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