Blessings, Blessings, and More Blessings

We had another very full week and also a little more relaxed weekend. After working  nearly seven straight days, including a long Saturday and Sunday, we finally had a day off last Monday. I kept my slippers on the whole day! I didn't know what to do with myself so I worked on HawkSoft stuff for part of the day, hahaha.

Tuesday started with a bang. It started with us finally getting our computers. We still didn't have all the authority we needed to do our work; but, at least we had computers. We attended our department meeting via Teams. We had lots of last minute changes (we seemed to have lots of last minute changes all week!). And we ended the day by participating in an event that evening. An event is usually a video that requires interpretations into other languages. We help the interpreters get setup up and if they need anything during the meeting. If all goes well, we get to watch the event while it is occurring (sometimes we even get it in English if the Engineer sends the right feed. lol). Tuesday night we got to watch the Hill Cumorah Pageant that will be broadcast publicly in July. There were a few other events going on at the same time; but we watched the Hill Cumorah. It can get a little crazy.

Wednesday was another busy day followed by another couple events at the same time. We usually facilitate meals for these events so that is both fun and a little stressful. It is fun because we get to mingle with the Interpreters. We meet people from all over the world. Lucky for us they all speak English but some have very strong accents. (In the picture the Sister in the front speaks Cantonese, the Brother in the middle speaks Spanish, and the Sister at the end speaks Tongan. The Brother in the mask also speaks Cantonese. The couple behind him are Elder and Sister Hansen. They are our trainers. They are talking to Curtis who is the Supervisor for the night and I'm also in the group. (The picture is actually of our Thursday evening event.)

Wednesday night we didn't actually hear the event. It was in Spanish with an English interpretation; however, they had trouble sending us the English interpretation. Soooooo, we spent the evening talking with Curtis. He is fascinating and knows a lot about a lot of things, including some of the software we are using. Needless to say I asked a lot of questions and thoroughly enjoyed myself and felt well fed!

Thursday was just insane! We had cancelations from some of our Interpreters so Supervisors were scrambling to get replacements. We were scrambling to make all the changes in the software so they can get paid. Steve and Sister Hansen were scrambling to make adjustments so the meals were still going to be OK. We enjoyed a wonderful meal and great company before we headed up for the events. We had 6 different events going on at the same time with 17 languages. Some of the languages were repeated but we needed separate interpreters because they were different events. Also, some of the languages were done in country and not at Salt Lake so that made things a "little" less crazy. To make matters worse, that particular night the Engineers had trouble getting the sound right. The interpreters for the same language couldn't hear each other so they didn't know when they could speak. We try to match the interpreters with the gender of the speaker. There is always a slight delay as they interpret so the next speaker needs to here when the first interpreter stops speaking before they start interpreting. They finally got it all straightened out, however, they never did get us any sound so we didn't get to hear any of the events. That was OK because Curtis was there again and kept us entertained. Actually with that many events we had all but one of our supervisors there that night.

Friday was a more relaxed day. We only worked until 1:30. We didn't have any evening events. WOW. And we didn't have any local events scheduled for the weekend because of Father's Day. We did have a couple oversees events, but all we have to do for those is enter them in the computer.

So Friday started our holiday. We had a relaxing afternoon before going to Thomas Bever's wedding reception. It was so fun to see people from home. We enjoyed a nice visit with the whole family at different times throughout the evening. And I got to see and hold Emily's baby. She is so cute!!!

After the reception we met up with Laila and Tyus for some frozen yogurt. We had a wonderful visit with them. It sure made my birthday special! I can't believe we didn't take any pictures with them. I'm not sure we will get to see them again before they move back to Oregon. They are leaving next weekend and we have the biggest event of the month next weekend from Thursday through Saturday all day long. It is the Mission Presidents Training Seminar. I'm excited to be able to watch that.

Last Sunday evening was the Face to Face with Elder Andersen for the Single Adults. It was a wonderful broadcast. They filmed part of it in Ashton Gardens in Lehi, Utah in the Light of the World Garden. They have some incredible bronze statues of the life of the Savior. Well, it is only about 30 minutes from us so we decided to go see it on Saturday. There are lots of other things to see at the whole facility so we spent several hours enjoying the park. I can't possibly post all the pictures we took so I will post a few of them for you. This particular day they had three events going on. One was the Fairy Tale Festival. There were LOTS of kids dressed up in costume with so many adorable little princesses and dudes roaming around. They also had a Nature Connects Made with LEGO bricks exhibit all around the gardens. And of course the Light of the World exhibit. We took pictures of all the bronze statues and all the LEGO creations (in honor of Djeryd). We did get one of Elsa and Anna for Elle. Enjoy  the pictures!

Here are some of the LEGO exhibits.

These are the fantastic bronze statues. The attention to detail is incredible.