MTC Devotional, More RootsTech, GA Wives Luncheon, and GC Preparation Training Meetings

Interpreters at our training meeting

 It has been a very busy week. We started Monday with our Mission Devotional. Since it was the last Monday of the month we had speakers from one of our Zones. We learned about the Lookup Project in one of the Family Search Zones. They have thousands of documents and books that contain valuable information. They will get a request from a patron for some information and they are tasked with doing the research and looking up the information. They can then give it to the patron. They shared some wonderful Spiritual experiences they have had, and even miracles that have occurred as they perform this valuable service.

Ljiljana, one of our MLCs

Later, I gave a demo of the Year at a Glance app for Daniel and Xenia. We finally got authorized to use it, only to find out that we didn't get all the approvals we needed. I found out on Friday, that we never actually paid for it yet so we have been in trial mode. Since the higher ups wanted to cancel the purchase it looks like that project is dead.

I spent the rest of the day working on a spreadsheet for the General Conference Preparation Training meetings that we are having on the 4th and the 18th of March. I am tracking all the RSVP's so we can get them in the system to be paid.

Venky, one of our MLCs

Just as we were getting ready to go home, Daniel called and asked me to create a 3 page PowerPoint slide show to be used in the PSD Translation and Interpretation department meeting the following morning. He needed it no later than 8 PM. So I stayed for a little while longer to get started and then headed home to finish. We had to get ready for Family Home Evening that night. I think it turned out pretty good. The three slides were as follows:

I finished just as FHE was starting. The Ipson's led our discussion that night.

Eunlan, one of our Supervisors

Tuesday started with the Zone Devotional. Because I had so much to do I went early to the Wellness Center and watched the Devotional on my phone while I worked on the elliptical. When that was done we had our GC Preparation meeting. It took nearly an hour. Then we headed to the 26th floor for an hour and a half meeting with the Translation and Interpretation teams. That is where my little slide presentation was. We got to meet all the different teams in our department in one way or another. The first group blew us away by making a very cute video presentation. The rest of us were "boring". hahaha. After the meeting portion we played some fun get to know you games. It was a good time.

Daniel, our Manager

Then we headed to the 27th floor where Venky had made lunch for us. He is from India and he loves to cook. He made some rice and some curry chicken and a few other things. I'm not really crazy about curry, but he made it more mild for us wimps so it was pretty good. Just as we were finishing that, the rest of our section joined us for our section meeting that was supposed to be from 1 to 3 but actually went to 4:30. Needless to day I didn't get a whole lot of work done, but it was a fun day. 

For the "activity" of our section meeting we went to the Church History Library for a tour. I have wanted to do that since we arrived on our mission. It was AWESOME. They gave us the GRAND tour. Like I said, we were supposed to end at 3:00 but they continued for another hour and a half. We saw original documents from the early Church, including an account of the First Vision in Joseph Smith's own hand. He didn't like to write so that is a rare find indeed. They had original copies of some early books in the Church. They took us to the freezer that is kept at -4 degrees where they store vary fragile things photographs and films. People are only allowed to work down there for 30 minutes or less and that is after bundling up in some serious snow gear. We were only in there for about 10 minutes. They gave us heavy coats to put on. It was fascinating. We saw how they restore old documents and books. We were instructed on how they preserve and even restore old audio recordings and films. All of it as incredibly interesting.

Dinner with our MTC Devotional
Interpreters

Elder Wilcox had to leave the tour a little early as he had to go pick up food for the MTC Devotional we were supporting that night. As soon as the tour was done, I headed back to the 27th floor to get things ready for the event. I also jumped on the computer on that floor that I use so I could start on my days work. I continued to work on the GC Spreadsheet. We had nine interpreters for our event and got to eat in the "library" on the 27th floor. I'm not really sure why it is called the "library" but that is the main room we work in to support events. At General Conference time we call it the Command Center. President Ballard spoke and it was a very nice event. His daughter and son-in-law were with him so he had them speak too. His daughter talked about how nice it was growing up in her family and the wonderful things she learned. Her husband had a funny story to tell. He said the first time Elder Ballard called him up to speak shortly after he joined the Ballard family, Elder Ballard asked him to sing a solo. So, he sang a hymn acapella. He didn't tell us his musical background so I don't know if he was a member of the Tabernacle Choir or had some other special skills. He said he was happy to just bare his testimony that night. President Ballard talked about the things he learned as a young missionary and how they have helped him throughout his life.

Our Section at the Church History
Library. We couldn't take any
pictures Inside.

On Wednesday I had a couple of meetings with HawkSoft to learn about a new program I will be using in a few weeks. It was nice to see them on our video call. I spent the rest of the day between the GC spreadsheet and adding missionaries that are going to help us with General Conference to the General Conference schedule I am working on. It keeps me busy. The Linfords supported a couple of RootsTech events in the afternoon.

