A Look Back at 100 Years of Missionary Training Centers

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By Aimee Cobabe, Church News

March 2025 marks 100 years since the dedication of what came to be known as the Salt Lake Mission Home, a predecessor to what became missionary training centers around the world for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Missionary training dates back to the Church’s early days with the School of the Prophets organized in the 1830s so elders could “teach one another” the gospel and “be prepared in all things” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:77-80).

The Salt Lake Mission Home

The Salt Lake Mission Home began training around 100 missionaries for a week at a time in 1925. Missionaries learning a new language learned that new language in the mission field.

Although the instruction and training new missionaries received continued to evolve over time, an article in the Church News in 1973 titled “Missionary Home: Place of Learning” gave a full itinerary of what life was like then for training missionaries at the Salt Lake Mission Home.

New missionaries checked into the home on Saturday mornings. Many General Authorities gave talks with titles such as “Your Potential for Success,” “Organization of Time” and “Spirituality, Key to Success.”

Sundays included a one-hour sacrament meeting during the day. On Monday, missionaries went to the temple for two sessions, ending at 4:15 p.m., and then returned to the mission home for more classwork. Tuesday was spent studying most of the day, and on Wednesday evenings, missionaries received a performance evaluation to review what they had learned.

Much of the study for missionaries at this time was focused on learning the missionary discussions and “flip charts” with pictures to use alongside the discussions.

On Thursdays, missionaries would leave and go either directly to the mission field or to one of the language training missions at Brigham Young University, Ricks College (later BYU–Idaho) or Church College of Hawaii (later BYU–Hawaii).

The Church History Biographical Database has a searchable record of missionaries who went through the Salt Lake Mission Home from June 1924 through 1957. Part of the mission of the biographical database is to connect descendants to their missionary ancestors.

Language Learning

By the late 1950s, missionaries called to Mexico were having difficulty obtaining permits to enter the country, with arrivals sometimes delayed months. This prompted consideration of a language-training facility at BYU in Provo, Utah.

The first class of missionaries — 14 going to Argentina and 16 to Mexico — began the language-learning program in the BYU Alumni building on the BYU campus in December 1961. The First Presidency changed the name of the Missionary Language Institute to the Language Training Mission in June 1963. It also added training in Portuguese and German.

The Language Learning Centers at Ricks College and the Church College of Hawaii were opened for Dutch and Scandinavian languages and Polynesian and Oriental languages, respectively, in 1968.

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The Church created plans in 1971 for a separate Provo Language Training Mission complex, which began housing missionaries in August 1976. When completed, the complex included 37 offices, 22 chapels, 290 classrooms, 12 observation rooms, and enough housing to accommodate 2,974 missionaries.

During the same period, a former elementary school just north of the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City functioned as the Salt Lake Mission Home from 1971 to 1978. The Salt Lake Mission Home was closed in 1978 as the facility was no longer large enough to accommodate missionaries for an extended time.

A Church News article from August 1975 noted that 100 to 150 missionaries went through the Language Training Mission each week, with sister missionaries accounting for 10% to 15%.

The preparation of new missionaries followed three main goals: “One, to teach them to become disciples of Christ; two, to teach them the culture of the country they will labor in and to learn to love the people they will serve; and three, to teach them to preach the gospel in another language.”

Missionaries spent their first three weeks at the Language Training Mission studying their new language full-time. The remaining weeks were focused on memorizing discussions.

The 1975 article notes that elders and sisters would stand in line for food in the cafeteria, “reading scriptures and studying discussions while waiting. No one stands idle in the queue.”

Elder Mark Hale of Provo, Utah, who was preparing for a mission in Mexico, told the Church News: “I can’t believe the Spirit here. I’ve never worked so hard and learned so much in so little time.”

International Training Centers

The first international missionary training facilities were established in São Paulo, Brazil, and Hamilton, New Zealand, in 1977.

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The next year, missionaries called to English-speaking missions were added to the Language Training Mission in Provo, which was then renamed the Missionary Training Center.

After more than four decades, and with the growth of the Church internationally, more languages have been added at the Provo Missionary Training Center, and more missionary training centers were opened around the world.

There are currently 11 MTCs globally:

• Brazil Missionary Training Center, in São Paulo, Brazil
• Democratic Republic of the Congo Missionary Training Center, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• England Missionary Training Center, in Preston, England
• Ghana Missionary Training Center, in Accra, Ghana
• Mexico Missionary Training Center, in Mexico City, Mexico
• New Zealand Missionary Training Center, in Auckland, New Zealand
• Peru Missionary Training Center, in Lima, Peru
• Philippines Missionary Training Center, in Manila, Philippines
• Provo Missionary Training Center, in Provo, Utah
• South Africa Missionary Training Center, in Johannesburg, South Africa
• Thailand Missionary Training Center, in Bangkok, Thailand

Missionary Training in the Digital Age

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of missionary training centers worldwide in March 2020, and the Church transitioned the training of new missionaries to online instruction. Even with MTCs resuming on-site training in June 2020, many missionaries will still begin their training online at home for a third of their training, then travel to an MTC.

Elder Jarom Michael Moody, who was called to serve in the Massachusetts Boston Mission, told the Church News in September 2021 that he was able to share his at-home MTC experience with his family.

“There are a lot of invitations to involve our family in our training. From sharing what we have been learning to introducing ourselves in Spanish to them, we have had numerous opportunities to make them a part of the experience. One of the biggest benefits of at-home MTC is seeing my family. It separates being a missionary from leaving your family. I have been able to train without any homesickness, and that lets me become a more effective missionary.”

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