Training Meetings and the Sistine Chapel

I'd like to say this week was a little easier, but that isn't the case. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Monday was pretty normal. We started with our normal Monday Morning Mission Devotional. I can't remember any specifics because of everything else that went on. I did a little training with the newbies and talked with Curtis about some problems we were having with our ITI program. Last week we were exploring an SQL solution. We were having lots of problems trying to get Curtis connected to my SQL Express server. No success. I did manage to get Elder Linford to connect to my server so that is a big PLUS.

Later that evening we held our Family Home Evening. The Burgoynes were supposed to lead the discussion, but they attended a granddaughter's concert in Kaysville instead. So we came up with a last minute topic that turned out great. We decided to use a potion of President Nelson's General Conference Talk entitled "The Power of Spiritual Momentum". He gave five suggestions on how to maintain Spiritual Momentum. I focused on his fourth suggestion which was "Seek and Expect Miracles." We talked a bit about the kinds of miracles most people think of. Then we talked about the more personal miracles in our own lives. We didn't share anything too sacred, but all had miracles they saw in their lives and why they were miracles. A couple of them saved their lives. Others were very specific answers to prayers in very profound ways. It was a very spiritual evening and no one wanted to go home. It was nearly 2 hours before everyone was done. We finished the evening with frozen berries and ice cream. So yummy!

Tuesday morning we had an event called Teaching in the Savior's Way - Pre-recording. Our morning session was Tieline; however, we had one Italian show up in the COB so we supported the event. Later in the day we had the SLC teams for the evening session. We had about 56 interpreters for dinner that night. Before the morning event was over I had to go upstairs and do a training with Jeanpierre and Russell on PLUNET. I talked with Curtis several more times as we tried to decide what we were going to do. With each passing day things kept getting worse.

Wednesday brought more of the same. I had been trying to get some monthly reports done, but never had time because of our ITI problems. Our evening event was Australia Area Leadership Meeting. We only had 1 interpreter from Marshallese. The rest were all Tieline. I was on a video call with Curtis through the whole event so I didn't get to see or hear anything. By this point, Curtis had been instructed to extract ITI from our main Documents library into it's own library. Apparently some of our problems were because the Documents library was WAY to big. So Curtis moved ITI out of the Documents library. He also created an Archive library and started moving a bunch of old files into that library. At one point he started getting error messages that said there were too many changed files. No real changes in ITI were getting synced so we had to rely on emails for all our changes. NOT GOOD.

By Thursday morning we realized two things. One, the local copy of ITI needed to be moved to the root directory of the C drive on each computer. We had it in the Documents folder; however, almost everyone's documents folder was synced to our personal files on OneDrive. That syncing was causing problems of their own. The second thing we discovered was because everyone was still connected to SharePoint and syncing we had overwhelmed the system and bogged it down so much nothing was syncing. We decided to unlink everyone from SharePoint and HOPE that when we synced everyone back it would all work the way it was supposed to do. We had another event on Thursday evening. New Mission Leaders Webinar - Final Q&A.  Elder Wilcox pretty much covered it himself. Sister Linford was in Georgia for a granddaughter's graduation and her daughter's birthday. Elder Linford was at the Temple. And I was upstairs working on as many of the computers as I could get access to. I had to move all the OLD synced files to another location. Curtis didn't want to delete them just yet so we moved them to a folder that we will delete next week or so. I had to sync the new ITI library and make sure the local version of ITI was set up on the ROOT C drive folder. I brought it up, checked a few events that I knew were new, and verified everything was all right. Then I went to the next computer. 

By Friday morning things were looking good. Curtis had been running some performance tests and so far so good. We finished up setting up the rest of the computers and laptops until everyone that was in town was all set up. We were all seeing new events show up and no one was running into any syncing issues. I was done setting everyone up by noon. I was finally able to work on my monthly reports. I think I have a few more to do but I have a quit weekend to work on them if needed. 

On Friday, Elder Wilcox finally got tickets to see the Sistine Chapel Exhibition in Salt Lake City. It had been a very frustrating experience. We had a very poor user experience on their website. Later that evening I did some work on HawkSoft to free up the rest of the long weekend. We didn't have any events over the holiday weekend.

After several days of absolutely beautiful weather we had rain on Saturday and Sunday. It was just a light drizzle. Getting to the exhibition we parked in the underground garage, but had to walk several blocks in the drizzle to exhibition hall. The exhibit was incredible. They were full size pictures of every panel of the Sistine Chapel. An advantage of seeing the exhibit is that you can see the pictures up close and personal, rather than 60 feet away. I'm sure we could see more details than we could ever see in person in Rome. 

Sunday was pretty laid back.  We got to be greeters at the main door to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building before Sacrament meeting.  Out talks were about how all things are possible with God. It reminded me of our past Family Home Evening. Sunday School covered how we are to remember all the things the Lord had done for us and how He will continue to fight for us.  

I want to bear testimony about the truthfulness of the teachings we have received in our meetings and in the scriptures.  I am always amazed how we are seeing the fulfillment of the prophecies about the last days in the scriptures. Even though the scriptures were written over 2000 years ago,  we can read them as if we are reading current newspapers articles.  I know the scriptures are true. 

All Our Love,

Mom and Dad 

Grandma and Grandpa 

Steve and Leslee 

Elder and Sister Wilcox 

Yigo Guam Temple Dedication, Amberlee Moore, and a Fire!

Beautiful Sunset

The last few weeks have been a little different for me. I haven't had a lot of specific work to do which was unusual. However, it was exactly what was needed because I was able to help our new employees get oriented and set up. This week was more "back to normal" with lots of projects and reports I needed to work on. On top of that we had our last New Employee start on Tuesday. So I have tried to help him as well, but there has been a lot more meetings that I needed to attend so I didn't have as much time to help him. We picked up all the laptops for the new employees so I had all those to set up. We also got the languages assigned to our new MLCs (Multi Language Coordinators) so I had lots of reports to prepare for them so they can start contacting their languages. We have had some events happen so they could attend and see how they work. It has been very busy and a little crazy.

Error Message trying to setup
Jarod's Laptop

On Monday, we tried to prepare for Jarod, our new employee. Daniel ordered the new laptops two weeks before, however, for some reason they didn't have a record of his requests. I had called a couple of times and they still didn't have the requests. On Monday morning Daniel called to let us know his mother had a heart attack that morning and he wouldn't be in for a few days. He asked me to take care of Jarod. So I called Tech Services to ask if there was anyway we could get the laptops as we had been trying for two weeks to get them. When I explained what happened and why Daniel couldn't put in a new request, Josh, the tech guy, bent over backwards for me and not only put in the request for me, but also rushed it and we got all four laptops within two hours. It was a miracle! I actually had two miracles that day. Late in the afternoon I got a call from the SQL guy I had been working with to be able to get my batch import script to work. He asked me why I wanted to be on the SQL Enterprise server. I told him it was because somebody told me the SQL Express wasn't secure enough and so I had to go on the SQL Enterprise. He then said he didn't see any reason why I couldn't stay on the SQL Express and do what I was doing before. So I'm back on SQL Express and everything is working GREAT!

Johan August Anderson

Monday night we had our Family Home Evening group. Elder Rohrbach was in charge. Sister Rohrbach wasn't feeling well so she didn't come. We missed her. Elder Rohrbach did a great job. They had asked us to come prepared with a story about one of our Ancestors and be prepared to share. We had a small group, but it was perfect since we all had time to share our stories. I thought I was going to have a hard time as I didn't have any stories of ancestors. On Saturday I went to the Family History library to look for some information and I found a third cousin 3 times removed that served a mission for the Church in the 1880's in Sweden. There was a wonderful biography about Johan August Anderson. I learned about his early life in Sweden, and his immigration to the United States when he was about 18. I learned about his early years in the US, how he fell in love and married, how he had 5 children and then was called on a mission to Sweden. He shared about his mission experiences and what happened in his life after his mission until he died in 1920. it was very cool.

Tuesday, we met our newest employee, Jarod Jensen. We spent much of the day getting the laptops up and running. We also had three events going on during the day. The Linfords covered two in the morning (May 2022 S&I Area Director Council Meeting, and Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults with President Nelson - May 2022) and we covered one in the afternoon (New Mission Leader Orientation for Mexico Area with Elder Gong). Before the end of our event I had to go help the new employees so I left Elder Wilcox to finish up the event and clean the booths. Since it was only one language he didn't have much to do. 

Wednesday morning, bright and early, we went to the Temple with the Linfords. I think I prefer going after work.. It was hard getting up so early. It was also very crazy when we finally got to the office so I felt I was playing catch up most of the morning. Our afternoon was spent in meetings. Our team meeting went two hours so I missed my PLUNET meeting. It was a good meeting, but it went really long. 

Thursday was spent trying to create reports for the new employees in between all the interruptions from the new employees. I was also getting interruptions from Curtis as we were having syncing problems with is program called ITI. We discovered why one of our Supervisors wasn't syncing so he added some code to try and fix that. He called me to talk about how we can fix this once and for all. He finally realized that we need to move to a SQL database backend for ITI. YEA!!!!  But how do we do it? I asked if he was ready to talk to Sean and he said he was ready right now. Of course this was toward the end of the day and we were ready to go home and now I was trying to get ahold of Sean for a conference call. We decided to connect in about 5 minutes. Sean sent out a video meeting invite. So we started walking home and Curtis was on his way home in the car. Just about the time we were headed down the elevator, Sean texted me and said they were online and could I join. So I joined on my phone and we walked home. When I got home I switched over to my computer to join the call. We talked for about an hour and Curtis got very excited. Sean was a great help to get us in the going in the right direction.

Yigo Guam Temple

Friday, was more of the same.  I was still trying to finish reports for the new employees. Curtis called several times and wanted me to try different things to get our switch to SQL to work. I had sent a message to my SQL guy to get some help, but he never answered me back on Friday. About the third time Curtis called and asked me to do something I told him I was still trying to get the first thing he asked me to do done and he asked, "what do you do all day?" I told him I had newbies to take care of. He then asked which one of the newbies was taking up all my time and I told him HE was taking up all my time. He then told me he wasn't a newbie.  I half expected him to call me again Friday night, but he didn't. I finally got the reports done, and his requests done, but it took me most of the day.

Friday night was awesome. We supported the Yigo Guam Temple Youth Devotional. (Pronounced Gee-go.) Elder Bednar is the presiding authority. It was an awesome devotional. He and his wife both gave very short talks and then spent about an hour or so with a panel discussion with 5 youth and then opened it up to questions from the congregation and those who were watching online. it was AWESOME. I was so impressed with many of the questions from the youth. They asked everything from what it was like to be an apostle to what to do if they feel scared to go on a mission. We supported 5 of our more obscure languages: Chuukese, Kosraean, Palauan, Pohnpeian, and Yapese. It was very cool.

Saturday was an amazing day. We didn't get home until after midnight from our event the night before. So we slept in a bit. When we woke up we decided to go to the movies and see the new Fantastic Beast - The Secrets of Dumbledore. It was AWESOME! It was fun to just go do something fun. We had to go in the morning because we had to be at the COB by 3:00 PM for the Yigo Guam Temple Dedication. We had three different dedication sessions. One at 5, 8, and 11 PM. It was another long night but an amazing experience. Elder Bednar was the presiding authority. They had the cornerstone ceremony where several children got to participate in applying some mud to the cornerstone. That was very nice to watch. Not long after it started, Amberlee Moore and her family arrived. They are visiting Utah for a week and Katie Sue said we give tours! So we missed most of the first session to give them a nice tour. Elder Wilcox had picked them up at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and showed them around there and then took them to the 28th floor of the COB. Then they showed up on the 27th floor and I joined them for the tour of that floor. It was nice because we had the event going on so they could see the interpreters in action through the windows. After sharing all we know (lol) I took them back to the JSMB so they could head to Katie's house where they were staying. It took almost the entire time of the first session.

We had an hour and a half between the different sessions. Luckily we had lots of food and snacks for everyone. While we were waiting for the next session to begin we received a call for Elder Stevens. He is an Assistant Zone Leader now and will take the place of Elder Drasso next month when they leave. Anyway, he called to find out where we were and to make sure we were safe as there was a fire in our apartment building. We looked out the window and what did we see? Several fire trucks in front of our apartment building! It was all over by the time we went home after midnight. It turned out to be one of the Sister Missionaries put some potatoes in a pan to cook and then they left the apartment to go do some work. Apparently lots of smoke filled the entire building. The fire department came with a total of 5 trucks; 2 ladder trucks and 3 pumpers.  Poor Elder Burgoyne had to walk down three flights of stairs because when the fire alarm went off it automatically sealed the elevator shut. He has MS and it was very, very hard on him. President Larsen and Elder Stevens helped him down the stairs. His wife was at the store. Anyway, he was still doing poorly on Sunday and didn't go to Church. He got a blessing from our Branch President and a member of the Mission Presidency.

The second and third sessions of the Temple Dedication were great. I loved the talks and the Dedicatory Prayer was beautiful. We had a video message from President Nelson as well as talks from some local leaders including a couple of youth speakers. Of course we also heard  from Elder and Sister Bednar. It was a wonderful experience to be able to attend.

Sunday was a day of rest. With 1 o'clock Church we got to sleep in so our late night wasn't so bad. I had to stay after Church for choir practice again since we are singing on Father's Day. We had a very relaxing afternoon. 

We hope you have a Wonderful Week.

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Events, Offsite Team Meeting, More New Employees

Curtis and Venky

Monday was a little crazy. We went to our Monday morning Mission Devotional. About half way through the devotional my phone started buzzing. I have it on Do Not Disturb so it won't make noise. I swiped the to NOT answer and went back to listening to our speakers. We have several missionaries getting ready to go home, including our Zone leaders. A few minutes later my phone buzzed again. Again I swiped it to not answer. The phone buzzed several more times and each time I didn't answer. The devotional ended at nine so as we were leaving I checked my phone and called the number. It was my manager.  Apparently two more new employees showed up a day early and were waiting in the lobby to be picked up. He finally got a hold of our other new guy from last week and he went and picked them up. Daniel was in a meeting and couldn't meet them.

David

So, we headed over to the COB and met up with Russell and the two other new guys, David and Venka. Russell had started the tour with them and I picked it up from there. We got their access badges and parking passes and finally headed to the 28th floor. I got them situated on their computers and then started showing them some of our programs. It was a good thing I didn't have anything on my plate. I'm pretty much caught up my projects so now is a good time to do training.

Monday we had our Family Home Evening group back together again. We were in charge so I had everyone bring an object that describes them. They were also to share a quote or talk about General Conference that affected or meant something to them. We had about 13 people there and had a great time. It was fun and inspirational. 

Tuesday was more training. That evening we had the MTC Devotional. It was awesome. Elder Holland and his wife spoke. His main theme was about how to give your mission everything. He said he doesn't think there is a day that has gone by that he hasn't thought of his mission. He wanted all the missionaries to feel that same way after their mission. He shared some things he has learned and applied from Preach my Gospel. He is very funny, too. I really enjoyed his talk.

Wednesday was a very fun day. We had planned our offsite team meeting several weeks ago and then postponed it to this week so our newbies could come. We had three out of four newbies as the 4th one hasn't started yet. We went over to the Conference Center and had some refreshments and played some games. For our first game we had to guess who belonged to the objects on the table. Then we got to share about what we brought. It was so funny. We laughed a lot. We played a few more games including werewolves which is similar to mafia. I was the werewolf for the last round and NO one guessed me so that was fun. After games we headed to Tucanos, a Brazilian restaurant. The food was delicious.

Russell

Thursday we had two more events. Our morning event was "May 2022 Leadership Enrichment". The Linfords covered that event. After the event Sister Linford brought up the fact that the PRJ (project number) was STILL invalid. We can't pay our interpreters without a valid PRJ number. So she started sending out emails again and finally someone told her someone higher up to contact. So she sent the email and that started some wheels turning. I got some calls from the higher up person and Sister Linford got some more emails and even a call or two. By Friday morning, the PRJ was valid and it sounds like some changes will be happening so we can avoid having anymore invalid PRJ numbers.

Thursday night we did the @Work Expo Manager + Employee Session. It was all about a new employee system that is rolling out next month. We got home by 9 that night.

Friday was another interesting day. I started the morning with that call from the higher up with PRJ numbers. I worked on some SQL stuff. Later in the afternoon Curtis called me about finding the answer to a big problem we have been having with our ITI program. About two months ago we were finally forced to migrate ITI to SharePoint because the mapped drive was causing so many problems. We have felt everything was looking great. It was faster and seemed to be doing great. Recently, we have been noticing some issues. We were not seeing some changes that Supervisors were making. Finally, Curtis made a change and got an error message. He investigated the message and found that it wrote a "backup" copy of his file because it "couldn't update the actual file". As he searched some more he found lots of other copies of files to the point that we don't know what we have or what to trust. So Curtis called me and we talked for over an hour about what to do. We are trying to connect with Sean to see if he can advise us on a course to take. I'll keep you posted. 

Saturday, I spent some time in the Family Search library hoping to make some connections on my German line. After two hours and the help of a sweet missionary, I still didn't make any progress on that line. I may have to wait until the Millennium before I can move forward on that line. 

Sunday we went to Church early so I could practice for a song some of the Sisters were singing. We got to practice on the 10th Floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The song turned out pretty good. We are singing again if a few weeks for Father's Day. That song is a bit harder so I'm glad we have several weeks to practice. We stayed after Church to start practicing that song. 

After Church we headed to the COB for the Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults with President Nelson. It was awesome. To get as many Young Adults to come as possible, they had a lot of different mingling type events going on throughout the day. They opened up the Family Search library and the Church History library. I think the Church History Museum was also opened. They had tours of Temple Square and the Conference Center. As it started getting closer to evening when the event would start, people came from all over. They roads were backed up. The freeways were backed up. We had nearly half of our Interpreters come very late because there were several accidents on the freeway. It was crazy. They put road blocks on the street in front of the COB and the Conference Center to restrict the flow of traffic. That caused a major problem for us as they weren't letting people turn into the COB parking lot. Elder Wilcox and Elder Linford went to get the food at 3:45 expecting to be back no later than 4:15. Sister Linford and I had everything set up for the meal in the downstairs cafeteria seating. 

At 4:40 they still were here so I called to see what was going on. They were stuck in traffic going around the block because they couldn't get into the COB. I called security and got conferenced into the parking manager to see what was going on. Also, one of the Security guards happened to be around when I started calling. So we explained to him and he had me follow him to get it taken care of. First we found out they had to approach the COB parking lot from the street we live on so it could be a direct shot into the parking lot. They were letting anyone TURN into the parking lot. So once inside they got a little hassle and they weren't going to let them park by the cafeteria so we could get the food. The Security Guard asked me what kind of car they were driving. He spotted them as they came in and asked if they had the food. They said they did so he jumped into the car. Whenever they got to a blockage he told the parking people to let them through. The final person kept trying to make them go down to level 3 and he jumped out of the car, told them he was security and to let them through. The person said they would have to call their boss, which they did and they finally let them through. What a hassle. 

Dinner was nearly 30 minutes late, we had only about half our Interpreters, and we were getting worried. All the Interpreters made it except one and she would have made it but another sister who lived much closer called her and said she would cover for her so she turned around and went home.  We paid her anyway. 

The event was AWESOME. Sister Wendy Nelson spoke first. I didn't hear much of her talk as we were still dealing with issues. President Nelson gave a wonderful talk. He can be very funny. They both gave wonderful advice to the Young Adults. It was all very uplifting. There were SOOOO MANY PEOPLE. I posted a few pictures taken about 1/2 hour after the event was over and you can still see a lot of people at the Conference Center. Earlier, just before it started, the whole top of the Conference Center was populated with people. They looked like a swarm of ants. 

We did 27 languages tonight and another 12 will be done on Tuesday morning because it would have been at 2 AM for them tonight. Out of the 27 languages we had 11 language in the COB for a total of about 40 people counting support personal. It was a fun but a lot of work.

The weather was perfect today. I am so ready for some sunshine and spring weather.  I hope you have a wonderful week.

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

New Employee and the Spring Concert

This has been a slower week. We didn't have any events other than one on Saturday. The Linfords handled that event. Monday evening we had a Mission Devotional with a special speaker. Elder Walter F. Gonzales and his wife were are speakers. He gave a wonderful talk about the powerful and wonderful benefits of reading the Book of Mormon everyday. There have been so many testimonies from our prophets and leaders over the years that have given us marvelous promises. He shared his own conversion story with the Book of Mormon. It reminded me of my own experience with the Book of Mormon. And my continued experiences of the Book of Mormon. It truly has changed my life in remarkable ways.

We had a nice Zone Devotional on Tuesday morning. I spent most of my day trying to convert (or translate) my email that I sent out several months ago to all the areas into Spanish. I had the initial documents translated by one of our Spanish Interpreters. Then as I formatted the translations into the format that matched the original documents, I sent them again to two of our employees who also speak Spanish to review my documents and email. It took all week of back and forth to finally be comfortable that I got it right. I finally sent them out on Friday. Most of all our area coordinators speak and read English, there were a couple in the remote areas of South America that don't. They can read Spanish so I was asked to provide my documents in Spanish. It only took we three months to get it done. hahaha

We also had a new employee start on Tuesday so I spent part of the day getting him settled in. I picked him up in the lobby and helped him pick up his access badge and parking pass. We got him signed onto his computer (that we set up for him last week) so we could get him access to all the other software he will need to access. I gave him a tour of the 26th, 27th, and 28th floor. Finally Daniel showed up so he could take over orienting Russell. I have been working with him for a bit everyday this week. Next week we get another new employee so I guess I will repeat the process.

We had a wonderful surprise at lunch. We normally eat with the Linfords and a young women who works in the kitchen. She has some disabilities and used to eat all alone everyday. The Linfords befriended her and we started eating lunch with her as often as we can. She is always so very thankful that we all sit with her. That day the Linfords were sitting with her, but we felt we should sit with Russell, our new employee on his first day. We were running very late and the cafeteria was nearly empty. After a bit, Russell finished and left while we finished up our lunch. Just then we saw the Beeches walk in and right next to them came President and Sister Lundgreen. What a Surprise! We got up and gave them a big hug. It was so fun to see them. Later in the day we left a little early so we could go to the Temple with the Linfords. The weather was so beautiful and enjoyable.

On Wednesday much of the day was spent in preparation and attending our weekly team meeting. I also continued work in SQL. I'm still hoping to get help with being able to programmatically import my data in a timely fashion. I talked to a new guy on Friday, so fingers crossed that he will be able to help me. I have to do it at least weekly and sometimes more often. We have added several other reports that I now need to run monthly. I'm glad I can provide information that helps other people do their jobs easier.

Sister Rodgers lives directly across from us in our apartment building. She showed us a bible that she found at a thrift store and wanted to know what language it was. I told her I have a friend that could probably tell us. I took a picture of the book cover. On Wednesday I showed the picture to Eunlan to see if she knew what language. She made a couple of guesses and then went to her Gospel Library app. She changed the language of her app to Japanese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. She finally pronounced that it is a Mandarin Bible. That is so cool. I emailed Sister Rodgers to let her know.

Douhet, this is for you. 😊

Later I helped get Eunlan's laptop set up so it would sync correctly so she could upload her events for us. It took most of the day to delete and reload the information. By afternoon it was working perfectly. At 4:00, I had another meeting with Sara and Russell. It ended around 5 and Russell left for home. Sara wanted to talk some more. She shared information from a meeting she had earlier that day with Sister Petty and a guy from Translation. As I listened to her, I was appalled as I listened to the long list of new tasks that they wanted Sister Petty to do. Since we have interpreters who also do translations, Sister Petty is now tasked to identify those who are also translators. As I listened to the list of tasks I kept shaking my head. Finally I said she should not have to do all of that. The translation guy, Matt, doesn't want Sister Petty to do any renewals for translators, so she needs to know who they are. At this point there is no central place that gives us a list of translators, interpreters, and those that do both. Well, I figured out a way to get the information they wanted her to check and dumped it into SQL. Then, I can compare it with our list of Interpreters so we can identify those that are also translators. We have added a check box in our system that we have all our interpreters in that we can check if they also do translations. Now Sister Petty just needs to look at that checkbox and not have to go through all the tasks that translations wanted her to do. It will be a monthly report for her.

Thursday and Friday were similar. Fairly quiet and yet still filled with lots of things to do all day long. We did get to go home at a NORMAL time which was nice for a change. Also, I did not have to continue to work when we got home. We actually got to read our Come Follow Me lesson and even watch a movie or two. It was a nice week. 

On Friday morning our prayers were with one of our dear friends we have known for 30 years, Carrie Call Anderson, had a very delicate surgery to remove a tumor. The problem was whenever they touched the tumor, Carrie's blood pressure would skyrocket. So during the surgery the anesthesiologist had to carefully monitor her blood pressure, because when they touched it to take it out the blood pressure would skyrocket and when it was removed it would plummet, both of which were life threatening. We kept tabs with Katie all morning and were thrilled when she sent that the surgery was successful and all is well.

On Saturday morning, the Linfords supported the MEA Worldwide Arabic-speaking Member Devotional. I worked on some HawkSoft certifications I needed to do. I also worked on our blog to get a head start. We thought we were going to do an event on Sunday for the Caribbean, but on Friday they cancelled it. Since it is Mother's day that is probably a good thing. I know we were having trouble getting interpreters. On Saturday evening we attended the Chorale & Orchestra Spring Concert. It was amazing.  The Chorale is the Farm Team to the Tabernacle Choir. Several will be joining the Choir soon.

Mother's Day was very nice. Steve had put a beautiful bouquet of flowers on the dining room table with a card sometime during the night so it was there when I got up. Our meetings were great. There was a men's choir that sang "O My Father". Steve was a part of that choir too so that was nice. After Relief Society we had an Ice Cream Social. Husbands were invited. We spent the rest of the day just relaxing.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox 

Computer Frustrations and Katie Sue Relief

I think this has been the most frustrating week we have had on our mission. Just when I think things are going smoothly and it looks like some needed improvements are in the works we get stopped dead in the water. 

SQL update. We managed to get my SQL Enterprise working on my Church Computer; however, we have been stuck trying to get it up and running for the Linfords. If I can't get other missionaries able to use it, then it kind of defeats the purpose of doing what I'm trying to do. I'm looking into other ways they can access running the reports, but that still does not make it sustainable after our mission is over.

Second frustration. I tried to get SQL Enterprise working on the Church Laptop that I've been given. SQL Enterprise requires a secure VPN to work, meaning I can't run it from my home computer. I have to have a Church computer with the secure VPN installed so I can work on it from home. After spending several frustrating hours with my tech guy we finally discovered that the default LDS domain was not setup on my laptop. So I headed to the 20th floor where IT support is and they worked their magic and changed my default domain to LDS. After a little setup I was able to get SQL Enterprise working just fine. However, in the process of switching it I lost my Admin privileges and caused some other issues on the computer, so I headed back to IT support the next day to get that fixed. 

In the meantime, Sister Linford said she could no longer get into CFIS which is the Church Finance system. We use that system to verify our PRJ numbers for all our events. We also do research when we get emails from Interpreters saying they haven't been paid yet. We have to check to see if they actually downloaded the invoice and emailed it to Church Finance. (That is the step they usually forget.) If it has not made it to CFIS, then we have to send it for them because once they click the "Submit for Approval" they can no longer download and email the invoice. (a long term frustration I have been working on for months.) Anyway, I tried signing into CFIS and I was unable to get in. Elder Linford tried and he got the same results. I called Global Tech Support (IT) and spent a couple of hours trying to get our access back. They finally said I was locked out and we both assumed it was because I had tried signing in too many times. They told me to wait a little while and try again later.

They gave us all new temporary sign ins and passwords and told us to try again. Still could not get in. They gave us new passwords again and still could not get in. We finally went to lunch and took a break from it all. Sometime after lunch, Sister Linford tried again and still could not get in so she called Global Tech Support. After a while they told her that she was blocked. They said they would try and get us unblocked and to try again the next day.

This was all on Monday. That evening we had our last Leadership Pattern Journey class at our apartment. It was a really good discussion. I will miss that group. However, the good news is we get to start our Family Home Evening group up again. Next Monday we have a Mission Devotional with a Guest Speaker so we will start the following week.

Tuesday morning I was again back on the 20th floor. First to get my Admin privileges back and second, to see if I could get back into CFIS. I was there nearly 2 hours. It was finally escalated to a solutions engineer who told me that we were all blocked based on a report that indicated we no longer needed access for our job. They said with the data breach we experienced a few weeks before they were really tightening down on security. He promised to see what he could do to restore our access and promised to have some news by the end of the day. In the meantime we still could not check PRJs for upcoming events. We have to have valid PRJs (project numbers) so the project can get billed. Technically they are supposed to be valid BEFORE we ever do the event, but things have been a little crazy lately with lots of invalid PRJs at the time of the event. We can't approve jobs until they are valid. So finally the Supervisors are pushing back and saying they won't even set up the event until the PRJ is valid.

By noon we got word that it wasn't a report that blocked us, but the PSD finance guy. I sent an explanation to Daniel (our manager) so he could present the need to get us access again. Finance did come up with a daily report of valid PRJs that we can check so we don't have to go into CFIS. I said that would be fine; however, that did not resolve the need to check if invoices were in the system. He said we were to send those request to Lisa. That will slow things down a lot, because Lisa is a very busy person and I think that is the reason they gave the missionaries access in the first place. We will see how that goes. The final reason we need access is once a month we run a report to see all invoices that have been created and then we check to see how many are NOT in CFIS so we can submit them. I don't think Lisa is going to want to check that list every month. If we don't check it, they the only way they will get paid if they forgot to submit the invoice is if they email us and say, "hey, I still haven't been paid yet." There are a lot that never email us and so they will never get paid. I'm not sure how this is going to work out yet.

We had a wonderful Tuesday afternoon. The Beeches and the Wilcoxes got to have lunch and an afternoon tour with Katie Sue and Bryce. It was so much fun and I really needed a break from all the Tech issues. Katie was running a bit late because of parking so we were rushing a bit to make it to the cafeteria before they closed at 1:30. Just as we walked into the COB near the cafeteria I spotted someone I knew entering the health clinic right by the main door. I hollered out to Jodi (Bean) to say hi as I headed over to give her a hug. She spotted us and then realized that the Beeches and Katie Sue were there. She was so excited to see them. We spent just a few minutes talking before we had to run to the cafeteria. The Tender Mercy is this.  Jodi would have already gone home, but decided to work out before going home. She was just dropping by the clinic to pick up her things before heading out. Perfect timing. Second Tender Mercy. Jodi ONLY works at the clinic ONE day a month. What are the Odds?  It was a wonderful blessing. Our tour went longer than we usually give. I think we probably spent about three hours with Katie Sue and Bryce. The Beeches left after about an hour as they had a Temple appointment. We had a wonderful time with them.

