Times of the Signs

Elder Wilcox did NOT make this sign

We are beginning to ramp up for General Conference. We are approaching the "blackout" period when we won't get any "new" events until after General Conference; however, this is a "lie". We will have tons of new events, but they are all "related" to GC. For example we are beginning to see the different AOA trainings pop up. There will also be Seventies' trainings and I'm sure other trainings from our leaders that will soon be dotting our Events Calendar. The official "blackout" period starts mid March and goes to about Mid April. There will be a few not GC related events that will sneak in, but for the most part the majority will be related to GC.

Monday started with a nice Mission devotional. The last Monday of the month we hear from a different Zone in our mission. They tell us all about the things they do. It is always so interesting to hear about all the many, many, things that go behind the scenes that no one ever knows about. This time we learned about the DQA section. No, they don't serve delicious Ice Cream. They are Data Quality Assurance. They work in conjunction another group that is nicknamed Syrup. I can't remember the acronym or the section name, but it was cute. They are the DQ and Syrup groups. It is amazing some of the ways they work to preserve and even restore the quality of some very old records. Monday evening we had another Leadership Pattern Journey class at our apartment. We are really enjoying this and how much it is impacting our personal study and growth.

Tuesday started a week of morning events. Besides our normal Language coaching events that we don't get involved in, we had an "HRD Development @Work Conference Broadcast Pre-recordings" event (yes that really is a single title). It started at 8:00AM for breakfast and went until 1:00 PM. Since the Linfords supported this event, we were able to watch our Zone Devotional at 8. Unfortunately for the Linfords, they didn't broadcast anything of the event so they didn't get to see anything. The Interpreters kept saying how great the conference was and how much they were learning about working for the Church. Tuesday, we also had our other Leadership Pattern Journey class. It is a little harder to stay focused in that class because I am at my desk and easily get distracted with emails and chat that continually come him vying for my attention. I try to ignore them until after the class. hahaha 

Before the Tuesday event, the Translation department held their first Area General Conference training. They gave a few minutes to the Interpretation group and Eunlan prepared a presentation. For some reason, I was also invited to attend the training. Eunlan had me answer questions that came in about PLUNET or Onboarding. We found out that day that we have two new languages added to GC this year. AUSLAN (Australian Sign Language) and Peruvian Sign Language. AUSLAN is official as they did their pilot program last October and got approved to be official. Peru is doing the pilot program this conference. Anyway, it is pretty exciting. Part of that required me to add AUSLAN to our All Languages Template for PLUNET orders. Long story short, there were problems with modifying the template that necessitated deleting it and starting all over again. Needless to say, I was scrambling like crazy to get it finished so we could get our GC Plunet order created by the end of the week. It took two days to create the template.

Wednesday Elder Wilcox and I supported the second day of the "HRD Development @Work Conference Broadcast Pre-recordings" event. It was another breakfast followed by 5 more hours of training. Again we did not get to see anything. In the middle of that event, I had an "Onboarding Process - New HR Policy and Exceptions to the Rule" meeting. Basically it said we now have a brand NEW layer of hoops we have to jump through to be able to use Church Employees as interpreters. Immediately after that event we had a short "2022 AgReserves CEO Safety Training Remarks - Portuguese/ Script change" event. One of the interpreters from the HRD event just stayed to do the AgReserves event. We got him lunch. After that was over we went immediately to our Team meeting and that was followed by my PLUNET meeting. We stayed until about 6:30 that night just to catch up on all the stuff that didn't get done because of the events and meetings. I finished up the All Languages template too.

