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