HawkSoft Virtual Team Meetings, Escape Rooms, and More General Conference Preparation  

We had eight different events this week, however all of them were either Language Coaching or Interpretations that took place in the studios at the Conference Center. We did 5 Language Coaching jobs to help several General Authorities record their talks in different languages. I think that is very cool. So when Elder Uchtdorf give his talk, the German people will hear it in HIS voice as he interprets his own talk. Elders Christofferson and Soares record their talks in both Spanish and Portuguese. Elder Renlund records his talk in Swedish. Bishop Caussé records his talk in French. And Elders Zeballos and Pino record their talks in Spanish. When Elder Gong speaks to a specific audience in a devotional or Stake Conference, he always tries to learn a sentence or two in the native language of the audience. I think that is so thoughtful for him to do that. Since Curtis is over all the General Authority GC pre-recordings, he had to come in several days this past week. He will be here all day next Tuesday as he finishes up the last three recordings. We are down to the wire on our General Conference preparations. These envelopes all contain items for our interpreters such as access badges, parking passes, and picture credentials. The one on the far left is for the people coming from out of town. Elder Wilcox, Elder Linford, and Eunlan will meet them at the Hotel on Friday night to pass out these things as well as their per diem for the Conference. The box on the far right is those that are actually scheduled to work for General Conference. We are trying to limit how many we have to search through to make it go much faster.  The two in the middle are active interpreters but not scheduled for General Conference. Occasionally there is a last minute change that we don't know about so we want to make sure we have their items if they show up. We have been working like mad to get these delivered BEFORE conference to avoid the huge clog we had last conference. We gave out a lot at our preparation meeting several weeks ago. We are in really good shape now. That is mainly what I've been working on all week, along with all the normal requests for help and special reports that I get everyday.

We didn't have our normal Monday Morning Mission Devotional on the 19th because of the Friday night fireside we had on the 16th last week. We did have our Family Home Evening group on Monday night. We were in charge. I did a Scripture Squeeze on several scriptures that we passed around. To do a Scripture Squeeze, you spend 10 minutes underlining and circling words or phrases in the particular scripture you are squeezing and ask questions. After 10 minutes, you choose a question, anyone's question, and spend a few minutes researching the answer. This is where personal revelation happens. Then we shared our questions and answers and had a wonderful discussion. For our game we played Old Testament Charades. We had so much fun as they acted out scenes from characters in the Old Testament. Lots of laughs. For refreshments we did brownies and ice cream. YUM!

Tuesday started with our Zone Devotional. I know I stayed busy throughout the day. We had our GC Preparation meeting. Everything is looking good. and later I had a new invoicing processing review meeting. We probably won't be addressing the emailing issue until after General Conference. In the meantime I continue to help our resources with their invoices. We are also scrambling to make sure we get the few remaining inactive people active in PLUNET! We are in so much better shape than we have been in for the last several conferences. Even the Areas are in good shape. 

On Wednesday, I sent out a mass email to all the interpreters that need badges and passes for GC to see if they can come in BEFORE GC and pick up their things. Even if we get a few it will help. I also started working on organizing the missionaries that will be helping at GC so I can create their schedule. It has taken several days and I'm still not done. We had our weekly Team Meeting that almost ended on time. Then someone asked a question and we finished well after 3 again. 

Thursday was a pretty fun day. One of our good friends was giving the Zone Devotional and texted me to come to their apartment to make sure they were good to go. I set up a Zoom meeting and had them join so I could talk them through how to share their PowerPoint presentation. Everything worked great. Then the meetings started and for some reason they couldn't share. So I ran down the hall and got on his laptop to see what the problem was. We never could figure out how to make the PowerPoint fill the screen but at least he was able to share his screen and do his presentation. The weird part is when he shared on my Zoom call it filled the screen perfectly. Go figure. 

I worked on some reports and scheduling until noonish. Then Elder Wilcox went downstairs and picked up the lunch that was delivered to me from HawkSoft. We had a virtual "team meeting" on Teams where we ate lunch and visited for about an hour. There were several that I knew from when I was in the office before I "retired". (I still work for HawkSoft part time. hahaha). There were A LOT that I didn't know so it was fun to get to know them. After lunch we broke into smaller groups and played a virtual Escape Room game. We had to solve several problems to be able to escape. We had a lot of fun working together. The problems progressively got harder. We only missed one problem but some of them took a long time to complete. We didn't win, but neither did we come in last. Hahaha. It was a much needed escape from the hectic week. Then it was back to schedules and problems. lol

Most of Friday was working on schedules and special reports. We have about 40 missionaries that will be helping us throughout the 5 sessions. It will be fun to work with so many of our friends and give them an opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes at General Conference.

Saturday I helped Elder Wilcox work on his PowerPoint presentation for our Zone Devotional next Thursday. We still have some more work to do before it is finished. I also worked on the schedules some more. I'm almost done. And I took a couple of security courses for HawkSoft. Oh, we also got hair cuts! We were both getting a bit scruffy looking. Haha.

Sunday Church was good. I truly love Sundays. It does become a day of rest. I got to do a small part of our Relief Society lesson. We discussed the talk by Elder Cook in last April General Conference called Conversion to the Will of God. Sister St. Clair asked me to prepare and share my testimony about the Prophet Joseph Smith. It was a wonderful experience to ponder and prepare that presentation.

Have a GREAT Week and don't forget to Prepare for General Conference!

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

October 2022 World News Report and Mission Tour 

This week we have been busy cleaning up all the access badges, parking passes, and picture credentials that have been sitting in our files in preparation for General Conference. It has always been a slow spot when checking people in so we brainstormed on Monday and came up with a plan that we put into place throughout the week. The first thing we did was go through all the items we had and divide them into three categories. We checked to see if they were scheduled for General Conference and put them in one pile. Then we checked if they were active in our system and put them in another pile. Lastly we put those that are inactive in a third pile. We want only those attending General Conference in the box we need to check at General Conference. That will make passing out those things go so much faster. We will also have the active ones to the side in case someone shows up last minute that wasn't scheduled. If they are NOT active, they are not allowed to interpret for us, so we want to keep those far away. In the past we would search through everything and it was easy to miss the ones we actually needed. The other problem is some were actually filed in the wrong language folder, so we missed those too. 

Copy of Access Badge and 
Picture Credential

We got rid of so many inactives!!! That will help so much. Our General Conference stack fits in one small box. That makes sense because most of our people have all their stuff. The remaining actives fit in two small boxes. I am very excited for this new process. We also put everything one person needs in their own 5 x 7 manilla envelope with their name and language on it. In the past everything for a particular language was in a big file folder. We tried to clip things together for a single person, but that was not the case for a lot of them. Picture credentials were kept someplace else and handed out separately. Plus, in many cases there were duplicate and even triplicates of the credentials. It was a mess. Everything is now all together in a single envelope for a single person. It should work so much better. It took us most of the week and even several hours on Saturday to finish the project with most of the work done on Friday.

Stack of Inactive Credentials

Just before lunch we had to rush over and get our flu shot.  We almost forgot our appointment because our brainstorming session went too long.  Then,  I almost missed another meeting I had with our new section leader.  I really enjoyed my meeting with Xenia. She is going to be a great leader.  Monday night we had an evening Mission Fireside with Georges Bonnet, Director of Communications Salt Lake City Temple Project. He has been in charge of many different Temple constructions and remodels. He gave us a history and update of the progress on the Salt Lake City Temple, complete with pictures. It was really a very nice fireside, especially with the spiritual aspect of his talk.

