Temple Leadership Seminar

Over the Beech's door

This has been a long week. I received a lot of response from all the areas about the inactive resources in PLUNET. Most said we should deactivate them in Event Central so we were able to clean up a lot of resources. Last Friday I sent out an email to our new section director as well as several managers in the Finance team. The guy we have been working with since we got here retired. Well, he supposedly retired, but he is still working. He is finally down to 1 day a week. He is the one who has been hesitant to make a decision about our new invoicing process because he was leaving. Anyway, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Sara and I talked about it last week and agreed we needed to send an email. Well, our section director was all for it; however, he wanted to make sure we had buy in from the rest of our new section. So, I set up a meeting for Monday with the different teams in our section as well as representatives in a couple of other sections. The meeting went very well and all were in agreement that we need to do something and if the proposal works they way we hope, then we have 100% support.

What you see when coming
out of the elevator 

Last Monday evening we had a wonderful Mission Devotional. President Holmes took a page out of President Leptich's book of devotionals. The format was one of discussion and not of talks. President and Sister Holmes walked around the floor and not on the stand. I loved it. He gave us three different talks to read and be prepared to discuss. One of the talks was one President Holmes gave in a BYU Devotional back in 2017. All the talks pertained to the Doctrine of Christ. It was a great Devotional.

Early Tuesday morning we helped support the first of six sessions of the "2022 Temple Leadership Seminar Pre-recordings." We were able to watch our Zone Devotional Tuesday morning while still supporting the event. The 3 morning sessions were Tieline with the exception of the French team that was at the COB. They were interpreting several different videos that will be shown in the first week in September for the LIVE Temple Leadership Seminar. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the videos. It was a 4 to 5 hour session, depending on who needed to do retakes, and we supplied breakfast and lunch. 

The two apartments at the
beginning of the hall

Just before the end of the session, I went upstairs to hold the second meeting I scheduled for the new invoicing process. This time it was with our Section director and the finance people as well as a few others who are directly involved. The meeting went very well with only one hitch. I had hoped to change the process to do just two things. 1. click the "create invoice" button and 2. click the "submit for approval" button. Unfortunately, I found out in the meeting that it is necessary to click the "print invoice" button. That not only creates an RTF file, but it also creates the AP file that finance needs to reconcile their reports. NOTE: that AP file does not actually go to the finance system. It is just to reconcile PLUNET. They still have to manually enter the data into the finance system. Luckily, however, the majority of "resources" (interpreters and translators) already click the "print invoice" button. They will no longer have to download the RTF file or email it to finance. So the new process will consist of thee clicks. 1. Click the "create invoice" button. 2. Click the "print invoice" button. And 3. Click the "submit for approval" button and be done. That should eliminate nearly 90% of the problems we currently have. There will still be a few who won't click the "print invoice" button and we will have to go back and do that for them, but at least their invoice will now be sent to the people who have to input it into church finance. So, even though I didn't hit a home run, I think I hit a solid triple. 

This is in front of the Burgoynes

At the end of our work day we got ready for the first of the three evening sessions of the "2022 Temple Leadership Seminar Pre-recordings." These were all SLC teams with the exception of Tongan which did Tieline. We fed about 30 people. Again, we didn't get to see the videos. That is always a bummer. The engineer learned a lot from the morning session, and from what he learned, the evening session went much more smoothly. We finished in about 4 hours. I think we left a little after 10.

Curtis's personal copies of the death masks

The Linfords supported both the Wednesday and Thursday morning sessions.  Both mornings also took 4 to 5 hours, depending on retakes, with a breakfast and lunch provided. Wednesday we had our Team Meeting. Curtis gave us an update on his research and findings with the new Joseph Smith picture. He also brought in his personal copies of the death masks of Joseph and Hyrum. It was pretty cool. And right after our meeting we began to get ready for our evening session. We had even more interpreters for this session. Paul was our engineer and he managed to show us the Videos to watch. The Linfords also supported all the three evening sessions with us. We tried to talk them into going home early since they had supported the morning session; but, with being able to see the videos they wanted to stay. I don't blame them. We loved the videos. The instruction was very good. I loved the stories they shared. We heard from several leaders. We left near 10:30 that night. This was supposed to be the longest evening. It was scheduled to end around 11:30 so we did good leaving at 10:30.

Thursday was similar to Wednesday. We had the last of the videos on Thursday. The morning session finished before noon. We still fed them lunch even though they ended early. We believed our evening session would also be quicker than the previous two nights. Most of the languages finished early and were done by 9:00 pm. There were three languages that had to do retakes. We did Spanish first because we figured they would be very fast; however, they took 30 minutes. It surprised everyone. Next we did the Tongan team and they took nearly 30 minutes as well. The last team was Ukrainian. They kept having problems. We weren't sure what was going on. Paul was so patient and understanding and worked so well with them. They repeated the same talk over and over again. It was a talk by Sister Aburto. Finally, Paul made a suggestion that made all the difference in the world. Paul recognized that the Ukrainians simply could not talk fast enough to fit all the syllables in the same time that Sister Aburto spoke. When we are doing videos, the interpreters have to make their talk be the same length of time as the original speaker. Sometimes the engineer can stretch or shrink the audio track to fit the length of the video; however, there are sometimes when the engineer simply cannot shrink it enough to fit without distorting the audio track. That was the case on Thursday night. He finally suggested the Ukrainians modify the script and cut out parts that could be eliminated without changing the meaning of the talk. They took about 10 or 15 minutes to rework the script and did one more take. It worked perfectly. They finished at 11:30. I asked them how the syllables differed and they gave two examples. The words Relief Society is 7 syllables in English; but, in Ukrainian it is closer to more than 10. The words Young Women is only three syllables in English; but, in Ukrainian it is closer to 15. Anyway, by the time we finished cleaning booths and submitting the jobs for approval it was close to midnight before we left. Sister Linford left at 10. Elder Linford left much earlier.

Friday, we slept in. No alarm! We managed to get into the office a little after 10. I did do a few things at home before heading in. We also left early so we could go to the Temple with the Linfords. We didn't have a lot of work to do so it all worked out well. At the Temple we managed to do some Initiatory, an Endowment, and finally some Sealings. It was a nice afternoon and evening. We got home by 7:45. The earliest night in the whole week!

Saturday, I worked on PLUNET a bit and did some work for HawkSoft. Around noon, we headed to Ogden to see Roy and Vicki again. Roy is back in the hospital with some internal bleeding. They can't seem to identify the source. They are still running tests to find the cause. Roy is looking better. He was nice and alert and we had a wonderful visit with them. They are also looking into a new rehabilitation center he can go into when he leaves. They are hoping to find something closer to Bountiful.

We missed Music and the Spoken Word this morning. We just needed a morning at home. Church was good. They announced a social on August 19 that will be held at the home of our new Mission President. That should be fun. I enjoyed the Testimonies that were born. In Sunday School we talked about Job. The discussion was very good in how we can liken Job's experiences to ourselves. And lastly, we had our monthly Break the Fast with our apartment floor. I absolutely love this event each month. We have so much fun getting to know everyone. We missed some of our old timers and welcomed several new couples to our group. I look forward to getting to know them. Elder Wilcox has been busy making everyone feel welcome with their own personalized signs. Everyone loves it. Apparently now when they move onto our floor the word spreads that Elder Wilcox will make them a sign. He is having to back track a bit because there are several that have been here a couple of months that don't have signs and they want one too! He enjoys thinking of something clever to put on their signs. I hope you enjoy the wave of new signs he has made. Oh, and when they leave he gives them a big envelope with a brand new fresh sign to take home. They also take the one hanging by their door. 😊

Have a GREAT week!

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox