10/9/91 - Entered the MTC

Today is the 20th anniversary of my entering the Missionary Training Center. Since there are now approaching 20 MTCs, including one in Santo Domingo, I should specify that I attended the MTC in Provo.

Being historically minded, I'm intrigued to realize that I am the first person in my family to enter the MTC. My father served a mission in 1969-71, if I'm not mistaken about those dates. That means he probably attended the LTM (Language Training Mission), which would have been recently established at BYU. The MTC I attended—the big complex west of BYU, across the street from the Provo Temple, didn't start operating until 1978.

I see the Provo MTC has a website now. That shouldn't surprise me, but I wasn't expecting it.

I've been poking around a little online for info about the Santo Domingo MTC. The Deseret News has a photo. I believe it's located adjacent to the Santo Domingo temple, which I've never seen.

According to the folks at Cumorah.com, Dominicans now account for half of the missionary force in the Dominican Republic. When I served, 1991-1993, they were about a third of the missionary force in my mission. I never had a Dominican companion, though I shared apartments with a couple. They had a reputation among the Americans for being difficult—for having sullen or arrogant attitudes—which based on my own observations, I would be inclined to chalk up to:

• Resentment over how often the Americans excluded them by speaking English around them (even though we weren't supposed to).
  
  
• Resentment over the way the mission was dominated by foreigners and generations-long church members who thought they knew best. (As the child of converts, I experienced a similar kind of marginalization in the States.)
  
  
• In at least one case I know of, a sense of dismay over the American missionaries' First-World lifestyle and expectations. The Dominican elder I'm thinking of resented the way missionaries spent what to him were exorbitant sums of money on recreation; he was trying to save money for attending the temple after his mission.

When I served, the Santo Domingo MTC didn't exist, nor did the temple. Dominican missionaries were supposed to go to Guatemala to be endowed and trained. Partway through my mission, the office began having difficulties obtaining visas to send new missionaries to Guatemala, so we had missionaries serving who were unendowed. That was a very problematic symbol of the American-Dominican differential.

Another symbolic status differential that I'm glad was later removed is that at zone conferences the mission president would give his closing "pep talk" in English on the premise that this was the first language of the majority of missionaries, and he wanted to be sure even the American greenies would benefit. This meant the Dominican missionaries received simultaneous translation from someone sitting behind or beside them. Eventually the mission president shifted to Spanish, which I'm glad of: however defensible his intentions, privileging English had the effect of converting Dominican missionaries into a second-class minority in their own country—and, no less, in an institution where all missionaries were supposed to know or be learning Spanish.

These are the kinds of signals by which American Mormons unthinkingly advertise their privileged status in the church—and in the world more generally. (It's a hell of a lot easier for an American to travel wherever they want than for a Dominican.)

I think there was one Dominican AP (assistant to the mission president) the whole time I served.

My mission (Santo Domingo East) is currently led, the church newsroom tells me, by a Puerto Rican, Heriberto Hernandez.

I'm floored to discover that in 2010, my mission was combined with the Puerto Rico San Juan East Mission, essentially bringing that part of Puerto Rico under my mission's jurisdiction. Not much must have been happening in Puerto Rico. That's ironic since immediately after the lifting of the priesthood ban in 1978, missionary work in the Dominican Republic began under the auspices of Puerto Rico.

UPDATE: I realized after writing this that the merger of the Dominican and Puerto Rican missions reduces the likelihood that the missions will be led by a Dominican in the future, since the mission president needs to be able to travel to both countries. It's easier for a Puerto Rican to travel to the DR than for a Dominican to travel to Puerto Rico. :(

Enough. I need to wrap this up.

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Heavenly Father—

I'm grateful for the experience of my mission,
for the way it immersed me in a different society and culture,
for the way it brought me into close contact with poverty,
for the way it opened my eyes and softened my heart to forms of suffering, discrimination, and exploitation.

I'm grateful for the people who allowed me to enter their lives while I was in their country.
I hope I brought them something worthwhile.
During this two-year meditation on my mission experience,
show me what else you would like me to do by way of serving individuals in the Dominican Republic,
whether that's people I already know or people I don't.

In Christ's name, amen.