SALT LAKE CITY — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will begin allowing some new missionaries to receive their training in person next month.
A small number of missionaries will be invited to begin receiving in-person training at the church's missionary training centers in Provo, Ghana and New Zealand in late June.
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At each of the facilities, missionaries will be required to test negative for COVID-19 before arriving, and they'll be given additional COVID-19 tests if they exhibit any symptoms.
The Provo MTC will require its missionaries to be fully vaccinated before receiving in-person training, and the facility will initially be open only to missionaries from the United States who will not require training in a new language. About 150 to 250 new missionaries are expected to arrive at the Provo facility each week.
For the MTCs in Ghana and New Zealand, only local missionaries will be allowed, with an expected capacity of about 50 missionaries at each location.
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Missionaries and their leaders will be notified if they've been invited for in-person training. Otherwise, they'll continue training online.
The church expects to open its other MTCs and expand MTC capacities as conditions allow.
"As MTCs resume on-site training, most new missionaries will begin their training at home and then move to an MTC for the remainder of their training. This will allow missionaries to continue to experience many of the positive elements of online training. The online portion of training will move to a Monday start," a news release from The Church of Jesus Christ says.
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