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