MTC
MTC Packing List
What to pack for the MTC and how to pack it: what belongs in your carry-on, what you need in the first 24 hours, laundry maths for a short stay, and what the MTC supplies.
Published 7 min readMissionary Tracker
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Packing for the MTC is not a separate packing job. You are packing for your whole mission and then deciding which of it needs to be reachable during a few weeks of training — which bag things travel in matters almost as much as what you bring.
This covers that split: what belongs in your carry-on, what you will actually use during training, how much clothing a short stay needs, and what can stay packed until you reach your mission.
How long you will actually be there
Training length depends on your assignment. Missionaries who are not learning a new language are typically at an MTC for around three weeks; those learning one stay considerably longer, commonly around six. Your call materials give your actual dates, and those are the ones to pack against.
The reason this matters for packing is laundry. A three-week stay and a six-week stay need the same clothing, because in both cases you are washing weekly — what changes is how much wear each item takes before you leave for your mission.
Divide your luggage before you pack it
Work in three piles rather than one. This is the single most useful thing you can do the week before you travel.
- Carry-on. Documents, medication, glasses, one change of clothes, and anything you would not want to be without if a suitcase went missing.
- First suitcase. Everything you will use during training: a week of clothing, toiletries, exercise kit, shoes.
- Second suitcase. Everything for the mission itself — the coat you will not need until December, the extra shirts, the supplies. Packed, labelled, and mostly left alone.
Storage in an MTC residence is limited. A suitcase you can slide under a bed unopened is worth more than one you have to unpack to find a toothbrush.
Your carry-on
Carry-on
10 items
Clothing for training
You are in proselyting clothing for most of the day, most days. Both the elders’ and sisters’ guidelines treat missionary training centres as one of the settings where the fuller expectation applies — for elders that means white shirt, tie, dress slacks and a suit jacket where required, and for sisters skirts or dresses at MTC devotionals.
Pack a week of it in the suitcase you will live out of, and leave the rest packed.
A week of clothing
10 items
Shared residences mean shared corridors and shared bathrooms. Sleepwear and a dressing gown or robe are worth a moment’s thought rather than being an afterthought.
Laundry, and what that means for quantities
The arithmetic is simple and it is what decides how much clothing you need. If you wash once a week, you need a week of everything plus enough margin for the day something does not dry. That is it.
Details that vary — how often laundry facilities are available, what they cost, whether irons are provided — are in your instructions rather than on this page. What is worth packing regardless:
- A laundry bag that is not a carrier bag.
- Detergent for the first week or two.
- A few clothes hangers, if you have space.
- A travel-size stain remover. Small, light, and used more than you would expect.
Toiletries and personal items
Pack a few weeks’ worth in the suitcase you are living out of, and keep the rest with your mission luggage. Anything you run out of can be bought — MTCs are not remote — but a bathroom shared with other missionaries is not the place to be reorganising a two-year supply.
Toiletries
10 items
Study and training items
Most study materials are provided or available digitally, and what you are expected to bring is stated in your instructions. Bringing a library is a well-known way to arrive overweight.
What is genuinely used every day:
- Your own scriptures, if you want a physical set — one set, not three.
- A study journal, and a second notebook for language work if that applies to you.
- Pens you like, a couple of highlighters, and sticky tabs.
- A small folder for the handouts you will accumulate immediately.
- A watch, so you are not checking a phone for the time.
If you are learning a language, index cards or a small notebook that fits in a pocket earn their space — most language learning at an MTC happens in the gaps rather than at a desk.
Things people forget
- A watch. Days at an MTC are scheduled tightly and phone use is limited.
- Shower sandals. Shared bathrooms.
- Earplugs. Shared rooms, unfamiliar building, early mornings.
- An alarm clock. Depending on your mission’s rules, your phone may not be the right tool for this.
- Addresses on paper. The people you want to write to in week one are the people whose addresses are in a phone you are not using.
- Stamps and a few envelopes, for the same reason.
- A small padlock for a case or locker.
Travel day
Weigh everything at home on real scales, against the allowance in your travel instructions and your airline’s published limits. Both matter, and they are not always the same.
Label every bag inside and out — a card with your name and mission inside each case is worth more than a tag that can be torn off. Wear your heaviest shoes and coat rather than packing them. And keep your carry-on genuinely small, because you will be carrying it through an arrival process while tired.
Two things worth telling your family in advance: the MTC does not hold a farewell meeting for families, and families are discouraged from meeting missionaries at airports when they leave the MTC for their mission assignment.
What stays packed
Anything mission-specific rather than training-specific can stay in the second suitcase: the coat for a climate you have not reached, the bulk toiletries, the extra shirts, the shoes you are keeping fresh, the gifts and letters from home you are saving.
For what goes into that second suitcase in the first place, see the full LDS missionary packing list. For the short version of what you need on arrival day, see what to bring to the MTC.