Senior Missionary Devotional, the Haynies, and Progress with my List

Monday morning started with our weekly Mission Devotional. We heard from missionaries in our Training Zone and the Office Zone. Each month, on the 4th Monday of the month we hear from one of our Zones. We have 13 different Zones in our mission. So, one month we get to hear from 2 Zones. I think our Zone will be reporting either December or January.

Monday evening we had a very special Family Home Evening at the home of President and Sister Holmes. They have a gorgeous home in Farmington. Since the weather has cooled down, we met inside. It was so much fun. We had a light supper of good food and great company. Then we all went to their beautiful basement for our discussion. We started by learning some things about some of our new missionaries in our Zone. I am always so very impressed with the people we get to work with. We laughed a lot and were amazed a lot. President Holmes finally turned to the topic at hand. He read from 3 Nephi 19. This is the day after the Nephites had just spent with the Savior. They all gathered back together to await the return of the Savior and the twelve disciples divided the people into twelve bodies so they could teach again what the Savior had taught the day before as many more people had joined the group throughout the night. 

After they taught the multitude they caused them to kneel down and pray unto the Father in the name of Jesus. In verse 9 it says: "And they did pray for that which they most desired; and they desired that the Holy Ghost should be given unto them." President Holmes asked why they most desired that the Holy Ghost should be given unto them. Why didn't they desire that Jesus should come to them? We discussed this for quite sometime and realized the importance of having the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost to be with us individually ALWAYS. The Holy Ghost is a member of the Godhead and the only member who can be with us always. We pray for that each week when we partake of the Sacrament. That is the promised blessing we have been given if we keep His commandments. This gift of the Holy Ghost, President Wilford Woodruff taught, “is the greatest gift that can be bestowed upon man” (Deseret Weekly, Apr. 6, 1889, 451). It was a wonderful discussion and has caused me to pray more that I may seek and recognize what I need to do to truly receive this great gift into my life. I now ask, "what lack I yet" to determine what I must do to change into the person Heavenly Father has in store for me. I know He loves me for who I am right now, no matter what. But, I also know I can be so much more and He wants that for me. So, I need to know what I must do to obtain that great life He has in store for me.

We didn't have any events that we needed to support this week. We had 7 different events during the week, but all were either Language Coaching, on Zoom, or in the office of a General Authority. We did have one event on Sunday evening that I'll talk about later. Consequently, we were able to leave on time or even early nearly everyday. 😊

I made quite a bit of progress on my Microsoft List for our Interpreter Resources. With the help of Jeff, one of the tech guys I work with from time to time, we automated changing the status from Active to Inactive when the contract expiration date is reached. We also automated changing it from Inactive to Active when a new contract expiration date is entered.

The next thing I wanted to automate was changing the color of the contract expiration date. I wanted it to turn kind of a pinkish color highlight when it expired. I wanted it to turn a lavender highlight when it will expire within the next 30 days, and a bluish highlight when it will expire within the next 60 days. There are some automatic rules you can set that will change the color so setting it to the pink highlight was super easy. However, when I tried to set a rule for 30 days in the future I ran into a problem. I could set the date to BETWEEN today and a FIXED date. That fixed date did not move automatically. There was nothing that let me choose 30 days or 60 days. It had to be an actual date. Of course that meant when that date passed, the rule was no longer in effect. This, of course, was not acceptable. Jeff was going to help me with it; but, we couldn't seem to meet again after we did the other two problem.

So, I did some research on my own and almost got it right. I found a simple formula in Google to do one of the things I wanted. I then decided to try a nested IF statement to see if I could add the other two conditions. My first couple of attempts didn't work because I didn't know the syntax of JSON very well. So, after sleeping on it, praying about it, and looking at my formula in the "advanced" format window, I finally figured out how to fix it. Now, it works like a charm. I am so happy that with the help of the Holy Ghost I was able figure it out. 

I have several more important things I need to do to make it fully functional for what we need. We are trying to get away from having to keep track of several databases. If I can link PLUNET with my list and Event Central with my list and ITI with my list, then all we have to do is maintain my list! It won't be easy, but I do hope it will be doable.

Tuesday morning we had our Zone Devotional. It was really good. We left early so we could go to the Temple with the Linfords. We stopped for ice cream cones on our way home. It is always nice to leave the world behind when we enter the doors of the Temple and look into the eternities. I love the Temple and am so grateful we have so many Temples close to us.

Wednesday we had a weekly team meeting. Daniel and Curtis were out on vacation, but we had a great meeting anyway. We did end on time for a change. Hahaha. I think we got out by 5 that night.

Thursday started with another great Zone Devotional. Love seeing members of our zone twice a week. Other zones in the mission have In-Person Zone Devotionals because they are all in the same place. Because our Zone is so scattered all over the mission we have to do Zoom meetings for our devotionals. We have people in at least 4 different buildings and on multiple floors in each of those buildings. We have several groups in the Church Office Building. We have the Prison Ministry in the Relief Society Building, We have some several blocks away at Ensign College. There may be some other places as well, but I can't think of them right now. I'm glad we have so many from our zone in our apartment building. We get to see them all the time.

We left work about 2:15 on Thursday to go to Steve's orthopedic appointment. It had been postponed twice because his doctor was sick. Anyway, he had a good appointment. He has arthritis in both knees which is why they hurt. They also checked his ankles and he has some arthritis there as well. They sent him to physical therapy where they gave him some exercises to do everyday and will check back in two weeks to see how he is doing. He has a follow up appointment in January with the doctor to see if the physical therapy is working or if they will need to try shots. Since I do therapy for my hip we can encourage each other to do it together. It will help both of us. lol  After the doctor appointment we took the car in for an oil change and then did some shopping on the way home. 

Friday, Steve had his first physical therapy appointment. I finished up all but one of the projects I was working on. I still hadn't figured out the color coding for the dates at that point. So, when 4 o'clock rolled around we all left for the day.

Saturday I worked for about an hour on HawkSoft stuff. I also worked for a little while on the color coding for the dates. I got pretty far, but had an error in my formula. We went to visit Vicki and Holly. Vicki is doing pretty good. She has got out a bit more and that is good. She went to lunch with her sister, niece, and daughter for her sister's birthday. She said that was fun and something she has not done in a very long time. She is concentrating on getting her health better so she can go out even more. She lives with Holly so that is really good. She is not alone and has family near all the time. Holly has been busy again, building her business back up. She had to slow way down to help take care of her dad and to take Vicki back and forth to the hospital as Vicki couldn't drive for awhile. Her business is picking back up so she is very busy. She does beautiful art work. She paints a lot of store front windows for the holidays. That is how she started when she was a teenager. She does a lot more now, but she still has some of her old clients she still paints for. We are very much enjoying Vicki's family and look forward to spending time with them in the future.

Sunday was wonderful as usual. After my prayers the night before and a good night's sleep, I awoke with an idea to fix my color coding format for the contract expiration dates. It worked perfectly. I knew exactly what to do. I love it when I'm in tune with the Holy Ghost. All things are spiritual to the Lord. Over the years, I have received lots of help with my programming problems. Every time when I humble myself and pray about my problem I get the answer. When I try and figure it out on my own, it takes much longer and I have many more trials and errors. I'm going start with prayer about what I need to do first and see if things move along quicker than usual. 

Our meetings were great. We spent the second hour discussing two talks President Holmes asked us to study. Both are outstanding. They are:

Sharon Eubank – By Unity of Feeling we Obtain Power with God  https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2020/10/31eubank?lang=eng

Elder Bednar – The Character of Christ https://www2.byui.edu/presentations/transcripts/religionsymposium/2003_01_25_bednar.htm

Later that evening we got to support an event called "North America Southwest Area Senior Missionary Devotional". The added blessing of this event was the Haynies got to come. We were supposed to meet for lunch and a tour on Friday, but one their grandchildren they were babysitting was up all night sick, so they had to cancel. They are leaving Tuesday morning so we tried to figure out the best time we could get together. I asked Aaron, our supervisor, if we could invite them to our event...especially since they are Senior Service Missionaries and this was a Senior Missionary Devotional. Aaron said he would love to have them. It was even better when I told Aaron they were both High School Spanish teachers and for our event we are only doing Spanish. So they got to get a tour and hang out with some of our Spanish Interpreters for dinner, and then watch what they do in action. They even got to sit outside the Spanish booth and listen to the Spanish Interpreters. So fun!

We hope you have a Wonderful Week! Enjoy the fall colors and cooler weather.

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox