Changes, Changes, and More Changes

It feels like every event we have had lately has some sort of change. It makes it kind of hard to make plans and then have to change them at the last minute. This is especially true when ordering our meals. We had at least two events this past week where we placed our order for X amount of meals and found out (sometimes the same day) that one of the languages in country can't do it because they are not allowed to gather due to COVID and can we cover it? So, not only are we scrambling to get Interpreters, but we have to ask the cafeteria to add more meals and we have to pay those interpreters at a RUSH rate. What I learned from working in the Temple is that this is the Lord's work and EVERYTHING always works out. It is the same here!
Monday was Martin Luther King day and the office building was closed. We actually stayed home and worked on a number of different things. I had another eye doctor appointment and I'm happy to report that my eyes are reacting well to the new prescription and actually doing much better now. We had our first Virtual FHE on Zoom. It turned out OK, but we didn't have very many attend. I think it was because I forgot to send out a reminder. We still had a good discussion with those who attended. We'll see what happens this coming week.

Tuesday was busy with work but no events so we were all able to go home by 5. I had been working on the last piece of my big project. I was trying to automate sending out emails with unique attachments to each area language coordinator. There is an app called Power Automate that comes with the new Office 365. I found a YouTube to show me exactly what I needed to do. The last piece was an add-on that I needed in Excel. To get the add-on I needed Admin authorization to download it. It was after hours so I knew I could get it that night.

I went in early Wednesday so I could tackle getting permission. After at least an hour of very frustrating and unproductive results, I was finally given a name of someone who could help me. At that time we had a BIG division virtual meeting so I knew I wouldn't get any help until after the meeting. No sooner had we signed in when the power went out all over downtown Salt Lake. Apparently a transformer blew out. We had a Tieline event going on the 27th floor so I ran downstairs to see if they had crashed. The Church has put beaucoup (bookoo) bucks into our engineering systems. They were running on a backup system and never even saw a glitch. Power was out everywhere else on the floor, but engineering was running fine and all the "in country" languages were working smoothly. Baptiste then mentioned that we could still watch our meeting on our phones so upstairs I went to let everyone know. We used phones and tablets and it all worked out fine. It was a wonderful meeting that talked out future direction for the division and some cool new technology that is in the works for translations.

I had two more meetings throughout the day but the others were VERY short. I managed to get in touch with the guy that could help and he showed me a way I could use Power Automate without the Excel app. It took us about an hour to get it working but I'm so excited now. They only problem I have now is auto emails like that will not allow you to email outside the organization. MOST of the area people are Church employees so that is good; however, there are a handful that are not. So now they are working on getting me "white listed" to allow me to send mass emails outside the organization. "P
henomenal cosmic powers, itty-bitty [work] space."
That evening we had a wonderful event with President and Sister Nelson and Elder and Sister Bednar. It was President Nelson's European tour. This was one of the events we had a last minute language addition to our SLC group. We ended up with about 30 for dinner that night. It was awesome hearing talks from all four leaders.
Thursday was a unique day. We held an all day off-site meeting at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on the 10th floor. It was kind of funny leading up to the meeting that there was no way we were going to have enough to talk about for 7 hours. Well, we were so wrong. We did end a little early, but that was because everyone was zoning out so Daniel said we should go home. We actually cut out several topics on the agenda so it could have gone another hour or more. Several of us had presentations to give on different topics. I shared all about PLUNET and how it affects everyone and why it is important to have everyone that does interpretations active in PLUNET. There were several other presentations given. We spent a lot of time working on our Global Interpretations Vision and Emphasis statement. The last part of our meeting was working on the agenda for our Global Area Training meetings we are having the first couple of days in February. One meeting will be with the Asia Pacific teams and the other will be with the European teams. Those of us who presented in our off-site meeting will also be presenting in the Global Are Training meetings. Obviously these will be done remotely.
On Friday we had two more events; one in the morning and one in the evening. We took the morning event. We realized the night before after we got home from the off-site meeting that we didn't order breakfast for our event...so we quickly put something together and placed an online order for breakfast with Denny's. So Friday morning Steve dropped me off at the COB so I could get things set up and he went to pick up breakfast. Then I met him in the parking garage to pick up the food so he could take our car home since we are not allowed to park in the parking garage during the week until after 3:00. So I took 16 meals to the cafeteria to set up breakfast. People showed up and meals disappeared. I began to notice there weren't going to be enough meals for everyone. Then I realized we only ordered 16 meals for our Interpreters. We forgot to order meals for the Supervisor, Engineer and the missionaries (us). The Supervisor took a meal which meant we were short one for one of the Interpreters. Well, we had saved a lasagna dinner with salad and dessert from Wednesday night for Jeanpierre, but we forgot to give it to him at the off-site. I had just texted him about how sorry I was for not remembering and he told me it was OK and to give it to someone else. So, I told our interpreter that we messed up on the order and that I had a lasagna dinner and would she like it. She said she had already eaten breakfast and would love the lasagna dinner so everything all worked out in the end. Later that evening, the Linfords did the other event. I love having the Linfords with us.
Saturday morning we had another event and the Linfords took that one as well because we had done the last two Saturdays in a row. Besides we were going to do a Sunday event. So on Saturday I updated the SharePoint site, took care of a few PLUNET issues and then got ready to start on a Leadership Journey class that we are taking. Elder Wilcox was still finishing up with his emails, or meal orders, so I decided to look for some Temple appointments. I scheduled some Initiatory for Feb 16 in the late afternoon and started looking for baptisms. I tried three different Temples and couldn't get in for 4 months. I tried one last Temple in hopes there were some cancelations. Ogden is a little far so we don't go there very often. Anyway as soon as I said Baptisms two appointments were available for the SAME DAY!!! So we did some Baptisms on Saturday afternoon. It was AWESOME! Sunday we went to the COB for our event at 9:15 call time. Our three interpreters arrived and so did Curtis, our supervisor. We were only doing snacks that morning. (A BLESSING IN DISGUISE!) Pretty soon Curtis got a little excited and said the event wasn't supposed to start until 6:00 PM. He double checked just to be sure. Apparently it was setup with the wrong time in our programs. Curtis checked with the Supervisor software and with the Producer and confirmed that it was indeed 6:00 PM. So we asked which interpreters could come back. Only 1 of the three could. We paid them a minimum 2 hours for coming anyway. We called Sara and got two more interpreters and I set it all up again, this time for a RUSH job. The Supervisor said we were to do dinner, too. (Hence the blessing we didn't buy breakfast.) So we got their orders for McDonalds and picked that up on our way back to the COB after Church.
Like I said. LOTS of changes all week.
Have a great week and stay safe and warm.
All our love,
Mom and Dad
Grandma and Grandpa
Steve and Leslee
Elder and Sister Wilcox
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