Safe Arrival in Michigan

Dear parents and family of Elders Compton, Ortiz, Richardson, Tilley, and Wiseman:

We are pleased to report that earlier this evening your son arrived at the Lansing Airport, after flying here from either Salt Lake City (through Minneapolis) or Mexico City (via Detroit).  One of the flights was delayed and we had some challenges with the baggage, but your sons are now safely in our hands.  They are each a bit tired, having gotten up early this morning, but look happy and pleased to have made it to Michigan.  Below (and attached) is a picture that we took of them at the Lansing airport:

We are all at the mission home in East Lansing now, and after Sister Brennan feeds them we will provide a short initial orientation and then send them off to bed.  I also will privately interview each of our new missionaries to help me get to know them a bit better and to aid me in making first-companion assignments.

I have carefully selected five of our best missionaries to serve as training companions. 

Your missionary will arrive in his area tomorrow afternoon or evening and hopefully will start missionary work right away.  Our mission’s preparation days are usually on Mondays so you can expect to get an e-mail message from your missionary then, in which they can give you more details about their companion, area, and address.  We also will send to you in a couple of days another email with a picture of your missionary and his or her training companion, as well as a picture with Sister Brennan and me.

We are so grateful to have your missionary with us here.  We will do our best to help each missionary feel welcome and loved, as well as successful.  Missionary service is demanding, and really requires the very best of each young missionary.  But we have every hope and expectation that your missionary will find joy and satisfaction in this divine work.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

All the best,



Sterling & Annette Brennan

Travelling to the Michigan Lansing Mission

We were able to talk to Sean for about 20 minutes this morning while he was waiting for his flight at the airport.  He sounded great!  He borrowed a phone from someone at the airport.  :-)

Sean (R) and Travel Companion

3rd and Final Week in the MTC

It's been another exciting week I have gotten more comments about being Elder straight outa Compton these last three weeks than the rest of my life put together

We taught our last TRC person of interest (your not supposed to use the term investigator anymore don't ask me why) but it was really hard because we were actually getting some were she had built some good faith in Christ and the Book of Mormon and we were planning on asking her if she wanted to be baptized on our next appointment but of course the TRC desk said we couldn't because we were leaving and couldn't fit it in the schedule but oh well we still don't even know if she was a real person of interest or not

president Niel L Anderson spoke on tuesday it was really cool to see an apostle of the Lord in real life in a gymnasium size of room he talked alot about temple which was really cool and he talked about a few other varius things

Their was a miracle at the MTC for lunch the other day I was really craving a Subway sandwich because this MTC food is really starting to work wonders on my digestive tract and the day after I was craving Subway that was what was for lunch in my book that was a miracle to get some nonfrozen food for at least one meal

and next time you hear from me I will be in Michigan and if I misspelled anything I wrote this on my phone and spell check doesn't work for some reason.

2nd Week at the MTC

Had a good second week at the MTC.  It's nearing flu season so we all got a note to go to the doctors and get a flu shot. 

Last week I mentioned how I get a smart phone on my mission and at the time I was kind of indifferent about having it,  I thought it would be nice and make doing things easier but now that we have learned more how to use Gospel Library properly. I know that smartphones are for missions they make it much easier to write talks and pull up related scriptures videos its really cool and makes doing the work easier

My district gets to host new missionaries this week.  What that means is we get to pick up the missionaries that are being dropped of at the MTC and we get to show them around.  Not very many missionaries get the chance to host, so I'm pretty excited about that

It's bean crazy watching the fire from the MTC and how close is was to all the homes.  I can tell you many prayers were said for the people and homes around Salem, Elk Ridge, and Woodland Hill area.  According to my parents not one house has burned.  That is pretty amazing and definitely a miracle.

Elder Sean Compton

L-R Elder Tobler, Elder Gierhart, Elder Compton

First Full E-Mail from the MTC

Note:  Scroll down to see some pictures.

First thing to get out of the way every one told me that the orange Juice makes you sick and because I love orange juice I tried it on the first day just to get the sickness out of the way if it made me sick.  Long story short the orange juice dose not make you sick I've tried it multiple times and it still hasn't made me sick.  Its bean quite the adventure one of the elders in my districts companion didn't show up and conveniently me and my Companion Elder Tobler got stuck with him making us a trio but its not to bad we have learned to get along and to get stuff done.  One note on Elder Tobler he has a JBL pay speaker system need I say any more

 I got to bring a smart phone on my mission and how all that works in the MTC is their is wifi literally every were on the mtc campus.  I only can have a handful of missionary approved apps and we have an app on our phones that monitors what we do at all times of the day and doesn't let us download any apps that aren't mission approved.  We are encouraged to use our phone as scriptures so we can learn how to use them so we can be ready for the mission field.  I wrote this email on a computer but we can choose to use our phones or a computer.  We also do our area book planner on our phones its really cool because if you go to the maps it shows you the boundaries for your areas which is currently the MTC.

When I was at home Sunday was a day of rest on the mission that is not so true.  It was devotional after sacrament after devotional etc.  I'm just glad I don't have to be in the MTC for a fast Sunday, because a regular Sunday was hard enough to make it through.   Breakfast on Sunday morning is just cold cereal and muffins and i'm sorry that just dos not cut it for breakfast I was starving 2 hours for lunch.  The frustrating thing was is I had loads of food in the residence halls but I didn't have enough time to go get any.

-Elder Compton

MTC Drop Off

We dropped Sean off at 12:30 pm on September 5, 2018.  We got our first e-mail from him about one hour later.

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Hey I made it I have my missionary tag I'm alive my p day is on Tuesday just so you know so I tell you more on p day!!! love you guys.
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