Thursday morning was BUSY. At 8:00 AM I had another Area General Conference Training meeting for the Asian Pacific areas. Again, I was invited to attend and answer questions. It was fun to see many of the same people who were at our meeting we held last month. We also had another morning event. The call time for this one was 9:00 AM (My meeting was almost over). Since it was later there was no breakfast involved. Just snacks. This time it was a little funny. It was the last (fingers crossed) Roots Tech event we were doing. It was a RUSH Live from Dubai. We needed 1 sister for each language. When I was setting it up, I thought Aaron made a mistake. He had the Start time at 10:00 and the End time at 10:01. I laughed. Well, he was wrong, of course. The event was actually less than 1 minute. It think it was a total of 45 seconds. It was just the opening remarks to start the conference. 

The Linfords were gone on Thursday. They had a family funeral to attend. So, I took care of the rush events that came in that day. If it was a normal event I left it for them to do on Friday. We had one event that involved some Ethiopian visitors for three days. We had actually been dealing with it for several days as it didn't come in through the normal process. We managed to finally get it all taken care of. The interpreter was going to put in nearly 30 hours for three days work. 10 hours each day. I look forward to hearing all about it. He should be here for General Conference so hopefully I'll get to ask him about it. 

Friday we had the last of our morning events for the week. This was another breakfast and the Linfords supported it. This was a "Mission Leader Webinar - President's Companions" and they DID broadcast it so the Linfords could watch. Nice!!! I spent most of the day putting out fires and working with Elder Linford to set up the General Conference PLUNET order. He still has dates to add, but other than that I think it is about done. We want it ready to send out notifications to the Areas on Monday.

Saturday was as busy as ever.  I had several hours of HawkSoft work.  I also got a call from Eunlan, who is over General Conference. She received official word that we can more than double the Interpreters we can have in the COB. So we spent the next two hours working on the language plan deciding who we could have come.  It was awesome to be part of the planning that goes into General Conference. 

I also spent an hour finishing up my Leadership Pattern Journey lesson.  Through the last several weeks these lessons have helped me realize how much the Lord loves me and how I have been prepared my whole life for this particular mission. I have set up a meeting with Marshall,  head of our PSD department, to talk about some issues we currently have with our programs that don't talk to each other.  I am aware that the various sections are currently evaluating new software to replace our existing systems. We all share the same list of people, languages,  and even events,  yet we all have separate lists of that same data. The problem is when someone is deactivated in one system no one knows about it to change in all the others systems.  Not good.  So after discussing my thoughts and concerns with Elder Wilcox,  I put together a short presentation to share with Marshall next week about the need to make sure whatever systems they choose that they all share the same database of information so that inactive status will be seen by everyone.  Without this,  the massive work I have been doing to get everyone in sync will disappear after we end our mission. 

Jamie Beech

We had a snow storm Saturday night. It was absolutely gorgeous walking to Church Sunday morning. It reminded me of a Winter Wonderland. After Church we had our monthly Break the Fast! We always have so much fun visiting with our missionary family. Elder Wilcox has been busy making MORE signs for our hallway because everyone was jealous. After the "Welcome to the Oregon Territory" sign, he made a "St. George Portal to the Great Basin". Below that he had a smaller one that said Woodstock with an arrow pointing to the Woodstock's apartment. They loved it. So then our Idaho friends at the other end of the hallway were whining so he made an "Idaho Falls, Self Proclaimed Center of the Universe" sign for them. There are about 4 couples in the same area that rolled over laughing with that one. Right in the middle of that group is a sweet couple from Kaysville so he made them a "Kaysville, Utah Salt of the Earth National Monument". They rewarded us with York Peppermint Patties. Now the rest of the floor want signs too!  After Break the Fast we had our normal Monday Leadership Pattern Journey class on Sunday evening. Monday evening we have a Mission Devotional with Bonnie Oscarson and her husband. Should be great.

I hope you have a GREAT week. We are excited because Sara and Brooklyn will be coming for the weekend. Brooklyn has some tournament volleyball games at the Salt Palace. She will be staying with her team. Sara will be staying with us. It is a little bit of a walk to the Salt Palace from our place so it won't be too bad for her. We should be able to see games on Friday afternoon/evening and some on Saturday. We are very excited.

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox