A sea of white shirts with colored ties

There are 2500 missionaries in this training center as I type.  When we go to meal times, all I see is a sea of white shirts and colored ties.  Here and there I see a lady missionary in colored shirt or dress resembling something like a flower amidst the white of the shirts, much like a crocus emerging from the Winter snow.
Meal time is a real zoo.  I cannot imagine how much food these young men eat, but they certainly put it away.  I wonder what the food bill is for one day here...............let alone what it must be for a week or a month.  They must bring in the food by the Tractor Trailer load.
I have been going to weight watchers for the past 18 months and have pretty much stabilized my weight.  I worry about the servings here - there is no way to monitor what goes into the preparation of the food or how large or small the portions may be.  It is like wandering through a gastronomical mine field.
I was wondering how they managed to keep things on track here and just how do they keep track of 2500 people in myriad language classes and other activities.  If it was up to me I would color code them, but they don't keep still so it might be too difficult to do that.  Instead, I found out that they have schedules that are posted and groups are staggered in their release from language study to go to meal time so that the food service people don't get over run by 2500 starving young adults all at once.  Add to that around 50 couples and you have an ecclectic mix. A few of the couples have sons or daughters also serving missions elsewhere but many of the couples have "lets compare grandchildren picture" parties as they eat.  My grandchildren are the cutest of them all, and I know that.Today was our first full day of instruction - the do's and don'ts and the in's and out's of checking in, checking out when we leave, the required meetings, the lessons in computer and digitizing.

Tomorrow will be theological instruction and discussion in the book "Preach my Gospel" from 8am to about 5pm with a few breaks here and there.  There is really not much time to do anything other than read and prepare for the next day.

The front desk is manned 24 hours a day and there are people coming and going all hours of the day - the place is like Grand Central Station.  Entrances and exits are governed by the airline schedules and missionaries come here from all over the world.  Some come here to learn English and to get to see the headquarters of the church and hear church leaders  address the missionaries and for most of them this will be the only time they will ever leave their home countries so it is a priceless experience for them to travel to the MTC.
I am glad I have taken on the challenge of becoming a missionary again but this time instead of proselyting I will be chasing dead people's records.
Well, talking about the nuts and bolts of being in the Mission Training Center is probably dull and boring so I will tell you of some of the things I have seen.
There was a hang glider way up in the sky on Sunday and as I was observing him, my eye was attracted to a couple of splashes of red way up high on the mountain.  The leaves have changed way up  there and if we stayed long enough, the entire mountain would become a blaze of colors.  I imagine the leaves will be totally beautiful out east when we get there.