Wednesday was filled with our usual meetings. Our team meeting went over so I missed my PLUNET meeting. We left as soon as the Team Meeting was over to go to the Temple with the Linfords. It wasn't as frustrating a day, but still we didn't get things resolved that we need to.

Thursday I spent much of the day in one-off meetings. I was assigned an SQL Solutions Manager. (Honestly, I don't know exactly what he does.) We talked for an hour and I went over my whole process from start to finish explaining the three different systems we use and how they don't talk to each other and how I'm just trying to get all the information in one place so we can make things easier. He listened and wrote lots of notes. All I really wanted was help with getting the Bulk Import to work on the new server. I brought it up many times, but that was not one of his solutions.

Later that afternoon I had another meeting with Baptiste and a few people from the Translation group. We are trying to figure out why some of their translators were renewed in the system as only interpreters. NOT GOOD. I told them we didn't do anything different then we usually do. We are trying to implement a practice to check before Sister Petty puts in a renewal request to see of Translation has already submitted the request to avoid duplicates but that is about it. Oh, Lisa's group did add three new check boxes in the request that says Translation, Interpretation, and Sacred Material. After the call I thought about it and think perhaps the missionaries that are doing the actual renewals we just looking at the box and not at the fact that they were already in the system as translators and simply put them in as interpreters. Anyway, it was just one more frustration for the week.  Later that evening the Linfords did another NANE Broadcast Videos for Primary and Youth event. I think there is at least one more in this series next week. It is kind of like Roots Tech. The event that never ends. hahaha

On Friday I created some thank you letters and certificates for some language coordinators who have moved on. Daniel came in and so he was able to sign them so we could get them in the mail. We also got some things set up for two new people that are starting next week. We have two others that may start the week after. There was more communication back and forth between Daniel and finance, but so far no resolution. I also got some percentage reports done for Daniel that he has decided he wants run regularly, some twice a year, some quarterly, and some monthly. I got the script written to make it very easy to do. He was very happy with that. I also got a call from my SQL solutions guy asking why I don't just do everything in Excel rather than going to SQL. He said it would be easier for missionaries to use a program they are more familiar with. I told him I started in Excel, but the work it took to get the reports out was a lot more complicated then what I can do in SQL. I can teach a missionary how to save the needed data into a csv file. I can teach them to run a script that will import all the data and then run another script for whatever report they want. No manipulating data or sorting, or selecting, or anything else that would need to be done in Excel. And, yes, I could probably figure out a way to automate all that manipulation in Excel, but at this point it is much, much easier for me to do that in SQL. I can manually do it in Excel, but I don't know how to automate it. So now I'm not sure they will let me keep SQL.

On Saturday we did a cool event. We supported the Farmington NM Temple Groundbreaking event. They only reason we didn't get to watch the whole thing is because we were watching the memorial services for the daughter of two of our wonderful Portuguese interpreters. Last week their daughter was flying in a 4 seater small aircraft just outside Cedar City. She was with her fiancé, his brother, and his sister-in-law. The brother was the pilot. They had just finished eating dinner in Cedar City and were headed to Zion National Park. We don't know what happened, but the plane went down and all four were killed. We have all be devastated and feel so much love and sympathy for the parents. Henrique and Ana de Agostini are always so fun to be around. They are both GREAT people. The service was beautiful. We were surprised that both Henrique and Ana spoke. Also a sister and brother spoke as well. The daughter sounded like a wonderful young woman. She was to graduate next week and was planning on getting married in the near future. When the service was over we turned the sound up on the groundbreaking event. We had missed most of the talks, but we did get to catch the shovel ceremony. I think it was very cool that in each of the shovel ceremonies they had several Primary children with a shovel too, so they could participate. That will be something they remember for the rest of their lives. 

After the event we did some shopping. Luckily I did my HawkSoft work on Friday night. We had a fairly relaxing day. On Sunday we had a special women's choir to prepare for Father's Day. We are also going to sing on the 15th. It was nice to be part of a choir again. We sounded pretty good. 😁🎶 It was also our Break the Fast meal. As usual, a fun time was had by all!

I hope you all have a wonderful week and enjoy the beautiful Spring Weather!

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox