***RUSH, RUSH, RUSH***, CANCEL, CHANGE!

That is the story of this week. We didn't have that many events; however, they were all very fluid. My main focus for the week was putting together two very important emails to our SLC teams. A few weeks ago I sent out the mass email to the areas. I have received very positive feedback and lots and lots of work has been moving forward to get everything ready for General Conference. This week and next week I am focusing on the SLC teams. 

Sister Petty is responsible for all of our SLC contracts. I mentioned last week that we are trying to help Sister Petty with all the follow-up she has to do with all the people who don't send in their paperwork. I sent out a mass email to each SLC team that has 1 or more interpreters who have not returned their various paperwork. I was surprised about how much positive feedback I got on the first day. Then on top of that, they emailed me about the results they got by calling or emailing to their people. Some immediately sent in their paperwork and others said they would get right on it that day! All of this should eliminate (or at least cut way back) all the RUSH jobs we get to activate interpreters at the last minute before GC. This coming week I am just about ready to send out the clean-up spreadsheets to the SLC teams. I am in the process of refreshing all their data so they are the most up to date data.

Monday evening we had a our 2nd Leadership Pattern class at our apartment. I really love meeting in person with our friends.

On Tuesday, we received a RUSH job for the Coordinating and Training Session - Council - Caribbean. Lucky for us it was a Zoom meeting so we just needed to do the computer work.   Tuesday afternoon, Elder Wilcox and I did our Teams video meeting for our other Leadership Pattern. We are on lesson 6 in that class. We are enjoying this very much.

On Wednesday we went to the Bountiful Temple and did Sealings. We also had a morning event for more Face to Face Youth Pre-recordings. The Linfords covered this event. The afternoon was filled with our Team meeting and PLUNET meeting. The Linfords left a little early so they could go to the Temple. While we were finishing up a few things we received an email from Eunlan a little after 5. My first thought was I'll just have the Linfords take care of it the next morning. I took a look just to see what it was about and the heading said it was a ***RUSH*** event that was starting at 6:30 AM the next day!!! I saw the date and time and panicked since it included a meal and a lot of languages. I immediately contacted Eunlan to make sure I read it right. Well, I read it right; however, she did NOT write it right. It was supposed to be 6:30 PM with dinner. Whew! Still a RUSH, but at least not first thing in the morning. So we stayed for about an hour to get everything set up since I needed to send the PLUNET order to our Mandarin team who were doing Tieline. I let the Linfords populate the event on Thursday, but the preliminary work needed to be done ASAP. The Linfords saw the email when they got back from the Temple they called us immediately to say they would do the 6:30 AM event since they were already covering a 9:00 AM event for Thursday. I told them not to worry it was 6:30 PM and that we would cover it as it was our turn.

So, Thursday we had one event in the morning and one in the evening. Both were part of the Face to Face event. Eunlan was in charge so it was fun to have her in the office all day. We are also very happy that MASKS are no longer required. That also meant we no longer need to serve the meal. They can serve themselves. Everyone was happy about that. It no longer requires all four of us missionaries to serve the dinner meals to all the interpreters. 

We received several cancellations on Thursday for events we had scheduled and had already ordered food. Our Saturday event was cancelled kind of last minute. Then there was a rumor that the following Saturday was also cancelled. I contacted Aaron, because I didn't want to believe it and he said it was true. So we dropped two Saturday events. We were very disappointed. We were going to cover March 5th with Elder Holland so it was disappointing. Although, we will now be able to at least see part of Roots Tech. Saturday is when they are going to broadcast the Family Discovery Day with Elder Soares. Should be GREAT!

Friday and Saturday we didn't have any events that we needed to attend. We were able to get caught up on our daily tasks. I had a meeting with my PLUNET guy and finance to see if we could get the Invoicing process better for our interpreters. We are praying Caleb (my PLUNET guy) can figure out the two things we need to happen for this to work for both finance and our contractors. I also got a special request from Daniel on Thursday night. We have been told there are going to be more stringent requirements to be able to use Church Employees for interpretation. So, I spent much of Friday putting together a report of all Church Employees that we currently use for interpretation. The tricky part was trying to find the employees we use that are NOT currently in PLUNET. It took all day to put together because of ALL the interruptions I get throughout everyday. I think that is why I usually stay late because there are far fewer email, calls, and stop by requests that come my way.

I spent Saturday doing some HawkSoft work. I also spent much of the day working on our taxes. Let me just say it was worth it! I also worked on the Zone SharePoint site, and finally I spent some time cleaning up my emails that piled up overnight and during the day. I still have more work to do in that department. Maybe Monday! lol

Sunday, we attended President Ballard's ward for Sacrament meeting because we had an event for NAW California Member Devotional. Curtis is over the event and he and I were tasked with the employee report for Daniel. We spent part of our event time discussing the report.

I hope you are receiving some of the beautiful weather we are getting. It is very cold, but the sun is so bright and beautiful. We have had intermittent snow this week, but it didn't stick around. The mountains are so beautiful with all the snow on top. I love it!

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

More Roots Tech, Face to Face, and Spreadsheets

Elder Wilcox has been working on a little project for a missionary couple on our floor. Their last name is Woodstock. So, of course, they have a little yellow Woodstock they put in a wreath on their door. The only problem was he kept falling out whenever they closed the door. So a couple of weeks ago Elder Wilcox volunteered to make something that would anchor him to the wreath. Sister Woodstock was so excited she paid us with cookies in advance. (So now he really had to do it.) He finally got all the parts he need and put it together is past week. Basically, he made and hung a little swing in the center of the wreath and then he attached Woodstock to the swing ropes so he wouldn't fall out. I think it turned out adorable.

Monday our Family Home Evening group is temporarily shifting to the Leadership Pattern: Lead Like the Savior group. We had a good turn out including 4 people who joined us on Zoom. I expect we will have everyone in person Next Monday. Our Zone Leaders, the Drasso's are leading the group; however, there may be some times when Elder Wilcox and I will lead the discussion. We are currently enrolled in the same course with an employee based group that is about 4 weeks ahead of this class. I'm actually very glad to be able to take the class so close to the other one. It helps us to review our goals and be able to do a better job of implementing them into our daily lives. It is a wonderful course that I hope they open up to the whole Church someday.

A week or so ago, after our Global trainings, I sent out an email to all the Area Coordinators around the world with full instructions on what was covered in our Global trainings as well as a spreadsheet with their entire team on it and their status in PLUNET. All interpreters, regardless of type (Contractor, Employee, or Volunteer) must be active in our PLUNET system. I was expecting some grumbling and complaining because many areas have been doing their own thing when it comes to using interpreters for events. However, I have been pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback I have gotten. I have almost daily (and multiple times a day) communications with people from around the world answering their questions. I also help them get their people onboarded into PLUNET or deactivated in our other software because they are no longer being used as interpreters. If it wasn't for the Linfords doing what my daily tasks used to be, there would be no way I could have pulled off this monumental project. I am in the process of sending out a modified version to the Language Coordinators of our Salt Lake City teams.  They can review their teams but they can't do any of the onboarding  or removing themselves. They have to send that information to us.

Most of my week was filled with additional meetings. One meeting that turned into two somehow ended up with me on another team. I am to work more closely with our SLC language coordinators to not only clean up their team rosters (which I was already doing); but, now to train them on taking responsibility for doing the follow-up contacts with their team members whose contracts are expiring. Sister Petty was trying to do that all herself. For example, this month she sent out 90 reminders. About 20 have responded. So she has about 70 more to hound until they turn in their paperwork. MANY who will wait until the last minute. We had 4 "emergency RUSH" requests this past week alone where they didn't send in their signed contract (which they had in their possession for over two weeks). They were needed and scheduled for an event that week. Hence, the need for more people to hound them to turn it in. I suggested it should be the Language Coordinators and everyone agreed. Now, I'm on the committee to make that happen. hahaha 

Of course in the middle of all this we still have events to support. It is nice to be able to split them with the Linfords. We didn't really have any that we needed to support on Tuesday. They were done in the Conference Center. 

On Wednesday, we did another 2 sessions of Roots Tech. This time it was the interpreting from the English dubbing we did last Friday into 10 different languages. We did the Tieline languages in the morning plus French, and all the other languages (4) that evening. We did French in the morning because half the team was in France and half were here. The Linfords covered the morning as I had a meeting with Eunlan and a sister from Africa. Kind of cool, huh.  All four of the Missionaries helped serve dinner and then the Linfords got to home early. We were supposed to switch the next night. 

On Thursday, the Linfords covered the morning again. This time the event was some Face to Face for Youth pre-recordings. The real Face to Face will happen in March. In the afternoon we did a very small AgReserves CEO Safety Training in Portuguese. Elder Wilcox and I covered that one. It then went right into the evening Face to Face Youth pre-recordings for the SLC teams.  We had a much larger group with 7 languages. It was supposed to be our turn to leave early right after dinner. Eunlan was in charge and our new supervisor, Joelma, was shadowing Eunlan. Eunlan asked if I would be willing to train Joelma in the software we all use for events and tell her a bit about what the missionaries do. That ended up taking the whole event so we didn't go home early after all.

Things went a little crazy that night. The night before, Aaron found out that there was one more little video for his Roots Tech event that needed recording. They didn't have the video ready that night so they couldn't do it then. So, he asked several interpreters if they would mind staying over on Thursday night since they were coming again anyway, and do the little Roots Tech video. That meant we were going to piggyback one event on top of another. Piece of cake....right? Everything would have been fine if they would have just done the Roots Tech video AFTER the Face to Face event like they did for the French team that morning. But NOOOOOO, they (I'm not really sure who THEY is in this case), decided to do the Roots Tech video right smack in the middle of the Face to Face. That meant most everyone took a break for up to 1/2 hour. I'm not sure how long it all took as I was training Joelma and found out after the fact when Eunlan was trying to figure out the hours for everyone. I won't go into those issues. Suffice it to say I don't think it is over yet.

Friday was a fairly laid back day which was nice. Elder Wilcox and I went to the Temple in honor of MyLiege's birthday. When we got to the Jordan River Temple we Marco Polo'd her and sang Happy Birthday to her.  It was fun! We had a wonderful time at the Temple doing Initiatory work. Next week we will get to do sealings. I love being near so many Temples. We are planning on going with the Linfords the first week in March for Sister Linford's birthday.

NO Events this weekend so we got to stay home. I, of course, worked on some spreadsheet ideas to make my tasks easier and more automated. I have asked Season to help me with one of them. Hopefully we will be able to get it all worked out by Monday as I need to send out emails for it on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. Elder Wilcox went shopping, because he loves to shop and I hate to shop. It works out so nicely that way. hahaha  We had the sweetest treat Saturday night. Sister Burgoyne and her sweet husband belong to our FHE Group.  Elder Burgoyne has MS and usually uses a scooter or walker to get around. They live at the opposite end of our floor. Well Saturday night about 8:30 we got a knock at the door. Sister Burgoyne was in a cute Red Apron pushing Elder Burgoyne's walker around with a tray full of fresh, out of the oven, cinnamon rolls that are still warm.  She gave us 4, two for that evening and 2 for Sunday morning breakfast. YUMMMMMMMMMM

Sunday Elder Wilcox got to sing with a double quartet (plus one) of Brethren from the two branches that meet together for a special musical number. They sang "Ye Elders of Israel" and sounded fantastic. I'm so glad we both get to do things for our branch and zone as well. It really feels like a family around here. I especially love the 3rd floor of our apartment building. We are getting to know almost everyone on the floor and it is so fun. We are on the end of our floor. Next to us live the Beechs from the Stake. On the other side of the Beechs is another couple from Hermiston Oregon. So, of course Elder Wilcox being Elder Wilcox decided to create a sign to hang up leading to the last three apartments; "Welcome to the Oregon Territory". So when we got home from Church this afternoon there was a little group of missionaries hanging out near the first few apartments. We joined the party. I told the Beechs they needed to visit the Burgoyne's apartment just behind us as she had dropped off cinnamon rolls the night before and they missed them. (Sister Burgoyne left a note that we saw when we walked past that morning.) Just then Sister Burgoyne and her husband arrived from Church. She quickly went in her apartment and brought out more cinnamon rolls. She gave the Beechs 4 and gave the Larsen's 2 more and us 2 more. So yummy!!!!

I hope you are all enjoying the beautiful sunshine we have been getting. It is cold, but oh so beautiful.

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Worldwide Missionary Devotional, Roots Tech 2022, and lots of Meetings

This has been one CRAZY week with last minute changes, lots and lots of food, and plenty of meetings. Poor Elder Linford and Elder Wilcox spent a frustrating week juggling Interpreters for Roots Tech pre-recordings. I found out later that the teams for the different languages were playing a tug of war between SLC and IN COUNTRY on who was going to do which session of Roots Tech. This was the "main event" as they are calling it. It consists of 4 different nearly hour long videos that have been put together kind of like they do the World News Report with short little segments all put together. It started on Friday, Feb 4th where they dubbed all the little videos that were originally done in native languages into English.

These are the languages we did for Roots Tech.
NOTE: Chinese is only for the written word. The
Interpreted languages are Cantonese and Mandarin. 

On the 9th and 10th, we had thirteen different languages interpreted for two 1 hour videos each day. They were divided into two sessions, morning and evening. Generally it was for the countries who are 8 plus hours different than us in the morning and the others in the evening. However, some languages couldn't decide who would do the interpretation, so we were constantly switching back and forth between SLC and IN COUNTRY people. Some ended up with the interpreters being made up with some from each team. On occasion we found out at the event itself that there were different people doing interpreting, than was on the list that morning. CRAZY. I'll come back to the actual events in a little while.

On Monday evening we had a wonderful Mission Devotional with Elder and Sister Kevin Hamilton. He is a General Authority Seventy primarily over Family History. He shared several insights on how Roots Tech is working in this COVID world environment. He said he asked Elder Bednar last year if he thought the Virtual Roots Tech was a good idea and Elder Bednar said something like, "I don't know. If you can tell me we can reach Greenland, then I'll embrace it." Elder Hamilton proceed to tell us how many people participated in the Virtual Roots Tech last year and mentioned they even had two from Greenland sign up. And there isn't even a Family History Center in Greenland!

On Tuesday morning, we gave our Zone Devotional. We chose a talk that Sister Wendy Nelson recently gave in the Europe Area Tour with President Nelson just a week or so ago. One of the things she talked about was Following the Prophet. She ended her remarks by highlighting 5 examples from President Nelson's life. She shared little stories with each example. That is what we based our devotional on. They are:

• He is attentive and alert.
• He is in awe of the laws of God.
• President Nelson finds joy in serving others.
• President Nelson knows that the Lord loves effort.
• President Nelson never delays. His moto is "why not now?"

Later that day we had our first April 2022 General Conference meeting to kick off all the tasks we need to do before April 2nd, 2022. We later went over all the missionary responsibilities with our team so we can divide it up. We don't have that much to do, but we we do have to do is timely and needs to be done in order. It is looking like things are opening up a bit more. I'm hoping we can have more Interpreters this year. I'm not expecting a full complement, but it would be nice if we could double what we had on October.

After that meeting Elder Wilcox and I had our Leadership Pattern meeting. It is such an incredible program. We are learning so much, not just how to be a better leader, but so much about ourselves and how to be a better follower and servant of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I know I am growing by leaps and bounds. Our Zone got permission to offer the classes to our missionaries. The Zone leaders asked if they could hijack our Family Home Evening group to be one of the classes. So starting February 14th, we will be starting all over in the program. I have already learned so much I'm ready to jump right back in and see how much I've progressed. It should be GREAT!

Tuesday evening we had a Worldwide Missionary Devotional with Elder D. Todd Christofferson.  We had 9 languages with 8 of them in SLC and one tieline. I love getting to mingle with the Interpreters. Since the latest tightening of COVID restrictions we have been serving the meals. I think we will probably be able to stop doing that soon. It has been fun. The devotional was really good. Aaron was the Supervisor over the Devotional. We took him home with us because he had to get up early for the Roots Tech event in the morning.

Wednesday morning started with the 3rd session of Roots Tech (the first 2 sessions were the previous week dubbing into English.) The Linfords were supporting that group. This is one of the sessions we planned for more people than we actually had. It worked out because for breakfast they just went to the cafeteria and got what they wanted. They gave their name to a particular cashier and all was good. We didn't pay for more meals than we needed. They were supposed to end at 1, but not only did we have trouble with who the interpreters were; but, the interpreters had trouble with the recordings. There were lots of retakes and they went over about 1 1/2 hours. SOOOO Aaron, the Supervisor, quickly chatted Elder Wilcox and me to see if there was something we could do to provide lunch. So we pulled out the menu and I created a spreadsheet with all the people we THOUGHT were there so they could pick what meal they wanted. They had a break coming up so they selected it then. That was when we found out nearly half of the original list were now tieline and not SLC people. So we added all the food requests into the spreadsheet, removed all the extra people, added the engineers and supervisor, added the PRJ (billing) number and event title to the spreadsheet and printed 6 copies. Each of us 4 missionaries took a copy and the other two were given to the 2 cashiers that we needed to use. We went down and picked up all the meals and took them back upstairs so they could each lunch. They finally finished about 2:30.

We had our Team meeting at 2:00. It went over and I had to leave at 3:00 to attend my PLUNET meeting. I'm making SLOW progress on getting things fixed but at least they are getting addressed. About an hour after that meeting it was time to get set up for our Roots Tech evening event. We had about 32 Interpreters for dinner that night and it took all four of us to serve and clean up again. Apparently they learned a lot from the morning experience because the evening people only went over 1/2 an hour.  We sent the Linfords home early because they were there early that morning. I think we left around 10 that night. We took Aaron home with us again as he had to be back for the morning session of Roots Tech.

Thursday was a repeat of Wednesday. We did the sessions 5 and 6 which were the second two videos. This time Elder Wilcox and I covered the morning because the Linfords were giving our Thursday morning Zone Devotional. We were able to watch from the office. The Interpreters were doing mic checks during that time. Then everyone had breakfast. I would love to tell you all about the Roots Tech videos, but we didn't get to see anything. So I guess you (and I) will have to sign up and watch it for ourselves. We only had 2 Italian interpreters with us in SLC that morning. Everyone else was tieline. They did go over just a bit so we provided lunch again but Elder Wilcox and I handled it all. Elder Linford was busy trying to get all the people straight in PLUNET so we could approve the jobs so they could create invoices. I won't say anything other than it was a bit of a mess!

That evening we did the last Roots Tech session for this "main event".  We had the most people of all in SLC that night with over 40. We even ran out of some of the food, but that was because Elder Wilcox and Elder Linford were scooping REALLY BIG servings. lol Luckily there was plenty of other food so no one went hungry. It was our turn to go home early so we left shortly after cleaning up everything. I helped Elder Linford with the PLUNET from the night before and then we left.

Friday started the NEXT major event for Roots Tech. This one should be much easier than the last one. It is entitled Family Discovery Day featuring Elder Soares and Family. The Soares family was in Brazil walking around and reminiscing about living their. It was recorded in Portuguese. So, on Friday, we had a delightful husband and wife couple on our Portuguese team dub it into English. Next week the same 13 languages will interpret from English back into their native languages. Some of the things that were learned from the last event. Aaron is NOT going to let the language teams dictate who is going to do the recordings. He is going to tell them who is doing what. That should eliminate the massive changes in people. There were other things they learned so hopefully we won't go over like we did last week either. And thankfully it is only 1 day. We will do 2 session on the 16th and that is all. We ACTUALLY went home at 3:30 on Friday!!!!

We also started a new event on Friday, called "Feb 2022 Caribbean Area Meetings" which the Linfords took care of. Friday afternoon was the Member Devotional. EARLY Saturday morning we did the Missionary Devotional that started at 5:00 AM for us so we could set up. The interpreters arrived at 5:30 for breakfast. That was a very fun devotional. Most of it was in Spanish, although we interpreted it into French and Haitian (also in Dutch on Friday night). That ended at 8:30 AM. It was so fun to hear our interpreters interpret into English. We normally don't get to hear them do that. I love being able to say, "that's Nikolaj" or "that's Maritza".  

At 8:00 AM the people for the next event showed up for Breakfast. This was the Utah Pleasant Grove (South) PLC/CLC. PLC stands for Priesthood Leadership Council and CLC stands for Combined Leadership Council. Elder Wilcox and I covered Saturday, since the Linfords covered the Friday events. Have I mentioned how much we love and appreciate the Linfords? The only problem with our Utah Pleasant Grove event was for some reason they were unable to broadcast it to our screen. I guess that makes it easier to concentrate on the work I was doing for HawkSoft, lol.  It also made it easier for Eunlan, our Supervisor for both events that day, to say, "Sister Wilcox, can you help me with this?" or "Sister Wilcox, will you make this RUSH Plunet order for me?" I LOVE Eunlan...especially they way she pronounces my name! She always makes it into a question. lol  We invited the Beechs to come for a tour so they showed up around noon on Saturday. The timing worked out well and we could show them around so they could see what we do. They really enjoyed that.

That about wraps up our week. It looks like next week is a little lighter. Wednesday and Thursday only...at least that is all we have right now.  hahahaha

I hope you have a Wonderful Valentine's Day. Enjoy your LOVED ones. Oh, I almost forgot some VERY IMPORTANT news. Our grandson, Montana just got engaged to a delightful young woman, Lauren, whom we love very much. We couldn't be happier!

Love to you all💖

Mom and Dad,

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Global Training, Screening, the Beechs, and Trains

This has been a fairly busy week. We started the week with another Zoom Family Home Evening. Sister Bartell was in charge and led a wonderful discussion on the National Geographic documentary entitled "The Rescue". It is about the 12 young boys from Thailand and their soccer coach being caught in a cave for over 12 days. They went in for a day hike one day in the spring before the normal rains came that would fill the caves with water. Apparently the rains came early and furiously and before they could turn around and get out they found themselves trapped. The documentary was about the monumental efforts of people around the world to help recue the boys. Our discussion centered around the many ways the Hand of the Lord was shown in the rescue of those boys. So many received promptings and impressions that led to their recovery. Many of the things they were inspired to do had never been done before. Some were against every rule of safety and they did their best to choose some other way; but finally realized it was their only choice. They risked their own lives to save these boys. On top of that they found 4 other men who were trapped that no one even knew were missing. They saved them too, and learned valuable things in that shorter rescue that probably saved lives when they finally found the boys. The biggest miracle from God was everyone one of the boys and their coach were all rescued. One of the rescuers lost his life and they almost stopped any further rescue attempts after that, but thankfully those who were doing the diving knew they couldn't quit. It is an amazing story.

On Tuesday morning we did our first Global Area Training meeting for Europe, Africa, Central, and South America. Wednesday evening we did the second meeting with those in the Asia Pacific. There were four of us who did a presentation and everyone did a great job. After our Tuesday presentation we decided to put all the separate PowerPoint presentations into a single presentation and then just pass control to the speaker. That went much smoother on Wednesday. I had several responsibilities for these meetings. I created the Agenda, got the prayers from four different countries, created one of the PowerPoint presentations, and later putting all the presentations into one presentation, recording the meetings, and finally making sure the videos and the presentation were uploaded to our knowledge base called Wisdom. Prior to the meeting I had spent a couple of months putting together the information to send to the Area Language Coordinators which consisted of a spreadsheet of the individual language team and their status in our various systems, instructions on how to onboard those there were inactive or missing from Plunet, instructions on how to create and send invoices, the Candidate Information form, and finally the Election for volunteered language service form. I also worked on an automated process to be able to send these out to all the area coordinators with all the necessary attachments. I sent those out on Saturday evening. The most fun part about both Global Training Meetings was getting to talk to so many people around the world before the meeting started. I started both meetings about 15 minutes before the start time so it was very fun to visit and get to know people who, to that point, I only knew their names, and now I have faces and actually talked to them. It was very fun.

On Wednesday we had a wonderful potluck luncheon for Baptiste since he is moving to the Translation team next week. We are going to miss him so much. As we were visiting and eating, we all realized it is probably the first time our entire team has been together since before COVID. I don't think we had everyone there when we first arrived. It was so nice to have everyone there. The picture with no masks was our complete team, We took another one with Joelma added and for some crazy reason, Aaron decided to put his mask back on. He actually spent the night at our apartment that night because we had an event that night and he had another one first thing the next morning. Needless to say I chastised him about his mask. He said he was messing around and thought he took it off before the last picture. hahaha

On Thursday we held a Screening event for interviewing prospective interpreters to bring onboard. With General Conference in just a couple of months we are always trying to grow our teams...especially the more obscure languages like Hiligaynon. It went very well and everyone that came, except one, was selected to complete the onboarding process. We had 4 young men that we chose for our Lingala team last November. They are already in the process of being onboarded. We invited them back to be screened for French and each one passed with flying colors. So we will increase two teams by 4. We do French a lot more than some of the other languages, so it was a good thing they are already in the system to be onboarded.

On Friday we intended to leave a little early to help the Beechs move in. They are new missionaries from our very own Oregon City Stake and we are so happy to have them here, and they are in our building. Not only are they in our building, but they are our next door neighbors. We made a welcome sign for their door and intended to meet them in the afternoon, but of course one thing led to another and we didn't leave until 5:30. We did stop by to welcome them and invited them to our apartment for a little while so we could visit. I am hoping they will join our FHE group as well. They will be doing training next week and will find out where they are assigned on Friday. We are so happy to have them here.

Part of the reason we didn't leave as early as we wanted was because of a couple of meetings I had in the morning and afternoon. I spent the morning helping Sister Petty, who handles all the new and renewal onboarding requests. Through all the preparation for the Global Area Training, Sara and I were tasked to simplify the paperwork to onboard new people. They also wanted it to be consistent with all the different departments that do onboarding, Translations, Sacred Materials, and Interpretations. Sara did a tremendous amount of work, and because she has been involved in the special Sacred Materials project, she had an inside scoop on how they were doing things. We evaluated all the different information gathering forms and made decisions on what forms to use for everyone. These turned out to be different than what Sister Petty had been using, so I spent Friday morning creating email templates for her to use that already have the wording and the attachments for her. All she has to do is key in the email address and click send. It will be far easier for her in the future.

After lunch I had two other meetings. One with our Turkish team lead and one with our Plunet expert who just got hired last month. We talked for quite a while going over the issue we have with invoicing for our interpreters, and all the changes the Linfords and I have to make every single time we add interpreters to Plunet orders. The prices should come in with the correct amount, but they don't so we have to change the prices every time. Caleb agreed that both my concerns are valid and he thinks he can help get them fixed. I hope we can see some progress BEFORE General Conference gets going in full swing.

On Saturday we did something we will probably never do again.  Hahahaha February is FREE transportation month and all the public transportation systems are free. So Elder Wilcox decided we should ride the commuter train from one end of the line to the other. We walked about a mile to get to the train station and just barely made the next run. We rode all the way to Provo and then all the way to Ogden and finally back to Salt Lake where we got off and walked a mile back home. It took us almost 6 hours to do every thing counting the walks and the 1/2 layover in Provo. It was fun and I'm glad we did it. But we both realized there is a reason we don't particularly care for public transportation. Some of you understand! There was free Wifi so I took my laptop and was able to still work on the things I normally work on for my Saturdays, including connecting to HawkSoft and doing some download certifications. Hahaha

Sunday we had our monthly Break the Fast. It is always fun, especially as we are getting to know more and more people who live in our building. For most of them our only interaction is with Break the Fast to it takes a while to get to know everyone. We love it and are enjoying our mission so much.

Through the "Lead Like the Savior" course we are taking I am learning so many things about myself and what I need to do to be more like my Savior. One thing I learned this week was how much my Patriarchal Blessing is about my whole life. There have always been some things that I just kind of wondered about what they really meant. As the years have gone by, I have seen more and more the fulfillment of the blessings and warnings in my blessing. This past week it was like everything was finally put into perspective. I saw why things in my past had to be, even though I could never understand why they had to be that way when I was living it. I especially learned why there was a particular warning in my blessing. When I was younger, I used to think the warning was in there about 40 different times. It seemed like every paragraph I would get the same warning. Needless to say it is only mentioned about three times. Anyway, I have always taken that warning very seriously and strived diligently to heed it in my life. Because of this past week I finally know why it is there and why I needed to think that it is in my blessing 40 times. I needed to take it seriously or I could have easily succumbed to the very thing I was being warned against. I still need to heed the warning and guard against it, but now I know why. 

I am so grateful for the blessing of my Patriarchal Blessing in my life. It truly is my own personal revelation and my guide throughout my life. I have read and studied it often and it has directed me throughout my life. And now, looking back, I can see the Hand of the Lord in ALL of my life and how He is guiding me back to HIM. I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love my Savior and all He has done for me and all of God's children. I want to be like Him and I try everyday to do what He would have me do.

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox