Parent and Missionary Report Provo MTC on Lock Down

A mother of a missionary Whitney Robbins assigned to the MTC in Guatemala reported on her daughter's missionary blog Sister Robbins that the Provo MTC is on lock down due to the swine flu epidemic in Utah.

Tracie reports:

(Tracie's Note: The Provo MTC is currently on lock-down due to the recent Swine Flu outbreak in the P-MTC so no missionaries are leaving Provo for the next 2 weeks, this means that no new missionaries will enter the GUA-MTC and those who have completed their time there have moved out into the mission field. This leaves only the 13 North American missionaries, including Whitney, that arrived in the GUA-MTC three weeks ago there for at least the next two maybe three weeks...Can you imagine, only 13 missionaries in the the whole GUA-MTC for at least two weeks...That's some GOOD one on one time with their instructors).

An interesting point is that her daughter who went to the Guatemala MTC is getting some very good quality time with the instructors and staff since there are only thirteen of them there for the next two or three weeks until the Provo missionaries arrive.

On the Deseret News site today Carrie A. Moore in an article entitled Utah child dies of H1N1: 489 people confirmed to have virus reported "A second Utahn has died after contracting the H1N1 flu virus, and while the spread of the disease is slowing in some states, the number of Utah residents per capita who have had it is now third highest in the nation." So the Church official are not taking any chance of spreading the disease throughout the world and are holding back missionaries for two to three weeks as a precaution.

Elder Sam Yoshida reported on his blog from the MTC that her report is correct:

Today has been the first time in four days that I've been out of the residence halls for longer than 3 hours. Things are getting pretty crazy here. The swine flu/regular flu has hit the MTC hard. I don't know how much longer I have until I'm the last one left. Around 60 elders have already had to be put into quarantine (solitary confinement with other sick elders). I don't know what is going on in there but I can only expect the worst. and I'm safe to say that at least 40% of the elders have been hit with some sort of sickness. It's only a matter of time before the MTC turns into a place full of Missionary Mutants and a movie called I am Legend 2 will be coming to a theatre near you.

There's my story for the week. It's all true too. Things are getting pretty crazy, and I've been blessed to not be getting this sickness that's going around. Missionaries are not allowed to leave the MTC until at least June 13th. New missionaries coming in only get to have their parents drop them off on the side of the sidewalk, and that's there goodbyes. Kind of sad, but that's how bad it's getting here. I think they have a thing on LDS.org about it all. No one be worried though. This will all blow over. I just wanted to make a joke of it all. I'm perfectly fine (knock on wood) I say I've been stuck in the residence halls because my companion has been sick and we've had to stay behind with hi. It's pretty cool.

Congratulations Elder Hellewell on a successful mission. I actually have two missionaries in my zone that were supposed to leave yesterday to the Mesa spanish speaking mission, but can't leave because of the sickness.

The church is handling the situation well and is being socially responsible during this current health crisis. I would hate to see any missionary succumb to the flu and hope we would all pray for the missionaries especially during the next month.