A Talk, Corn Maze, Piggy Races, and a Miracle

This has been an unusual week in some ways. We were light on events so I spent a great deal of time working with Interpreters with different problems. 

On Monday Steve was a bit under the weather in the morning. We usually have a Mission Devotional or Conference on Monday mornings that is also broadcast via Zoom so Steve was going to watch it. I, on the other hand, had to go to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in person as I was the final speaker of the devotional. There are pros and cons to being the final speaker. They asked me because they wanted someone who could fill in time if we had time to fill or adjust shorter if need be. As is usually the case with 5 scheduled speakers I did NOT need to fill.

Our Zone put on the devotional and shared a little about 5 of the different departments in our Zone. We have a lot more departments than 5. Anyway, I had not idea we have a Geology department that analyzes all the Church properties for natural resources and minerals and such on the property. It is fascinating. We are to share a minute or two about our department and then spend the rest of the 7 minutes we had sharing about how we Hear Him, especially on our mission. As is the normal case when you are dealing with the kind of people in our mission, people who have served their whole lives and had various callings and who love to serve, 7 minutes is simply not enough time for a talk. Everyone one went over by a minute or two. The guy right before me not only went to the time I was supposed to stop but went nearly to the end of our meeting. I figured I wouldn't even get to speak and was putting my phone away (I had a scripture open that I was going to share), when my Zone leader leaned over and said "go ahead and give your talk". 

So at two minutes to the hour I got up and talked off the cuff as there was no way I had time to give my whole talk. I shared briefly what we do in Interpretations and put a plug in for any new missionaries that wanted to join us. Normally new missionaries go through Family History training before they get their mission assignment and we just got a whole slue of new Church Service Missionaries. Then I went on to briefly share how I Hear Him. I will write a separate blog and post my whole talk, along with a wonderful story one of our Interpreters shared with me of how he Heard Him one day and received a marvelous experience.  I didn't have time to share that in my talk. But what I did share was what I had realized AFTER I had prepared my talk. On Saturday night I had an epiphany that caused me to rewrite my whole talk. I realized that I can't put my finger on a specific time when I Heard Him, but, that I have actually been Hearing Him my whole life since I joined the Church. When I was baptized I received the Gift of the Holy Ghost to be my constant companion. I never truly realized what that meant. I have wondered for years why I have not felt the Spirit "very much" since a year or two after joining the Church. Had I done something wrong? Was I just not worthy enough? I haven't born my Testimony in Fast and Testimony meeting for years and I used to do it often. Why? Where was the burning I felt when I joined the Church?

Well late Saturday night, the thought came to me that He has been with me always. The Holy Ghost is my best friend and a best friend does NOT yell at me or have to get my attention. My best friend is constant and supportive and can talk to me about anything and everything. Then the Spirit whispered that He has helped me and answered me throughout my life. When I would have a problem at work and mumble to myself about how am I going to solve this, the answer would pop into my head. This happened ALL the time when I was working on bugs. When I was teaching a class and wondered what can I do to make the lesson meaningful or get a particular point across, an idea would come that would be perfect. This even happened when a teacher wouldn't show up and they would ask me to teach a minute before the class was to start and everything would just go perfectly. Of course, I knew when that happened it wasn't me teaching. It has happened when my husband, or child, or grandchild, or friend, needed to talk about something important and I would be directed to say what they needed to hear at that time. 

I never thought about these experiences in all those years that I wondered why I wasn't hearing the voice of the Lord in my life. I guess I was waiting for the pounding heart or the overflow of tears that accompanied the Spirit when I first joined the Church. I wasn't recognizing Him as the constant companion and best friend that He is. I have felt such peace and comfort since discovering this. Preparing the talk was more for my benefit than giving the talk; although, I had several people come up to me as much as a week later and tell me what I said touched them.  Sorry, I didn't intend that to be so long.

We had the last S&I Area Directors Convention on Tuesday evening. That was really very good to end it. On Wednesday morning we had the Central America Mission Meeting with Elder Gong. We didn't see it because it was pretty much all in Spanish. Our Interpreters were going from Spanish to English and for some reason they didn't broadcast it to us. No event on Thursday and then on Friday we had a "Rush" Event for the Utah Area 5th Sunday Content meeting. We learned about it on Thursday, but for some reason thought it was Zoom and that we didn't need to be involved. Luckily Steve had arranged lunch and we were able to plug it in to the Event on Friday. Only when Eunlan showed up for the event did we remember. It turned out to be very good. No events over the weekend. A much needed rest.

So on Wednesday evening we were invited by another group of missionaries to go to a Corn Maze as one of the couples had to drop out. It was so much fun. It was a 2 mile maze and was very muddy and slippery. Luckily no one fell down. We had fun getting lost and finding our way out. The group would split up and then end up finding each other again. We all ended about the same time. Walking back to the pavilion we had reserved for S'mores we passed the Piggy Races. A bunch of us decided to go while the others got the wood and fire going for the S'mores. We sat in the RED bleachers. They had four colors. There were three races of 4 pigs each. Each pig had one of the colors represented in the bleachers. That was who we were supposed to cheer for. They all had the funniest names like "Little Miss Piggy" and "Kermit the Hog". Another one was "Harry Porker" or something like that. Anyway the RED pig took 2nd place in the first race. However, in the second and third races RED took FIRST. We were so excited. The funniest thing was all the pigs would run halfway around the track and then stop at a mud hole for about 10 seconds or so and then take off running again to finish the race. It was crazy.

On Friday, we had a miracle. All week I've been working on problems we have been having with getting some Interpreters into our software so we can pay them. One Brother I have actually been working on for a couple of months. He is one of our Language Coordinators for an obscure language called Lingala. Two years ago, when they went on to the new software they migrated all the Interpreters over. Not everyone came over active. Many came over inactive, unbeknownst to our department. Well when I got here and started asking questions about whey people were not active in PLUNET, it brought this issue to light. We were told everyone had to be in PLUNET or they could not interpret. It didn't matter if they were employees, volunteers, or contractors, they all had to be in PLUNET. Johan is a brother that came to my attention as not being in PLUNET. He was listed as a Volunteer Employee. So no one was sure what to do with him. He said he was a Contractor and always had been. He had been inactive since 2018 so he had not been paid since then. I guess technically he was a volunteer at that point. 

The gal in charge of entering people in PLUNET was convinced he was lying and put a hold on his account. He had a Church email address so he was an employee and he claimed he was not so obviously he was lying. Also, the Church email record said he was a Volunteer Employee. What does that mean? So I have been working for nearly two months trying to get them poor guy back into the system so he could get paid. Come to find out, several years ago they gave all Interpreters a Church email account so they could access some accounts that can only be seen with a Church account. It also provided them with a secure email address for the sometimes sensitive data that is sent. When those accounts were set up they were given a status of Volunteer Employee. In reality they were neither an employee or volunteer. They were contractors. Longer story short, I dug and pushed and kept bringing it to the attention of Church Finance and FINALLY on Friday, the head guy said he could see no reason why Johan could not be reactivated as a contractor. Of course that means we still need to jump through all the hoops one more time to satisfy the gal in change of entering people, but at least there is no longer a hold on his account. She wants to start all over with gathering information and I have told her that has already been done. Sister Petty, the other missionary that works with us and is in charge of contracts, has pulled all the information together again and is sending it to the gal to see if we can move this along quickly. Daniel, my manager, has also petitioned to let us back pay him for General Conference since we were told nearly a month ago that he would be active in time for General Conference and that didn't happen. We are ALMOST there.

Elder and Sister Drasso, Our Zone Leaders

We had two other cool things happen on this week. On Thursday afternoon, our mission president and his first counselor and our Zone leaders all came to visit us on the 28th floor. I was hoping they would tell us they have a missionary couple, but instead they thanked us for all we are doing, told us they are still looking and praying and gave us a candy bar for Halloween. We gave them a little tour and had a very pleasant time with them.

On Friday, after our forgotten event, we almost went home to finish work. Steve mentioned it was much easier to work with our three screens so we decided to go back upstairs for an hour (that turned into 3 hours.) Anyway, not long after we got up there, Sister Cordon came down the aisle looking for one of our recording studios. She pretty much ran right into me so I showed her where she needed to go. We had a very brief conversation. She asked what we did to keep busy. I said interpretations always keeps us busy. She asked what language we interpreted and I said none, we coordinate them. She smiled, patted me on the back, said thank you and went into the booth. One of our producers, Dave, does a lot of recordings in the booth just across from my cubicle. Basically his recordings are usually interviews in English for various things. Later, those recordings are given to us to interpret into various languages and then sent out on different medias such as messages that we see between General Conference, or as spotlights to be used in lessons and such. So occasionally we see someone important on our floor.

So, for Halloween, a couple of Sister Missionaries in our building (they take up floors 1 & 2) came around Trick or Treating Saturday night. Only they weren't looking for treats, they were handing them out! Such fun.

Awesome Jellyfish thought up and fabricated by our Supervisor, Sara's daughter.

I hope you will send us some pictures of your kiddos in costumes. Several of our Supervisors posted pictures of their kiddos to warm this grandma's heart. All our Supervisors are the same ages as our kids so now some of them call us mom and dad. lol

Have a great week.

Love,

Elder and Sister Wilcox 

Fire, Power Outage and More, Oh My!

Monday was a fairly unusual day last week. It started with our monthly Mission Conference. I haven't decided what the difference is between a Mission Devotional and a Mission Conference except time. Devotionals are 1 hour and the Conference is longer...up to 2 hours.  Anyway, this time it was a Conference. Our Mission President and his wife spoke along with his President Randall's Executive Secretary. It was a really good conference. 

We went into the office for a couple of hours to get ready for the week and then headed out to get hair cuts and do some shopping. We have also got back to updating the procedure manual since I have made so many changes to make things more efficient and easier for Elder Wilcox to do his job. Our manager decided he wanted the original procedure manual updated and shortened if possible. He didn't think we needed every listed step such as "turn on the lights". (I'm not kidding. That was a step in one place.) So far we have cut it down from 70 some pages to 20 some pages and we are not done yet. Hopefully we will finish it this week.

At 4:30 we got a visit from a Doctor from our insurance group. We thought he was here for both of us but he was here just for Steve. A little after 5 another one showed up for me. Why they couldn't schedule both of us with the same doctor no one knows. Both doctors thought it was ridiculous and both had time in their schedule to cover the other person. Oh well. We both checked out just fine; although we both need to lose some weight. Of course eating all the delicious meals we have for the interpreters doesn't help. 

Family Home Evening was fun as Elder and Sister Burgoyne combined the lesson, game, and treat in a very fun activity. The end result was this beautiful puzzle. We combined our own version of scrabble, puzzle pieces and treats for being able to place your puzzle piece in the puzzle. We had lots of fun and good conversation along the way. And the treats were yummy too.

Tuesday, bright and early we had the next installment of the S&I Area Directors Convention. This particular event was not very engaging for us or the Interpreters. It was 4 hours to start with; but, the problem for us was that it was more interactive with the attendees on Zoom. There were LOTS of breakout sessions which meant our screens were black while they broke up into little groups to discuss the things they were learning. Then they would come back and share a little bit, give the next topic and instructions and have another break out session. This went on for the whole 4 hours. Needless to say our Interpreters went through a lot of snacks while they waited for them to come back together. I got a lot done and didn't feel guilty about not paying attention to the event. hahaha

On Tuesday Joey celebrated turning 15. We posted a Happy Birthday on Facebook. Don't you just love the new hair?

Our Tuesday evening Worldwide Missionary Devotional got cancelled due to Elder Rasband getting sick. We were all disappointed and have kept Elder Rasband in our prayers for a speedy recovery. Consequently we actually left close to 5:00.

Wednesday was event free and meeting free. No one was in the office except Steve and I so it was pretty quiet. Even the emails were pretty quiet so I was able to spend much of the day on some General Conference reports as well as starting on my comparisons to get all our databases in sync. I feel I accomplished a lot. We left at 5 and planned on a nice quiet evening at home. We had just started a movie a little after 7 when the power went out. Well, we thought the power went out and we noticed there were still lights on in the hall way. We could see them under our door. So, Steve got up to explore the apartment. As it turned out we only lost power in half our apartment. The plugs in the living room, hence no TV. The overhead lights in the kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom. However, the appliances all worked in the kitchen. The bedroom lights and plugs all worked in both bedrooms. But with the plugs out in the living room we didn't have any Internet. It was weird.

After making some calls and not reaching anyone, Steve decided to go down the hall and talk to the Missionary over Mission housing to see if she had a different number we could call. He met nearly everyone from our floor out in the hall. Many had similar problems to ours, and had part of the apartment out. Others were all out and still others were all on. It was crazy. He also found out what caused the power failure. Apparently there was a fire on the 2nd floor roof of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building that somehow caused the power outage. It happened around 7:30 and they had it completely out in 30 minutes. There was not real damage other than some smoke and a little water damage. No one was hurt. It was caused by some construction debris on the roof that caught fire.

Thursday we had an event in the evening. It was a NASW Senior Missionary Devotional with Elder Alonso. It was pretty good but it talked mainly about encouraging seniors to go on a mission, either full time or Church Service Mission. They told all about the Church Service Mission opportunities available in the North America South West area. Several missionaries bore their testimony of how serving has blessed their lives as well as the lives of the people they serve. It was really good.

Friday morning, before sunrise we had another event. This one the Mexico Mission Meeting for Elder Gong. We had nearly the same Interpreters back as the previous night as this one was also Spanish only. The only problem with this event is it was mostly in Spanish and we didn't get the English interpretation so we didn't really understand a lot of what they were saying. We will have a similar meeting next week with Central America. I hope we get the English interpretation next time. We actually left after lunch on Friday. We spent the rest of the day working on the procedure manual. We are making progress. 

Saturday, NO events. Steve ran errands and I worked on a number of different projects. We enjoyed a nice relaxing evening.

Sunday we headed out bright (well it was pretty overcast) and early to Katie Sue's ward where her oldest daughter, McKayla Lofts gave her talk prior to her going on her mission to New Jersey, Spanish speaking. She gave a great talk. Afterward we went to the Lofts for an open house and to visit. We had a wonderful time and everyone said they are looking forward to us coming for Thanksgiving. It is nice to be near "family" when we are so far from our own family. They all said how seeing us made them feel at home too.

It was fun to visit with Brent and Helen, Annie, Justine, Martha, Carrie Anderson and her husband, and of course, Katie and Bryce Lofts. There were lots of grandkids too but I can't begin to remember all their names.  Oh, MyLiege, Annie says to say "Hi".

On our way home we got a text from MyLiege about the Primary Program today. So instead of going to our branch (since we had already told them we wouldn't be there) we came home and watched the Primary Program on TV. This was Alyx's last time. She had the job of being a narrator and helper for the little ones who didn't remember their parts. She did a great job. There was only ONE major problem. They turned the mic off for all the songs so we didn't hear any except for the little groups that sang a verse in the last song. It was so sad because I absolutely love all the primary songs and we didn't hear any. 😢

In spite of no music, we enjoyed the program and especially seeing our granddaughters share what they have learned in Primary this year. I love watching their testimonies grow.

Until next week. Love you!

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Training and S&I Area Directors Convention

This was a much slower week. We had a mission devotional on Monday morning so we decided to go into the office so we would be prepared for training our new missionary on Tuesday. We got caught up and even went home around 1:30 so we could run some errands before our Family Home Evening group that night. The Sister who was supposed to give our lesson had to bail on us as she tested positive for COVID. She had a very mild case because she has been vaccinated, but needed to quarantine all the same. SOOOOO, we decided to discuss General Conference for our lesson. We picked up some frozen bread that we thawed and baked fresh for our refreshments and bought a gallon of milk. I put out jam and peanut butter and it was a hit! On the funny side. We don't have bread pans so we put the three frozen loaves on the cookie sheet and put them in the oven on the lowest setting to thaw. Instead of raising up like they do in a bread pan they sort of spread out and even over the cookie sheet. They tasted great even though they looked very flat. hahaha. I think we may pick up some bread pans before our next Break The Fast meal since we are having soup, salad, and hot bread.

Our friends from the previous week, who gave a great lesson on Orson Pratt, never got around to their game, so we invited them to do their game on Monday since we didn't have one planned. We had a smaller group then usual because the weather has turned colder and some didn't want to venture out in the rain at night. I think we may see some if them start groups in their own apartment buildings. We can easily add some local residents to our group if that happens.

Tuesday was a very busy day for me. We started the day with our Zoom Zone Devotional. They are always very good and a great way to start the day. I spent most of the day training Sister Hunsaker. I would find snippets of time to respond to the never ending emails and chats I get to try and keep up with the little fires that seem to arise everyday. At three, Steve called from Floor 27 and asked if Sister Hunsaker and I were planning on attending the event that evening. I had totally spaced the call time and was busy showing Sister Hunsaker our PLUNET program. We quickly went downstairs to join the group for a delicious dinner and fun discussion. This event was the second of 4 weekly events for the Seminary & Institute  Area Directors Convention. The previous week the S&I event was at 7 AM. Next week it will be 7 AM again with the last week in October at 3 PM once again. I have to admit I didn't get much out of the event because I spent the whole time training Sister Hunsaker.

Wednesday was also spent training. Sister Hunsaker was doing very well working on her own with occasional questions. I was very pleased with how well she picked up on everything. Steve was struggling with some receipts so I was helping him going back and forth between him and Sister Hunsaker throughout the day. I had more time so was able to get caught up on most of the things on my plate.

We went to the office early on Thursday so I could go through my emails and set up what I wanted Sister Hunsaker to work on. We had our Thursday Zoom Zone Devotional by our Mission President. The whole presidency is taking a turn focusing on Pure Doctrine and emphasizing excerpts from General Conference. It was really good. Next Tuesday and Thursday we will hear from the two counselors. I really like our Presidency and we have become friends with all of them.

We had a first touch of snow on Thursday. There is quite a bit of snow on the mountains as shown in some of the pictures. We also had hail that stayed on the little overhang for a little while. By the time we went home it was dry but cold. And Friday was absolutely Beautiful.

Sister Hunsaker came in around 10 AM and said she had to talk to us. She then said she was being transferred to a different department. She was changing from a Full Time Mission to a Church Service Mission and going to work in the Seminary and Institute department. Although we were sad to see her go as she was catching on so quickly, it was not unexpected. We knew from the start this was a trial basis as the Mission President said they were trying to find the right fit for her. This mission was not the right fit so we are back to needing a Senior Missionary Couple to help us out. At least with General Conference over things are a little more manageable. 

Even though we only had 1 event we needed to attend we still had 14 total events for the week. The other 13 were all language coaching or Zoom meetings. This coming week we have 5 events we will attend. I'll talk about them in next week's blog post. Well maybe I'll talk about todays event before I post the blog. I'm excited for it as it is a member devotional for Oklahoma and Kansas with President Nelson! I'll talk about the other 4 coming events next week. 

On Friday I had a wonderful Zoom meeting with Season. He helped me automate a spreadsheet for Steve to help with his receipts. He doesn't do them very often so it is hard for him to remember what to do. Soooo, with Season's help we added a couple of buttons on the modified spreadsheet that will  automatically save the reimbursement form as a PDF with the correct name and in the correct folder. Then with another button he can automatically send the reimbursement form WITH all receipts associated with that reimbursement form to finance. Sean helped with the multiple attachments on Saturday. I am so excited about this new spreadsheet. This saves about three pages of notes that he has to do to process receipts. And since he is receiving a bunch of receipts from General Conference this will make it life a whole lot easier.

On the way home that night we decided to visit the little cemetery next to our apartment. The weather was gorgeous. Heber C. Kimball and his family are buried there. There is also a memorial to Newel K. Whitney on the same site. 

We got a call from Steve's sister-in-law on Friday evening stating his brother, Roy, was in the hospital. He is still recovering from the last time he was in the hospital (about a year and a half ago). On Saturday, while I was busy with the many things on my plate, Steve decided to go see Roy in the hospital. He had a wonderful visit with Roy and Vicki and was able to give Roy a blessing. I'm so glad he was able to do that for him. So, please keep Roy in your prayers for us.

Our event Sunday afternoon was the Oklahoma and Kansas Member Devotional with President Nelson! Our speakers were Elder and Sister Uchtdorf and President and Sister Nelson. They talked a lot about the history of the Saints in the area as well as current times. President Nelson focused his remarks on Joseph Smith and the translation of of the Book of Mormon. There were also a few video clips interspersed in the devotional. Most of those focused around Oklahoma and Kansas. It was a very nice devotional.

That about covers everything. As I said before we have a very busy week ahead of us. On Tuesday we have two meetings, one first thing in the morning (The next S&I Area Directors Convention session) and in the evening we will be doing the Worldwide Missionary Devotional with Elder Ronald A. Rasband. It was formerly called the MTC Devotional. On Thursday evening we have the North America South West Senior Missionary Devotional with Elder Alonso. And on Friday morning we have a Mission Leadership Seminar with Elder Gong. Monday is filled with several Language Coaching events including the 2022 Come Follow Me Videos. I wish we could be involved in those too.  

So, until next time, have a GREAT week. Please drop us a line and let us know how you are doing. An email, or a comment on the blog works just fine. We love hearing from you.

Love always,

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Post Conference, GA Training, and a NEW Missionary

If we thought things would slow down now that General Conference is over, boy were we mistaken. We were busier than ever. I mentioned last week that we started the General Authority Training. Well this week we finished it with a bang. I'll talk more about that when I get to Friday.

Monday was pretty much a down day. We slept in. Steve ran errands. I did the wash and of course checked on things at work. I think all the Supervisors were taking it easy, too as we didn't get any new events so I turned my efforts to HawkSoft for a few hours. We had a wonderful Family Home Evening with our FHE group. I think almost everyone was there except one couple. We had to scramble for a couple extra things to sit on and discovered if our missing couple would have shown up we still would have had enough to seat everyone. I love our FHE group. We have so much fun together and we have wonderful discussions on the topics of the night. I look forward to it every week.

Tuesday started bright and early with breakfast for the Seminary and Institute Directors Convention. We will have a different session of this convention every Tuesday throughout October. The first and third weeks are bright and early with breakfast and the second and forth weeks are later for dinner.  I didn't catch too much of what was going on because of other things we had to do, but what I did catch was very interesting. They talked about some statics that they have been tracking around the world for several years. Baptiste, our lead supervisor, is actually in France for three weeks working on this tracking process. He is the interpreter for the interviewer who is gathering the information. It is all very fascinating.  They are interviewing youth, both in and out of the Church.

On Wednesday we had another early morning breakfast for the AOA (Area Organization Authority) Training for Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society. AOA are the female equivalent of the Area Authority Seventies only for the women's organizations. They are fairly new. We have been involved in a lot of trainings around the world. It is nice that they can do a Zoom meeting with the leaders in a few Stakes or a whole area. This particular meetings was really cool as they had several primary children on the Zoom call who participated by sharing their thoughts and feelings. I remember feeling the Spirit very strong when listening to them. It is so awesome to witness how much the local people are involved in these training meetings. The Gospel is truly brought to the people.

Thursday was pretty quiet. No events. I spent most of the day trying to get hours for General Conference entered into the system so I could approve and release them so the Interpreters can submit their invoices. There are still so many languages who have not sent me the hours yet. I was told it can take up  to three months to complete General Conference. I am hoping to get that done a bit sooner. I spent yesterday putting all the languages into a spreadsheet with a status of where they are at. I do have quite a few done; but, there are so many EXTERNAL languages that have not even populated their language yet, let alone put in the hours. I'm not sure if there is anything I can do about them. I'm mainly concentrating on the Salt Lake Teams.

Friday was the busiest day yet. We had 5 different session of General Authority training throughout the day. We had two that were starting at 9 in the morning so we had provided breakfast. The day before, the Supervisor got word that the Producer wanted everyone there 45 minutes before the start of the training so Curtis (the supervisor) sent out an email asking everyone to come 15 minutes earlier than normal. We had two teams for the morning, Spanish and French. At 7:45 we were ready to serve breakfast so they could be in their booths at 8:15 which is 45 minutes before the 9:00 start. The Engineer (Aaron) came out in a panic and said they were ready to start and that the start time was 8:00 not 9:00. It was only for the Spanish team so we quickly got them in their booth. There were a few technical difficulties (which is why we usually do all mic checks during that 30 to 45 minutes before it starts) so we weren't quite ready until 8:10. Everything went fine after that. They were doing training for a specific 70's Quorum. We covered 5 different quorums throughout the day. French started at 9. Spanish ate breakfast after their meeting. This was another example of the little miracles and Tender Mercies we see on a regular basis. We had three more sessions that day. One at 11:30, one at 2:00 and the last one at 4:30. Some of the sessions we didn't get to hear because the engineer couldn't pipe in the English interpretation for us. The ones we heard were awesome. Oh, one other Tender Mercy that occurred that day... One of our sessions couldn't be broadcast to us so the engineer sent us a different Quorum training that was all in English. Elder Bednar was leading that training meeting. About half way through the meeting Elder Bednar turned some time over to a new Seventy to share something. Curtis (our supervisor) turned quickly to the screen and said "WHAT! He is one of my mission companions. I didn't know he was a Seventy. That is awesome!" That was not a session we were even interpreting, so there is no reason we would have seen it. It just happened our session was a blackout for us and the engineer happened to choose that one to show us. Coincidence?  I don't think so. It was a Tender Mercy just for Curtis...and for us too, as we got to witness it.

The second thing that occurred on Friday was we were brought a new Sister Missionary. She lives in Draper so she will be commuting several times a week into the office. She will work at home a couple days a week and as soon as we can get her a companion, she can do a few Events and we can have a little relief when we get so many events in a row.

Saturday NO EVENTS! I spent most of the day working on our Zone SharePoint site that I have neglected for a while. I also got through all my work emails that have been piling up. And I worked on a project to track the status of all of the General Conference languages. This will help me is so many ways. First of all I know which ones I need to target to turn in their hours. I also know which ones to target to actually fill in their language. I can also make a template for next conference that will be easier to maintain next April.

That brings us to Sunday. We had a wonderful Fast and Testimony meeting and Relief Society lesson. and now we are headed to our monthly "Break the Fast" dinner with the Senior Missionaries in our Apartment Building. We have been attending every month since we got here because we were scheduled to move here, but this will be the first one where we just need to walk down the hall! I'm excited!!!

Have a GREAT WEEK!!! Love you!

Elder and Sister Wilcox

 General Conference

This week focused almost entirely on prepping for General Conference. I spent most of my time trying to on board our "missing" people from our Invoicing program. That involved putting out a lot of fires.  

We had our final General Conference pre-recordings. I found out there are two types of pre-recordings. One type is a General Authority needed to record his message ahead of conference because COVID made it impossible for them to travel to Salt Lake. Those are the ones we have been working on for the last week or so.

The second type is where the Interpreters will use the written talk and pre-record it to then be presented "live" when the General Authority actually gives his talk live.  We will usually do this with a particular language who can't come to the COB because of COVID or does not have access to the tieline equipment to do it live during conference.  I'm not exactly sure how they do that, but it aids some of our smaller teams that may only have two or three Interpreters so they can do more talks without having to do all of them during the actual conference. I hope that made sense. 

We also started the General Authority training. So far we have held 4 our of ten sessions of that training. It has been very interesting. They are focusing on important concerns that affect the members of the Church. This could be trends in activation, or social trends that are in conflict with Gospel teachings, or Temple attendance, or ministering, or any number of other topics. With us being more and more world wide we have a lot of different cultures that need to be looked at and understood. It has been fascinating to listen to.

We had a last minute GA Wives Luncheon that we had to pull together. I'm not sure if it just got lost in all the General Authority preparations or what, but Wednesday we got a panicked request from our supervisors to get the meal and job set up for the Luncheon. It was amazing to see how everyone worked together to help pull it off. The supervisors shared the responsibility because both supervisors we also attending the special GA recordings at different times. It was a little crazy for a couple of hours but we pulled it off perfectly.

On Thursday we had two of the General Authority training sessions back to back. We started early with breakfast and finished near 4 PM. Thankfully I could work while watching the event and helping those with questions and needs. We had a delightful lunch with the Portuguese team that day. Our Catering department has a "blackout" the week before General Conference as they have to get ready; however, they worked with us to find ways we could get our people fed and happy. Sometimes that meant we could just put their names on a list and send them to the cafeteria. Other times the cafeteria was closed; however, catering packed up some cafeteria food for us and brought it up to the 27th floor so we could still feed our people a hot meal. They are so awesome and we love them so much.  We managed to go home close to normal time on Thursday.

Friday started out as a repeat of Thursday with two more training meetings. Breakfast was a little later, so the catering staff brought us hot biscuits and gravy with hash browns, fresh fruit, and turnovers. Think there were other goodies with it. As usual, there is always more food than we need or eat and it oh so good! I was very busy Friday as it was the last chance to get people activated. I worked through lunch, although Steve brought me a yummy salad. Our event ended around 3:30 and the constant fires and emails slowed down to a trickle. I finally started on what I needed to do to finish preparing for Conference. We finished at about 11 that night and made it to bed at midnight. 

We were up by 5:30 to be at the COB by 6:30. We had a lot of setup that we couldn't do the night before because there was a special banquet going on until about 9 PM in the ballroom which was our "command post" for the weekend. So we came early to get set up. Thankfully the IT staff came early to setup the laptops and printers for the Interpreters.  Catering showed up early to setup a waffle station for our breakfast. Steve had to maintain and man the station throughout the morning. I thought I would be helping Steve with food and other aspects of supporting the Interpreters...particularly helping them on the laptops. Again, thankfully the IT support staff stayed to help with that and I was delegated to setup a check-in station.

We first setup it up on the 26th floor which is the ballroom/command post. I also had all the access badges and parking passes for those Interpreters that expired or were recently onboarded. Steve had all those created and in folders for each language so it was organized and easy to pass out. After the session started and things calmed down a bit, we found out that our smaller support staff had a big hole. Normally someone would be stationed down on Level 1 where all the Interpreters come into the COB. We didn't have anyone down there and our poor security staff were struggling to know what to do with a number of Interpreters that were new or had invalid or expired access badges. They let them up because of who they were and eventually sent word that they really wanted someone who knew something about the Interpreters to come down and help. Soooooooooo I packed up my Check In station and moved it down to Level 1. I was able to setup a table right across from the Security booth.  It has worked much better. I can check them in, check their access badge, give them instructions and make note of invalid badges or missing parking passes. It went much smoother for everyone. It is not perfect or fool proof because there is a back way that some of our more experienced Interpreters use to get to the 26th floor where they bypass me entirely so I was missing people I knew should be there. Next conference we will have a few more signs to say them must check in first.

Saturday went relatively smoothly. Much better than we expected based on all the stories we were told. They said it gets better with each conference as we figure out better ways to do things. We finished up by about 9:00 PM or so after cleaning all the booths. We had a few languages that had to do retakes. I questioned why we would do retakes because it was a live event. I was told the retakes are to make the recordings that are on the website and in the Gospel Library App "perfect". That makes so much sense. So we waited for three languages to finish so we could clean their booths before we left. Just about the time we decided to just clean them in the morning, they finished and we were able to get it done before we left.  We got home about 9:30 or so and made it to bed by 11.

Oh, here is the link to President Nelson's video about the renovations of the Salt Lake Temple.

https://www.ldsliving.com/watch-president-nelson-visits-the-salt-lake-temple-renovation-site/s/10075

Sunday we were up at 5:30 again. We didn't have as much setup to do as we did on Saturday; but, we started 1/2 hour early on Sunday because of Music and the Spoken Word. Both days I had Interpreters show up early and luckily I was barely set up and ready to check them in.  I tweaked my spreadsheet a bit on Saturday to identify the sessions the Interpreters were supposed to work so I could check them into 2 or 3 sessions if they were here for the whole day.  It also helped me to verify that even though they were early, they were only doing one session. There are lots of things to track.  I also had to track when Interpreters leave early because all their speakers are done. We pay a minimum of two hours but we have them come at least an hour early for "call time" so they normally get credit for 3 hours. If they leave after the first hour I have to adjust their time to just 2 hours.  I may have missed a few that sneaked out, but I believe we were able to track it better than in the past. 

So, even though it was a little lonely being on Level 1 all by myself it did have some advantages. Yesterday, shortly after the evening session started, Steve sent me a message to come upstairs and join everyone. I weighed my options. I still had some work I needed/wanted to finish so that perhaps I could actually take at least part of Monday off. Also, it is quiet on Level 1 once the session starts, meaning I can actually watch and/or listen to the session without much interruption.  Yes, upstairs would have been more fun; but I know how much talking goes on so I wouldn't have been able to hear as much of conference as I did. Plus I probably wouldn't have been able to complete my work. Oh, and there was one amazing side benefit that occurred that I would have missed had I gone upstairs. Susie, a fairly elderly little Navajo Sister finished early. Someone was coming to pick her up. She got lost trying to find her way out and luckily ended up back on Level 1. I started to tell her how to get out to the street and realized with all the construction going on in the underground parking where we have to go through to get to the street that she may get lost again. It is a maze down there. So I took the opportunity to walk her out so she could meet her ride. It was a very sweet experience visiting with her and I'm so glad I stayed down on Level 1 so I could help her.  Consequently, I decided to say to the end on Sunday as well.

I have also had the special treat of seeing multiple GAs and their families as they came to the cafeteria for lunch and dinner. Bishop Causse even stopped by my table to thank us for all we are doing. My table is right next to the cafeteria so I saw lots of GAs. The only problem is I don't know most of them by site. The First Presidency and the Twelve did not eat here so I didn't see any of them. Sigh. It was still fun.

We had a total of 263 Interpreters over the two days. That doesn't mean 263 different Interpreters as many of them did multiple sessions; but, it is the number of Interpreters we needed for all 5 sessions for the 16 different languages we did in the COB. Some languages don't do all sessions so we didn't have 16 different languages here at one time. I think the most we had at a time was 14.

All in all, I think it was a very positive experience. I want to do a lot of clean up between now and next conference to avoid all the last minute problems we had with trying to get people in the system. I met a couple of people who work with one of the three programs that don't talk to each other. I suggested a few changes I would like to see and was surprised to hear that at least one of my suggestions sounded like it is very doable and would make my life a LOT easier. We are supposed to have some meetings this month to talk about why there were so many people not in the system. This may be a good opportunity to get these programs talking to each other. For one thing we need to know when they deactivate an Interpreter from the Invoicing program (PLUNET) so we can also deactivate them in the Assigning program (EVENT CENTRAL). That would have avoided a lot of problems if that one thing was in sync. Obviously we would like to automate the syncing process. If we have to rely on manual input to keep them in sync it will get messed up again.

We have a busy week coming as we finish the General Authority training. We have 6 more sessions and we already have several more events scheduled for this week. So far next weekend is not scheduled. I'm not holding my breath that will last, now that the Supervisors are done with General Conference. hahaha

I hope you all had an opportunity to listen to General Conference. If not, please listed to it online. It was a wonderful conference and the Spirit was strong. I love our Savior Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for His Atonement in our behalf. I know this is the True Church of Jesus Christ and I am grateful for the wonderful opportunity I have to be an instrument in HIS hands to accomplish the monumental task of providing these wonderful messages from our beloved Prophet and other leaders into the native tongue of so many members around the world. What an AWESOME opportunity we have to be a small part of this wonderful work.

Have a WONDERFUL week.

This is Pollyanna Van Lenten. She is the Interpretation Coordinator for Marshaleese. She is a Relief Society President in her ward. The reason I have this picture is because Pollyanna and I have a mutual friend. Her first counselor in Relief Society is Cassie Call Sleight. I found out on July 4th when we went to Katie Sue's house for the Forth of July. As I was telling everyone what we do, Cassie mentioned that she knew someone who did Interpretation and mentioned Pollyanna's name. I said I knew who she was. Then I talked to Pollyanna and let her know I knew Cassie. We've been great friends ever since.