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