native speaker and were able to serve on a local mission.

One of the first of these missionary training centers was established in 1977 at São Paulo, Brazil, adjacent to the newly dedicated São Paulo LDS Temple.

As the number of missionaries coming from North America grew, it was decided to send many of the missionaries directly to areas where they would soon be serving, if there was a local MTC capable of servicing them. This has allowed the growth of these MTCs outside of the USA instead of building another MTC campus in North America. Missionaries from North America who have visa difficulties still attend the Provo MTC first, as well as missionaries who will be serving in North America or in countries where there is no local MTC.

Provo MTC

The Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah is still the largest such center. The Provo MTC was the first MTC built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. While the concept of the MTC is the same around the world, there are some specific functions pertaining to the Provo, MTC. For example, missionaries that are serving from countries that do not have their own MTC come to the Provo MTC. This means that at any given time there are classes being conducted for native foreign language speakers (in addition to the foreign language classes for English speaking missionaries).

List of Missionary Training Centers

There are 17 missionary training centers throughout the world. They are located in the following countries:

External links

Missionary Training Center - official site for the Provo MTC
The Cumorah Project - devoted to Mormon doctrine and missionary work
Organizational and Administrative Church History - Has some historical notes related to the history section
BYU helps push language learning for missionaries - A detailed history of the MTC published by the BYU Newspaper, Daily Universe