Utah teen helps missionaries not feel alone while attending MTC remotely
Apr 28, 2022, 10:46 PM | Updated: Jun 10, 2022, 11:29 pm
DRAPER, Utah — A Draper teen has found a unique way to help missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adjust to training remotely and not feel so alone.
When Caroline Murdoch gets home from school, she usually has assignments to get done. Assignments that have her learning new languages — over 50 of them, in fact.
She pulled up words on her computer and explained what language they were written in.
One was in Cantonese, and the next was in Greek.
“This one’s really cool. I like the look of the Greek language,” she said.
It’s the highlight of her day. Caroline is creating special signs for people she’s never met but wants to help, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I don’t think we realize how much it’s affected our missionaries, and I think this is a great way to make it more apparent to people,” she said.
Caroline watched how the pandemic affected her sister, who couldn’t attend the Missionary Training Center in person.
Instead, her sister did everything remotely.
“When my sister was in the home MTC, I saw how hard it was for her because she was stuck in her room all day,” she recounted.
Their dad had the idea to make a sign for her sister’s room that she could hang in the background.
“THE MISSIONARY TRAINING CENTER DRAPER, UTAH BRANCH WELCOMES HERMANA MURDOCH,” the sign reads. “CALLED TO SERVE IN THE CHILE, CONCEPCIÓN SOUTH MISSION,” it continues, and then in Spanish reads “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Knowing it helped her sister not feel so isolated, Caroline began making the signs for other friends.
Word of her home MTC banners began to spread around the world, and requests poured in from all different places.
“The more orders we got, the more and more we knew that it was an important thing to our community,” she said.
She expanded the signs she offered to include countdown charts for missionaries returning home, welcome home banners, and posters for people who served missions years ago.
After making the file in Adobe Illustrator, Caroline sends it to the customer for them to download and print.
Caroline has now received 2,648 orders, including one that came in Thursday evening. That order was for a missionary in Arizona.
As she personalizes each word and language, Caroline knows she’s making an impact on each missionary.
“I love that I get to make a difference like this, it makes me feel really good about myself,” she said, adding, “I’m just so glad that I get to do this.”
