Conference Reports, MSW, and Area Emails!

John Benbow Farm in England

Monday was the official Pioneer Day holiday so we didn't have work. Surprisingly we didn't hear from any of our Supervisors. We just lazed around all day. We did go out shopping for a little in the afternoon. We also had our Family Home Evening group that evening. The Beech's led the discussion. Elder Beech created a PowerPoint presentation of the Wilfred Woodruff's mission to England.  I knew of the basic mission as I taught it when I was teaching Seminary; however, Elder Beech shared a lot more interesting facts. He also shared pictures of the country side and shared personal stories of several places he had experienced since he is from England. It was a wonderful presentation.

Zupas - One of the Restaurants
we got food from

Tuesday was our Zone Devotional. Normally I go to the office before the devotional; but Tuesday, I decided to watch from home. Since we have been so slow, we have been sleeping in a bit everyday. We headed to work after the devotional. Last Friday, Eunlan called us letting us know that even though our three events (Disabilities Resources Videos - Cebuano and Tagalog) for this week were tieline and we normally didn't have to do anything other than the computer work, the producer requested meals for the engineer, supervisor, producer, and of course the missionaries for all three days. Elder Wilcox spent much of the day trying to organize the meals. The producer didn't want meals from COB Catering. She wanted to go off campus, meaning restaurants.  So, on Friday Elder Wilcox chose three different restaurants and sent menu links to each person that was scheduled to come. Most had put their menu requests in the spreadsheet we sent out. Then on Monday several changes occurred. First the producer who request the meals and the restaurants couldn't come. Her mother tested positive for Covid and the mother lives with the producer. Second we were told the engineer had changed. It took several hours to track the engineer only to find out that it was the original engineer after all. 

Hip Exercises

Right after lunch, we walked home and picked up the car so I could go to a therapy appointment. My hip has been hurting a lot lately and I was hoping to get another shot to make it better. Instead of the shot, I got exercises to do. Much, much slower process to get any relief. I'm trying to be diligent with my exercises in hopes I will feel some relief soon. For the most part it is only bad when walking up the hill to our apartment. After the appointment we headed back to work. Around 5 Elder Wilcox went to pick up dinner. He gave the engineer his dinner and then Eunlan, Elder Wilcox, and I had dinner together. Technically, we could have left right after dinner; however, Eunlan has a way of keeping us there for a while. We don't mind. We love serving with her. We left around 7. Poor Eunlan had to stay until 10 that night.

Diagram of a Blood Clot

Wednesday, we worked from home in the morning as Steve had a follow-up appointment from his emergency room visit last week. Normally we get right in; however, on Wednesday they were very behind schedule and it took us an hour before we saw the doctor. The visit went well. The doctor asked a bunch of questions trying to determine what might have triggered the blood clot. We left with it still undetermined. She said she would talk to a specialist to see if there were any other questions she should ask and to see how long he will need to take the blood thinners. The original prescription was for 90 days; however, the specialist said with his history of several other blood clots, he recommends he stays on the blood thinners for the rest of his life.

October General Conference 2019

Wednesday afternoon was spent in our Team Meeting, which went 30 minutes overtime again. Elder Wilcox also had to deal with similar problems with the engineer for that night's tieline event. Again we were told it would be a different engineer. At that point he didn't have a meal picked for the engineer. Again, the engineer we thought was going to be there said he wasn't going to be there and in the end he was there after all. lol  Eunlan asked if there was a way I could give her a report of all the Interpreters we used for the October 2019 General Conference. That was the last conference before Covid. So I took about an hour to create the report for her of interpreters by language and session. Then we went home around 7:30. That night Eunlan had to stay until 10:30.

My Mass Email Power Automate Flow

Thursday the Linfords left for Casper for the weekend. We watched our Zone Devotional at home again and then headed into the office. I had been working on trying to finish up my mass emails to the areas. I finally got approval for the new email subject I wanted so I was ready to go. The text worked perfectly. I changed my input list to use the area emails and let it run. It crashed. Before I could look into it, I got a call from Eunlan wanting me to modify the report I gave her the day before to break out the interpreters by those in SLC and those in the AREA. So I spent the next couple of hours extracting what she wanted. I also realized that with the Linfords gone I needed to do their work too. Needless to say, I didn't get to everything very quickly. I finished the Linford's work in the morning and started on Eunlan's report. In the meantime I kept trying to tweak my mass email job. At 11 AM we had a Teams meeting with the Sacred Materials part of our new section. It was a "get to know you" and "what do each of you do" kind of meeting. We all enjoyed it very much. It took over 1 1/2 hours to cover everyone. We still need to meet with our Operations Managers part before our next full section meeting on August 11th. I already love everyone in our new section and look forward to working more closely together. 

By the end of the day I still had not sent out my mass emails so I set up an appointment with Jeff (the tech guy) to help me first thing on Friday. I finished Eunlan's new report, but had a slight problem with one of the formulas in the spreadsheet. This day all the meals for the evening tieline event went off without a hitch. After we ate, I did some final tweaking on the formula and was able to give Eunlan exactly what she wanted. She is in charge of General Conference again this conference. We will be having a full compliment of interpreters in the COB and she wanted to get a handle of how many that would be. This report will help her a lot. Again, we didn't leave until around 7:30.

Friday morning, I connected with Jeff and within a few minutes he was able to identify the problem. He changed one little thing and it worked perfectly. I only had one error come up when it ran and that was an invalid email address. I corrected that address and manually sent that one out. All the rest went out without a hitch. I was amazed at how many responses I got back right away and throughout the rest of the day. We deactivated a TON of people in Event Central that were no longer doing interpretations. I'm sure I will receive more in the next week or so. After talking to Sara we decided to put together an email and send it out to the new people over the finance department as well as Greg who is over our new section about the new proposed process for invoicing. I have been trying for so long to go up the chain to get approval, but have not got any response. Sara and I decided to go over the chain and work down instead. I explained briefly the problem and the proposed solution. I then proposed a meeting with them so we can show them what we are proposing. Greg wrote back and wanted to make sure we have done our due diligence in talking to others in our division that use the same process. I have briefly mentioned it to everyone involved over the course of several months and received positive feedback; however we have never done anything formally. So Sara suggested we set up a Teams Meeting on Monday. We are a GO! I am very excited about this and hope it will be the final step in getting approval to move forward. After this meeting, Greg said he would be ready to meet with us along with the people over finance. Wish me luck. I have been working on this since a month or so after arriving on our mission. Friday evening we went to the Bountiful Temple. It felt good to be in the House of the Lord again. We missed last week.

Saturday I didn't even leave the apartment. Steve did some shopping. I worked on HawkSoft as well as processing a few more responses from the areas. Then I watched movies just because I could. lol

Sunday was a good day. We started the morning by attending Music and the Spoken Word. It is such a beautiful way to begin our day of worship. I usually work on the blog after that. Church starts at 1 so we leave around 12:30 or so. Our talks are always so uplifting. When you are surrounded by the caliber of people who are serving missions, the talks are always good. Same thing with our Sunday School, Priesthood, and Relief Society classes. The lessons or discussions are always so enlightening. I learn so much. We are so very blessed to be here at this time. If you would like to know more about why we feel so blessed, we invite you to "come and see". 

Bountiful Temple

I'm excited about next week. We are starting preparations for the Temple Leadership Seminar. The live meeting will be the first week in September; however, we have several events leading up to that in August. The first one is some pre-recording videos that we will be doing Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings (for tielines and French), as well as evenings for SLC teams. They are always so spiritual. I am really looking forward to them.

Sorry we didn't have any "real" pictures this week. We'll do better next week.

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox