Events, Costco Shopping, Moving, and 50 Years!

We had several major events this past week. I hope some of you watched the Face to Face with Elder and Sister Bednar last Sunday. We had 32 people there. We ate with one of our Cantonese brothers and enjoyed getting to know him better. Because of so many people, we served them down in the cafeteria. Since it was a weekend, that meant we were responsible for the whole meal, setup and cleanup. We missed part of the broadcast since we were still cleaning up. We had already watched the original taping of the broadcast a week or so before, but it was nice to see the edited and finished product. I thought it turned out very well.

Our Monday was typical with more work coming in that we needed to be aware of. We took most of the day off and paid the price on Tuesday when we had some surprises that turned into emergencies. We were informed that we were going to be moving into our remodeled apartment on Friday, so we took most of Monday to do some preliminary packing. Then we held our last Family Home Evening in our West Temple apartment. By unanimous vote, we will be continuing to host Family Home Evening in our new apartment starting tomorrow. We don't mind. We think it is very fun.

So Tuesday morning as we were reviewing our upcoming events we discovered one event that was happening the next morning and required a breakfast. It had been in "Prep" for so long we completely forgot about it. Apparently it came out of "Prep" on Monday and we missed it because of our day off. Anyway, we scrambled and got everything taken care of and our breakfast ordered. We also made final preparations for another event for Wednesday evening that was very large. While Steve was working on the meals, I was working on the final Agenda for our Team meeting that day as well as getting everyone entered into our invoicing system called Plunet. 

Right after the Team meeting we went Costco shopping with Baptiste, our lead Supervisor. Apparently we get to do this twice a year right before General Conference. We bought nearly $600 worth of snacks and supplies not only for General Conference, but for all our events for the next 6 months. It was a very fun trip. I mean, how fun is it to buy tons of cookies and candy and chips. We bought a few protein bars too, to throw in a little healthy stuff. 😊

We received an email that day that we were able to move in on Wednesday. I wrote back and said there was no way we could move on Wednesday because of our busy event schedule and was told that that was the earliest we could move and we were OK to wait until Friday. Well, we decided to move in the stuff we packed the day before on Tuesday night. We thought we would just drop it off that night, but ended up unpacking and putting everything away. We also moved some furniture around to better suit us. I'm so glad we did. It made for a late night, but it made it so much better when we moved the rest of our stuff.

So, Wednesday morning started with an Event called Leadership Enrichment Series with Elder Gong. This was a new series so we were all in the dark. That is part of the reason it stayed in "Prep" so long. We just didn't have all the details we needed. We had a total of 19 people, 14 of them were interpreters.  This was a zoom meeting with a panel of leaders. One of the main things they talked about was the demographics of the Church from about 1920 to a projection of 2050. It was fascinating. For example, we know that 1998 was when the members of the Church outside the United States became greater than the members living inside the United States. It is projected in 2025 that the members living in Latin America will surpass the members in the United States and Canada. They also shared the world wide Congregation Geography of the Church. Meaning, out of every 100 people how many are US, Europe, Latin American, Asia/Pacific, and Africa. They showed a comparison from 1980 where 72 percent was US and Canada and 2020 where it dropped to 42 percent. That doesn't mean there are fewer members, just that other countries are growing. Latin America is 40 % in 2020. They also showed some projections. Next they shared the Congregation Demographics between married, children, youth, and unmarried adults. Again comparing 1980 to 2020 the numbers are surprising. Married went from 42% down to 32% and unmarried went from 29% up to 54%. It was a fascinating event.

A couple of hours later we were doing the World Report October 2021. We had 21 to feed which included 16 Interpreters (4 languages) plus support staff. This was another crazy event with last minute changes. We actually had several other languages but they were either done on different days in the Conference Center or were done in country. For example Spanish recorded in the Conference Center on Monday. Portuguese on Tuesday. While Portuguese was recording we got word that another segment was being added to the broadcast. Since Portuguese was recording, they just threw that in and got it recorded. Spanish had to come back on Wednesday night with the other languages and just record the new segment. It was crazy. But we got it done. I hope you will all watch the World Report between conference sessions. There are some very cool segments.

We didn't exactly get to watch much of this event because our supervisor, Curtis, is a TALKER. He is fascinating and we always learn so much from him. He is a Joseph Smith expert.  For example, several years ago there was some controversy over where Joseph and Hyrum were really buried. Apparently some evidence came out that the bodies were misidentified. Curtis wanted to know for himself if the long held belief was correct or the newer evidence. He had no agenda, he just wanted to know for himself. He is a genius, literally. Long story short, he spent two years researching all the information he could find, visiting the different sites, examining the two reported death masks of the brothers, and taking hundreds of pictures from different angels using a tool he designed and built so he could capture every angle of the death masks. When he was done he was satisfied that the original information was correct and the so called new evidence had been fabricated. He was able to prove scientifically his results. In talking with others he was asked to present his findings to several different organizations, including the Church History Association (not sure if that is the right name.) He even published a paper on the subject that is now used by different organizations and can be found by searching Curtis Weber Joseph Smith. Look for the PDF called Skulls and Crossed Bones....  We read the paper and are presenting it to our FHE group tomorrow. Needless to say he took the whole event time to tell us his story. It was worth every second.

Thursday was a busy day at work so we weren't able to leave as early as we wanted. After work we decided to move more stuff over to the new apartment. Our intentions were to move our bulky items and then go back to West Temple, shower and sleep. Our reality was to move the bulky items, go back to West Temple and pack up everything else and move that too, and go back one more time to get the last remaining things that wouldn't quite fit in the car and move that too. And of course we unpacked almost everything as we got to the apartment. We "finished" a little after 11 and were ready for a shower and bed. HOWEVER, we discovered the water heater gas wasn't turned on. It took Steve about 1/2 hour or more to read the instructions and figure out what the problem was, which was the complicated but safe ignition system. He turned it on and we had to wait for the water to heat up. SOOOOO we decided to finish reading our Come Follow Me lesson while we waited. I think we finally got to bed about 1:30 and 2 before we actually settled down and went to sleep.

We took Friday "off" since that was the day we were supposed to move. We hooked up the Internet and finished unpacking. I was able to start work at home around 10:30. Steve went shopping for a few things we still needed for the apartment. I spent much of the day working on a spreadsheet for General Conference. I contacted my special Excel Help Desk (Season) for some assistance. He helped me again on Saturday with another aspect of the project. Needless to say, this will make the whole General Conference computer interactions much more manageable. For example it would have taking me a couple of days to enter over 100 people into the Plunet system doing it the "old" way I was trained. With the new spreadsheet I had it done yesterday in just a couple of hours. And adding additional people will be a breeze.

On Saturday we celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary differently than we ever have before. We started the day with an event at 6:30 in the morning. Baptiste was feeling bad that we had to be there on our anniversary; but, when he called me a little before 7 to tell me that he set his alarm at 6 instead of hitting the road at six he was very glad that we were working the event so we could get it started before he got there.  This one was a Middle East/Africa North Devotional. We had French and Arabic languages. It was a Zoom meeting and families were on the call. It was fun to listen to the questions and comments from a number of children as they interacted with the leaders of the Church. They did a fun activity with the group. They showed an QR code on the screen and asked the viewers to scan it with their phones. A question then popped up and they were to key in their answer. As they wrote their one word answers, the screen then showed all the words reflecting in size by the number of people who said the same word. Loving was the one that got the most responses. The words continued to move around the screen and change size as more and more people responded. It was very fun. 

After the event, we didn't really do too much for our anniversary. Steve reversed the doors on our fridge. I worked some more on General Conference. Around 3 we decided to go out for a treat and to get some things so we could hang up the wonderful picture blanket we had made when we got our original call and packed away in our "mission" box and totally forgot to open up when we got here because we thought it only contained bug repellent and stuff we would never use here. BUT, when we got to our new apartment we forgot it was our mission box so we opened it up and low and behold we found our beautiful picture blanket. SO, now it hangs beautifully in our living room. I am so happy!!!!!

I almost forgot. Here is the link to the video of the latest updates to the Temple renovation.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/temple-square-renovation-video-august-2021 

Here are some pictures of our new apartment.