Tuesday started with our Zone Devotional. We heard from the Cutler's. They gave a great devotional about a sheep named Shrek. For 6 years he wandered about hiding in caves. His fleece was not shaved the whole time he was gone. On average, a sheep carries 10 pounds of fleece before being shorn. Shrek had over sixty pounds. After he was found, a sheep shearer relieved him of the sixty pound burden in just 28 minutes. They then compared us to the wandering sheep. "Prone to wander, Prone to leave the God we love." We carry our burdens and let them multiply until we realize we don't have to, because "the Lord is [our] shepherd, [We] shall not want."  He has carried our burdens so we don't have to do it again. He has paid the price so we don't have to pay it again. He has overcome our sins, so we now can overcome them, too. All we have to do is Hand it over.

Shrek the Sheep

Tuesday afternoon we had our weekly General Conference meeting.  We are doing good to be on target.  I still need to find out how many missionaries we can have help us.  We will be limited on who we can use on Saturday because many of our missionaries will be singing for the afternoon session of Conference.  We are so excited for them.  They will be joined by missionaries from the MTC.

I spent most of the day trying to complete the PLUNET order for our General Conference Preparation meeting we held last Saturday. Unfortunately,  I had lots of questions and interruptions so I wasn't able to complete the PLUNET order by the end of the day.  Since our contractors can't get paid until I finish the order,  we decided to stay late.  There were over 200 people I had to put in the order, so it took a long time.  We had 48 languages in attendance, either in person or on Zoom.  We finished at 10:30 that night. 

I knew I couldn't do the PLUNET order on Wednesday because of the very busy day planned.  We started with a Tieline event for the October 2022 World Report for General Conference.  French and Italian we in person so we had to be in attendance.  Wednesday evening we had our other Salt Lake City teams.  The Linfords covered that event.  After the morning event started, Curtis was there to cover for us so Aaron,  Venky, the Linfords, and the Wilcoxes could do our semi-annual Costco shopping.  That is always fun.  As we were finishing,  Elder Wilcox received a call from Jodi Bean Clark letting us know that Spencer Bean was in town to take h his daughter to the MTC to begin her mission to Vancouver,  Washington. Spencer's family has lived in Germany for over 20 years.  He was going to be in the COB for lunch with Jodi at 11.00am. We managed to finish up and get back in time to visit with them before they had to leave.  Thanks to others of our team who unloaded all our stuff so we could visit.  We had a wonderful visit. 

Thursday was a little lighter day.  We were still busy but not overwhelmed.  I attended a meeting about some of the automation jobs that one of our teams has made.  I'm anxious to start implementing them in our team.  That will have to wait until after General Conference.  We were able to leave early and go to the Temple.  It was so nice to be there.  Since our anniversary is on Sunday,  we wanted to make sure we got to go to the Temple for our anniversary. If was a wonderful session.

Most of Friday was fixing problems and sorting through our badges and stuff.  We took out an hour or so to meet with Elder Evan A Schmutz of the General Authority Seventy as he was conducting a mission tour Wednesday through Friday. Since our Zone is so scattered in many different departments, it was determined that those that wanted to meet with him would gather together in a conference room on the 24th floor of the COB in the Family and Priesthood center. We had a very large turn out. President Homes and Elder Schmutz and their wives were running a bit late so we had about an hour to kill before they got there. We had a lot of fun telling jokes and stories while we waited. When they got there Elder Schmutz went around shaking everyone's hand to greet them. He then shared some brief remarks that were very uplifting. He had to leave for another meeting, and President Holmes talked with us for a little while. He shared with us several experiences he had in that very room when he served in the General Young Men's Presidency. That was cool. 

Friday evening we had another Mission Fireside, this time with Elder Schmutz and his wife. President and Sister Holmes spoke briefly, too. At first I was a bit reluctant to go as I was tired after the week we had been through. I just wanted to go home; but, of course we went and I am so glad we did. Elder Schmutz spoke for almost an hour about many wonderful things. The last 20 or so minutes was exactly what I needed to hear. He talked about all the different faithful people he has met and worked with over his many years of service. He told some beautiful stories of people in the Philippines where he served several times for a total of over 10 years. One story was of the life and conversion of the Patriarch of one of the Stakes he presided over. This tiny 4'11" man first heard about the Church when it was first introduced in the Philippines. He had a very hard life. He and his wife had 5 children and felt they were comfortable enough. Their apartment was close to where he farmed. One day the landlord told them they had to move because two young missionaries could pay more money then they were paying. He was angry and wanted to punch them in the nose. They had to move further away and take two trolleys to get to work. It ended up costing them more money and time. He lost his first wife after she was hit by a bus on her way to work while waiting for the trolly. That made him even angrier at the missionaries. Not long after he saw the missionaries at the top of the hill and he clenched his fist into a ball and held it behind his back as he started toward them. When he got closer, the missionaries asked for his help in finding someone. He knew the person they wanted to find, so he asked them why they wanted to find them. He still had his clenched fist behind him. One of the missionaries told them they had a gift for the person. They other missionary held up a copy of the Book of Mormon and told him that the book was very precious to them and could change lives. They wanted to give the person that great gift. The little man said something immediately came over him and he fell to his knees and pleaded with the missionaries to give him the book. Of course they said yes, and started teaching him. His heart was healed and he was baptized into the Church. A few months later a women in the branch came up to him and told him that she didn't know why, but she was told she would marry him and asked him right there if he would marry her. He said "OK". They got married and had 7 more children. All twelve of his children served missions and all twelve were married in the Temple of the Lord. 

Elder Schmutz went on to say that he knows every act of kindness we do is written down in the books of life. He talked about the sacrifices we, as missionaries, are making to serve at this time in our lives and that several of the missionaries have served several missions. I honestly can't believe how many senior missionaries have sold their homes and just serve one mission after another. I think I might want to do that, too. I can't think of a better way to live out my life than in the service of God. Elder Schmutz continued talking about our worth and the good we have done. He said that too often we feel we are not enough. We focus on the things we are not, or the mistakes we may have done. He pointed out that that is what Satan would have us think, but we need to realize that Heavenly Father looks on all the good we do. He measures where our heart is and what we are stiving to do. The Atonement of Jesus Christ takes care of our shortfallings and mistakes. I needed to hear that. I am one who sometimes only sees the mistakes I make and not the good I have done. Perhaps you need to hear (read) this too.

Leaky Roof in Sister Linford's Cubicle

Saturday turned out to be a longer day than we expected. I wanted to finish up some of the sorting we were doing and thought it would only take an hour or so. I also wanted to start work on a new report I have to do. Well the sorting and labels took nearly 4 hours and I never did get to the report. Elder Wilcox worked on some things he has not had time to do either so it was a very productive morning. After that we picked up Vicki and went and visited Roy. It had been a few weeks since we have seen them. Vicki is recovering for a fall she had a few weeks ago. She was still recovering from her heart attack. Poor thing. She hurt her ribs pretty bad and has a hard time walking now. It is healing slowly. Roy is recovering from pneumonia that he came down with a couple weeks ago in addition to continuing to recover from his stroke. He was having a particularly rough day and was in a lot of pain. Vicki so tenderly took care of him as best she could with her sore ribs. It was so sweet to watch her care for him, but so hard to see him is such pain. Of course, Steve jumped in to help where ever he could. Before we all left an hour or so later, Elder Wilcox gave Roy a blessing. Please keep both of them in your prayers. After we dropped Vicki off, we went to dinner for our anniversary.

Anniversary Cinnamon Rolls from
Sister Linford

Sunday Church was awesome. The talks were great. We heard a beautiful duet played by two sweet sisters on the piano. Sunday School was so enlightening. President Parker taught us how to read Isaiah. It has to be done one verse or even one phrase at a time. If you read the whole chapter you miss so much. If you look at each verse and say, "what does that sound like" the Spirit will prompt you to know. Isaiah's symbolism usually refer to things like the Temple, the Book of Mormon, the Savior, the Atonement, Apostasy, the Restoration, and so much more. Only when you ask yourself the right questions will you get the answers. It was so AWESOME! After Church the Linfords invited us for dinner for our anniversary. That was so sweet of them.

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

General Conference Preparation Meeting

FHE Bar-B-Que

Monday was labor day and we actually got it off. I had spent most of Saturday catching up on things so it was very nice to have Monday off. We went shopping and bought some folding chairs. We needed them for our FHE group as well as for the bar-b-que we had with our apartment floor. All the missionaries chipped in and we bought a bar-b-que for the apartment complex. So, for FHE Monday night we had a wonderful potluck bar-b-que. The weather was perfect and the company grand. The food was delicious too. We visited and played some games. It was a lot of fun.

FHE Bar-B-Que

Tuesday started with our Zone devotional. Most of the day was spent preparing for our Saturday Preparation meeting. At 3:00pm we had our weekly General Conference team meeting. Things are progressing nicely. Several weeks ago, Daniel had told us we couldn't use any additional missionaries to help with General Conference. We told our friends and they were sad. At our meeting we were told that we will be able use missionaries after all. We need to figure out how many and when. Hopefully we will get that information this coming week so we can start scheduling the extra help.

 

Daniel at our Training Meeting

Tuesday evening was our monthly MTC Devotional. This time it was with Elder Uchtdorf. We had a very nice event. I always enjoy listening to Elder and Sister Uchtdorf. We had three languages, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. We always have all 4 of us missionaries work the MTC devotionals even though we don't have that many interpreters. As missionaries we can participate in any event we choose. We usually split the events, however, there are a number that we always do together. The MTC devotional is one of them. 

Aaron getting ready to present

Wednesday was a full day. We started with a PSD All Hands Meeting for our big department. It was a wonderful meeting. I felt the Spirit so strong. We had a musical number by Reed. He is our retiring finance manager. He plays the piano and bore his Testimony through a medley of hymns. It was so beautiful. It really brought the Spirit to the meeting. Next we heard from a delightful sister who shared a wonderful spiritual thought. She works with the Sacred Materials Music team. She told us briefly what they do and then shared one of the tender mercies they get to experience. She said they received a special request to translate a single hymn into Irish. We don't normally translate into Irish. She gave a brief history of the Irish language and how at one point it was basically declared illegal to speak. In recent years it is beginning to be legal again to speak. Anyway, we didn't have any Irish translators so they had to arrange a "team". She, as the team lead, called the area staff over Ireland to see if there was anyone in the area who could translate. They didn't have anyone; however, they gave her several names of people who might be able to help. After many calls she found a 13 year-old-girl who could do it. With the help of her father they made a team. They were trained on how to translate hymns. Within two weeks they had a translation. The next phase was to have a test group sing the hymn. They got a small group of people in the branch (or maybe it was a ward) to sing the hymn, "Faith of our Fathers". What occurred after that was hard to relate in words. She said the feelings the people had as they heard this particular hymn in their native Irish tongue about their their ancestors was indescribable. Needless to say, I don't think there were very many dry eyes in the meeting. The rest of the meeting was no less spiritual. We had a video report for our Asia Pacific area. It was fun to see people that I only email. They talked about their area, which includes New Zealand, Australia, and all the South Pacific Islands. The video was beautiful and the spirit conveyed was wonderful. It ended with a wonderful story from our PSD director.

Sara and Ljiljana

Our afternoon was our weekly team meeting. It almost ended on time, until Daniel finished with a few words that lasted 30 minutes. Hahaha. Consequently I missed my PLUNET meeting again. The rest of the day was spent working on our General Conference Preparation Meeting. So much work we had to do.

Thursday we started with our Zone devotional. More General Conference Preparation Meeting work. The deadline for signing up for the Saturday meeting was September 1st; but of course, we had more RSVPs after September 1st then we had before. Lots of work!

Daniel presenting and
Venky running Zoom

At 1pm we had our monthly Section Meeting. We went to the Conference Center for that meeting. It turned out to be very good. Xenia is the Sacred Materials Team Lead and they were in charge. She was also just made our new Section leader so for a while she will be doing double duty. I am working with her on the new invoicing process. We were supposed to go to the Temple right after our Section meeting, but we had so much work to do before Saturday that we ended up canceling our appointment. We will go next week for sure. Right after the section meeting we had another meeting with Sara and Venky to go over logistics for our Saturday meetings. The Saturday meetings were both In Person as well as Zoom so we needed to arrange the technology for the Zoom meetings. Sara called the IT people to tell them what we wanted. We were just asking for a portable camera that we could use with a large TV monitor in one of the wings of the 26th floor where we were going to hold our meeting. They said they would look into it and we were to call on Friday to see what they found out.

Sister Linford and Sister Petty
setting out credentials, access
badges, and parking passes

So, on Friday I spent much of the day on the phone and in chat and in person with IT people as well as adding more last minute people to our preparation meeting process. Add to this a General Conference Preparation video rehearsal meeting at the same time that I was on the 26th floor with an IT person setting up the video device they brought for us to use on Saturday. It was a little crazy for a while. On top of all this we had to print multiple copies of two different talks in the different languages that were being represented for all the interpreters that were coming, and put them in folders for each language. I think we used about three reams of paper. We finished a little after 5:30 and finally headed home. 

Sister Wilcox at Check-In

Saturday was LONG and hard. We started at 8 am so we could finish our setup. We had the Events team set up all the tables and chairs for the meeting. They also set up a few tables for snacks and check in; however, we decided we needed several more tables for the talks and to hold all the credentials, access badges, and parking passes we needed to pass out. So we were there 2 hours early. So much to do. We had some people arrive very early so we were still working on several things to finish up our set up. At first, everything was working perfectly. But then they started arriving in waves and it was very close to when we needed to start the meeting. We couldn't keep up as we only had two people checking in and 2 or 3 people passing out all the other stuff. So we had everyone write their names down so they could go into the meeting. We added them to our spreadsheet. I then had to give a short presentation in the meeting before getting back to finish checking in everyone. We also had to get all the people that were on the Zoom meeting listed so we could get them paid as well. It gets complicated when they sign into Zoom as "iPhone" or "Luke Skywalker". 😁 And to make matters worse we had 15 or 20 people who were not on the list but just showed up.  We had about 130 people in person for the morning session and almost 60 on our Zoom call. In addition to all that we were tracking how many people wanted to be in the drawing for General Conference tickets. I had to get it all entered into the spreadsheet so I could produce two reports for Curtis. One for In Person people who wanted to be int he drawing and one for Zoom people for the drawing. Curtis was doing the drawing before the end of the meeting and needed all the people. I got it finished barely in time for him to be able to do the drawing. 

Curtis waiting for me to send
him the drawing participants

Between the morning session and the afternoon session we spent time brainstorming on how we could improve the process. The group that was passing out all the stuff decided to create a separate manilla envelop for each person that we had credentials for. That way we could set them out alphabetically and people could help find them on their own. I also want to clean up the records of people we have in the files that are no longer active. If we could thin out the list, it will be much easier. For check in, I decided to put the afternoon session people on a new spreadsheet with a check in time and request for GC tickets drawing. I put a blank line between the languages and printed three copies of the 4 page document. That way I could put all twelve pages out on a table and be able to check in 12 people at a time if it was very busy. The afternoon session went much better. However, part of that was because we had a little less than half the people attend. We will refine the process before General Conference and hopefully have it much easier. We also want to only have the credentials for those that are coming to General Conference so we don't have to sort through EVERYONE we have in the file. We finished at 6 pm after cleanup and some debriefing.

Elder Linford enjoying the meeting

A little after 7, Djeryd and Eva arrived. They were in Salt Lake City for a mission reunion for Eva. It was so much fun to see them and visit with them. I wish I had taken some pictures, but of course I didn't think about it until they left. Hahaha.

Sunday was very nice. Church was good. Our second hour was more like a 5th Sunday forum. President Holmes conducted a joint meeting. We had a wonderful discussion on ministering. We all feel we are already living in Zion. Since most of the missionaries live it 4 different apartment complexes, we are very close and can easily care for one another. It is truly a unique circumstance and we are all very grateful for the experiences we have on our missions and the close, family-like feelings we have for our fellow missionaries. 

Curtis presenting and Venky fixing something. 

Have a FANTASTIC week!

Love 💖Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

 

 

Temple Leadership and Global General Conference Training

Since Monday was the fifth Monday of the month, we didn't have our normal Mission Devotional. Our day was pretty low key. We have a busy month ahead so we stayed busy setting up events. Our Monday evening was a wonderful Family Home Evening. One of our brand new missionary couples gave the lesson. The Ipsons live in Utah; however, they actually come from Gresham. Sister Ipson looked so familiar to me, so when I found out they were originally from Oregon, I asked her if she ever worked at the Temple. Sure enough she did. I then asked if she ever substituted for the Tuesday evening shift and she said yes. She asked if I was the coordinator and I said yes. If was fun making that connection.

Tuesday was a very busy day. We had an event Tuesday morning that the Linfords covered. It was originally supposed to be Tieline only; however, our French SLC team and Sara from the Italian team came to the COB so we provided support. There had been a great deal of confusion about Tuesday morning. We were originally told it was Tieline only. They we were told French would be there. Then we were told French would come Tuesday night. Lastly we were told they be be there for Tuesday morning after all. In actuality, The French team were just as confused as we were. The French sister showed up at almost 8:30 thinking that was the call time. Call time was actually 8:00. Neither of the brethren were there. They thought it was Tuesday night. So after some quick calls the other two brethren showed up. One lives only a few minutes away. The other one arrived about 9:05 after the event started. Needless to say, everyone was frustrated and confused. The interesting thing is we had brought it up to the Supervisor and MLC on Monday because we were still confused. Elder Wilcox didn't know what meal he needed to put the French team on. We were assured they were coming Tuesday morning; however, the French team didn't get the same reassurance. We need to do a better job of communicating to our teams.

Elder Wilcox and I started with our Zone Devotional. We had an initial panic as no one could sign into the Zoom meeting. We weren't sure what was going on. I decided to see if it was the link or Zoom that was having the problem. I started a new meeting and sent the link to our Zone leader. He was able to get it so I immediately sent the link to everyone else in the Zone. We didn't get everyone, but we did get a little more than half of the people we usually get. The Merrills did the devotional. Elder Merrill was a Captain in the Marine Corps 
and shared how the Gospel helped him many times in his military career. After the event, we realized the Zone leaders Zoom link had expired. He sent me a new link and I updated SharePoint with the new link.

Throughout the day, I worked on our continual clean up of our systems. Later in the day we had our General Conference preparation meeting. We are on target to get everything done in time for General Conference. That evening we had the Tuesday evening session of the Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, September 2022. We had about 4 different languages in SLC. The rest of the languages were Tieline. After we ate, they did mic checks and got ready for the event. About the same time, I got prepared to participate in the first session of the October 2022 General Conference Preparation (East) Teams meeting for the areas in the East. This meeting was put on by the Translation team and we were invited to participate. Eunlan gave a great presentation about Interpretation. We fielded lost of questions and it was a good meeting.

Wednesday we had our weekly Team meeting in the afternoon. Daniel brought up the problem we have with some of our Interpreters being unable to take the mandatory annual workforce training. I've been passing the information on to a person that was supposed to be working on the problem. A day or so before, I decided to take the problem to someone else. I have been sent back and forth between the Training team and the Global Services team. No one wanted to responsibility for the problem. Anyway, I finally got someone to actually help me. I had opened a ticket with 5 people on it in hopes more than one reporting the problem would get some attention. The tech that called me back and together we figured out what the problem was. Long story short, there are two active records for those who cannot take the course. He signed in as each of the 5 people and selected the account that had the courses assigned to it. He sent me a new link and had me have each of the 5 sign in and try it again. IT WORKED! Daniel said he gets hundreds of emails throughout the month of those who cannot take the course or those who no longer do work for us. He decided to turn that task over to Sara and me. I was happy to report that the problem is solved for those who could not take the courses. So now when he gets an email, he forwards it to me and I send it to the team who can reset the account so they can take the course. 

The second problem of people who no longer work for us presented a new problem. In the past when Daniel would send those to me, I was told to make sure they were inactive in Event Central, PLUNET and ITI. Most of the time they were already inactive in those systems. However, we found out with the previous problems for not taking the courses, that they are also in ANOTHER system that does not talk to any of our other systems. So now we have to make sure they are deactivated in another database. Sara and I had a meeting with our HR head and came up with a plan. Alan sent me a list of all the people in Daniel's downline. I compared it with our ITI list and sent back all those who are inactive in ITI so they can be deactivated in the HR/Training system. Hopefully, both of these things will drastically drop the number of emails Daniel gets from these two problems. 😊

Later that evening we had the last session of the Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, September 2022. The Linfords covered that event. We actually went home early and had a relaxing evening. We went to bed early, as we had an event very early the next morning.

Thursday started with the 2022 Live Temple Leadership Seminar. We started at 5:00 am. The cafeteria doesn't open until 7:00 am so we had to go off campus for breakfast. Elder Wilcox and Elder Linford picked up breakfast and Sister Linford and I set up the area in the cafeteria so we could feed everyone. We had 42 people for breakfast. We had 11 languages. It was a lot of fun with so many people. Many of the teams we don't see that often. We got to watch most of the event. They had a panel discussion where they answered questions from the Temple leadership. Unfortunately, I missed the last part of the meeting and the talk by Elder Bednar because I had to participate in the second session of the October 2022 General Conference Preparation (West) Teams meeting for the areas in the West. This one was in the morning to accommodate that part of the world. It was a virtual duplicate of the other meeting. It went well. Again, Eunlan did a great job. A few of our team were able to answer questions via chat or actually online. Because of both events, we missed our Zone Devotional which was also at the same time! We were able to leave at 3:00 pm so we could go to the Temple. It was so nice to get away and bask in the Spirit of the Temple.

I spent much of Friday on video conference calls. Most were ad hoc calls to tackle specific things that have come up all week. I think we accomplished a lot of work and made good progress. Unfortunately I didn't get all the physical work done during the day so I had to postpone it until Saturday. As much as I hoped to leave early, we didn't get out until after 5.

Saturday, I worked all day. It was nice that I didn't have all the interruptions I get throughout each day. By 6:00 pm I had finished everything left over from the week. I even put in a little time on HawkSoft. Sara chatted me later in the evening to let me know she added more people to our GC Conference Preparation meeting that we are holding on Saturday, September 10th for all our Interpreters. We are getting a great response and expect to have about 100 people in person and nearly that many on Zoom. We will be holding two session on Saturday. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. Anyway, I had spent much of the day adding the people to our PLUNET order. I told her I would take care of the new ones on Monday. I needed the evening off. We watched Harry Potter #2 Saturday night. We will finish the series this week (I hope.)

Sunday was a good day at Church. We missed Music and the Spoken Word. Well go again next week. We didn't have our monthly Break the Fast dinner at the apartment because we are having a Labor Day Bar-B-Que on Monday. We started a new Sunday School class. This one is taught by a member of our Mission Presidency. We decided to check it out. We loved it!

I hope you have a GREAT week!

Love, 

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox