Wednesday at the MTC is real-life 'Fear Factor'

PROVO — It's Wednesday down at the Missionary Training Center, the place where grown men weep like babies.

Wednesdays at the MTC aren't the easiest day in the lives of LDS families. Wednesdays are the worst — and, later, the best. Wednesdays are the day dozens of new missionaries report for duty and say goodbye to parents, brothers, sisters and childhood. Ask any parent who has endured Wednesday here, and he acts like a survivor — "How did the MTC go?" he asks knowingly. "That was the hardest ... "

On Wednesdays, the main hallway of the MTC is divided by a rope. On one side of the rope, new missionaries are arriving with their families, all of them smiling. On the other side of the rope, families are leaving the MTC without their missionaries, tears streaming down their faces, eyes swollen, as they pass through a gantlet of volunteers offering boxes of tissue in their outstretched hands.

That sums up Wednesdays at the MTC: A happy day, a sad day.

On Wednesdays, the MTC is as choreographed as Swan Lake. There are people directing traffic in the parking lot. There are people telling the new missionaries what to do with their luggage and where to check in. There are people to show the families where to go next.

But there's no one to tell parents how to cope with the pain. They're on their own.

There's a brief program/pep rally for the missionaries and their families. Songs are sung and sermons are delivered and a brief video is watched. They give you a few minutes afterward to say goodbye.

The faithful will tell you it's wonderful, these kids going off to serve, but right now it doesn't feel wonderful. Those missions for kids always sound like a great idea right up to that part where they tell the kid/missionaries to leave the room by one door and the families to leave by another door.

For 19 years or more, they have rarely been apart, and just like that he/she is gone for two years, or, as the parents can tell you, 24 months, or 730 days, or 17,520 hours, or 1,051,200 minutes. It's not the same as sending them off to college, where there are frequent phone calls and weekend or holiday visits. Wednesdays at the MTC are the end of the line for a while. Two phone calls a year, and one letter a week.

For parents, there aren't many experiences more painful than Wednesdays at the MTC. A root canal? Bring it on. A kick in the gut? Embrace it. A tax audit? Get real. This place has seen more tears than a Larry Miller press conference. There is hardly a man alive who can take it with a stiff upper lip.