Thursday I did the whole Wellness Center/Zone Devotional thing again as it worked so well on Tuesday. From there we had another General Conference Preparation meeting. This one focused on our training meeting for Saturday. Daniel decided to do things differently this training meeting so we had a whole new set of talks to prepare. They had picked two talks from the last October 2022 General Conference that he thought were particularly hard. Mainly because the speakers speak fast. That makes her harder for Interpreters to Interpret. He prepared several "games" that would help train the interpreters for what to expect in GC.  As soon as the meeting ended, Elder Wilcox and I supported the GA Wives Luncheon. I was tasked at the meeting to save the two talks in the specific languages we were going to have in attendance at the training meeting. I put them in a folder with the name of the language and the number of copies we needed. Sister Linford then printed all the talks and put them in folders for each of the languages. We had a few languages they didn't have those two talks translated for last conference so Venky reached out to the team to get them translated before Saturday. We got three back. The fourth one is coming on the 18th so they have a little more time. It took us two days to get that all done. I finished saving all the talks about the time the event ended. After that we went to the Temple that evening. I really needed it. 😇

Taking our section through
the secret tunnel to the
Church History Library

On Friday I had three meetings back to back. The middle one was in person in the East Wing of the COB, so I took my laptop there to join the first meeting on Teams before the second one. The only problem was for some reason I could NOT connect to the Internet on my laptop. So, I ended up joining the Teams meeting on my phone. It was a fairly productive meeting...I think. It didn't turn out quite like I had hoped, but I think the solution will help a lot. I was hoping to get APIs set up for PLUNET and Event Central. An API is a way to pass data from one program or system to another when the two systems don't talk to each other. I wanted to automatically get the contract expiration date, status, engagement type, and name from PLUNET into my Microsoft List. I then wanted to automatically the status from my list to update Event Central. Right now all this is done manually by me.

More Interpreters at Training

I was told they could not do the APIs. I was not happy. However, they talked about adding several new fields to Event Central that may help, even though they would have to be manually updated. They won't do anything until after General Conference. (I hope they don't forget.) They will add the contract expiration date, engagement type, and PLUNET ID #. We will use the PLUNET ID# to connect with PLUNET. They will color the expiration dates RED when they are expired and another color when they are a month or less from expiring so people will know they can't use them or they have to work on getting them renewed. The manual part will be updating the expiration dates and/or anything else that may change that comes from PLUNET. But at least this will help a lot. Right now I have to monitor the date and then request that Event Central be deactivated if they have expired. I can't deactivate them myself. Someday, I really hope they will get a system that will do these things automatically. It would say a lot of headaches and rushing around to get people activated because they have been assigned to a job and they are going to or already are expired. 

More Training

SATURDAY! We spent all day at the COB for our GC Preparation Training meetings. I was responsible for checking everyone in. Even though we asked for everyone to RSVP and tell us what session they were going to attend and if it was going to be in-person or on Zoom, we had tons of people who never RSVP'd as well as a ton more that either didn't tell us which session or changed the one they told us and showed up in-person or on Zoom. It was a little crazy. Then when the zoom portion of the meeting ended and the interpreters went to the booths for the live training, I was told I needed to do some kind of random "drawing" for conference tickets for those in attendance. Curtis normally does that but he was home sick. So I called him and asked what he did. He basically said he just used a random number generator and applied it to the list of attendees. So I added a new page to my spreadsheet and set up the "ticket drawing". I had it done by the time the live training was done so Daniel was able to read the names of the winners. I then got the requested session they wanted and told them they would be emailed their electronic tickets sometime in the near future. After I got home I worked on HawkSoft for about an hour before finally relaxing for awhile. After the first session, the team went to the 27th floor library for lunch. It was Sister Linford's birthday so we tried to make it fun for her when we ate lunch. It was Sister Linford's birthday so we tried to make it fun for her when we ate lunch. Then we did the whole thing all over again with another group of Interpreters for the afternoon session.

More Interpreters at training

Sunday started with my Emotional Resilience Class. It was great, as usual. President Faerber was not feeling good today so I got to to help with the technology in class. We had our Fast and Testimony meeting for Church. The testimonies were inspirational, especially the ones they shared about experiences at Roots Tech.  It was followed by a nice Sunday School lesson. We talked about the miracles of Jesus Christ and how we can recognize them in our own life.  And lastly we had our wonderful Break the Fast dinner with our apartment floor. We have several new missionary couples on our floor so it was nice to meet them. We decided to do something different this time and instead of just doing a potluck we decided to do Hawaiian Haystacks and everyone brought something to put on them. It made be think of Christmas Eve as that is our traditional Christmas Eve dinner every year with the family. I love it.

My Emotional Resilience Class

We have some very busy weeks ahead of us from now until General Conference which occurs on April 1st and 2nd. On Friday, I was trained on how to process contracts because we are very behind in getting these all caught up to date. The only problem is I didn't have authority for any of the programs I will need to use. By the end of the day I got authority for two out of the three programs. I can't begin to help until I have all three programs. I hope I get it soon or I won't be much help for them before General Conference.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and stay warm. Perhaps we can look forward to spring in a few weeks. Maybe then we can all thaw out. 🤣

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox