Tours, Tours, and More Tours, Events, and General Conference Preparation Meeting

Monday morning started with the Mission Devotional with speakers from our Mission. We had 4 sisters talk about the benefits of the Leadership Pattern Journey. The mission is getting ready to begin a new series and they wanted the missionaries to be aware of just what it is. In the past, the course was only available to Church Employees. Just before we got here they opened it up to missionaries, but it was not widely publicized. Over the last year, they have encouraged all missionaries to take the course, even though most are not in leadership positions. Everyone is a leader in some way, even if it is only in our families. This course it wonderful for ANYONE. I am hoping in the near future it will be made available to the whole Church.

I didn't think my week could get much busier, but I was wrong. I spent most of the week working on Contracts. That was to be expected. I also worked on the report I will need after General Conference that will report all the hours the interpreters will work for Conference. We pay for 3 hours per session and there are a total of 5 sessions. That means some interpreters who work all 5 sessions will be paid up to 15 hours, while others will only be paid 3 hours. My report tracks all the sessions they are assigned and totals up the hours they should work. Then after conference, we have to compare that with our check-in report to make sure they were actually here and worked all their sessions. The other tricky thing I have to do with my report is look up the name we get from Event Central that comes from the Interpreter report we run over the General Conference event. It lists all the interpreters and all the talks they give and the sessions those talks are in. I consolidate that by interpreter and session so we only record them once in PLUNET to get paid. We total up the sessions to determine payment. However, the name is PLUNET is usually not exactly the same name as in Event Central. So, my report compares the Event Central name with my Microsoft List and grabs the PLUNET name from that list and creates a report with that name and the total hours for Elder Linford to use to update the PLUNET order. So much easier than trying to go through that one session at a time. 

Anyway, late Friday afternoon I was trying to finish up the report and found a problem that has been driving me crazy. I have spent countless hours over the last year trying to get all 2000 plus records in sync so there is a match between Event Central and PLUNET. I have both names in my list and I run a comparison every week or so to make sure those names stay in sync. Well, I ran my "final" test report Friday afternoon and for the most part everything looked good. I expected to see a few people who were on the report but did not have a match in PLUNET. As I started researching why so many were missing I discovered a HUGE problem. I get a report out of Event Central that I use to put the Event Central names in my Microsoft List. I also get a report out of PLUNET that I put in my list. Apparently, the Interpreter Report that we get out of Event Central that is just for a specific event does NOT always use the Event Central name that I get when I get the Event Central report of all interpreters. For example, there were several names that looked like they were a match until I noticed there was an extra space in the name from the Interpreter Report for the event. At first I thought I had the name wrong in my Microsoft list so I changed it. Then I came across a name that I knew I had right. This was one of our Mandarin interpreters. In the master Event Central list it shows his name followed by several Chinese characters. In the Interpreter Report for General Conference the Chinese characters were missing. I went to Event Central and pulled up the interpreter to see if his name had changed, but the Chinese characters were still there. That is when I realized that the Interpreter Report for General Conference was using names that were NOT necessarily the same as what is in the master Event Central database. AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!! I will deal with that on Monday.

Anyway, back to last Monday. I started my Tours for the Missionaries that will be helping us with General Conference. I am doing 2 tours (morning and afternoon) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, plus 1 tour on Thursday morning. Tuesdays we have too many meetings to do tours. It is a lot of fun. It gives the missionaries a chance to see where they will be working. I tell them about the jobs they will be doing and where they will go. It also gives me a chance to get to know them a little before General Conference.

Monday evening we had Family Home Evening. It was our turn to lead the discussion. Since most of these missionaries in our group were not here early in our mission, I decided to resurrect my "Lost in the Forest" presentation. This was two fold. One, no one had seen it before and two, I didn't have time to throw anything else together. Anyway, it all worked out and we had a great time. The Burgoynes couldn't make it and I knew Sister Burgoyne wanted to see it, so we made a special trip to their apartment on Wednesday to have another personal FHE with them. We had a great time. We love them so much.

Guatemala City

Tuesday was our Zone Devotional, Contracts, General Conference Preparation meeting, more Contracts, Team meeting, and more contracts. The Linfords had the MTC Devotional with Elder Cook. We went home and I think I worked for a while after I got home. We did get to watch a little TV.

Wednesday I missed the Wellness Center because we had an Event in the morning. This was a last minute event. We have a PSD All Hands meeting once a quarter and it has been on our calendar for a while now. On Tuesday we got a request for Spanish interpreters for the PDS All Hands meeting. It was originating from Guatemala so nearly everyone was speaking Spanish. We brought in three speakers to interpret from Spanish to English, so that was a treat to actually get to hear our Interpreters. Elder Wilcox and I covered the PSD All Hands - Guatemala event. I was setting up Laptops that we will use for General Conference during the meeting. I still have several more to set up. We use them for Check-in. Right after the meeting I had a tour and of course more contracts. Another tour in the afternoon. 

Thursday I tried to get on the Zone Devotional but our link had changed. It was a misunderstanding. The "new" link they sent out was for the Mission Devotionals, but I accidently put it on the Zone Devotionals. Oooopppppsssss. I missed the devotional, but got it all straightened out later that morning. I had lots of Contracts, plus other issues that I was dealing with that day. I gave one tour in the morning. A little before noon, I got a text from our MTC Trainers. Since we did online MTC training we never actually met our trainers in person. Well, we had arranged to have lunch together. When Elder Bills sent the invitation he said Thursday, but gave me Friday's date. I didn't pay attention to the day but just scheduled it based on the DATE. I was surprised when I got the text saying they were running a little late and would be there in about 20 minutes. Other than being swamped with contracts, we didn't have anything else scheduled. So I acknowledged the text and we met them for lunch. We had a WONDERFUL visit with them and it was so fun to finally meet in person. After lunch we gave them a tour of where we work. They got to meet the Linfords, Venky, and Eunlan, who were all in the office. After about two plus hours, I had to excuse myself so I could get SOME contacts done. We were supposed to go to the Temple, but Steve wasn't feeling well so he went home and I stayed to finish up what I was working on. We will go next week. 

I actually thought we would go home little early on Friday. The Linfords did the Mission Leader Webinar - Missionary Medical event. Elder Wilcox was feeling much better. He headed to the dentist at 8 and dropped me off so I could go to the Wellness Center before starting work. I had two tours that day. I finished all the contracts I had by the time of my last tour. Of course that didn't stop people from asking me to please make so-and-so active so they could participate in the General Conference Preparation meeting on Saturday. I told them I can't do anything unless they return their signed contract. They would tell me that the interpreter told them they returned it so I should be able to process it. I would tell them it wasn't in the inbox or the electronic system so I couldn't process it. This went back and forth A LOT. Anyway, after the tour I was ready to go home, but Elder Wilcox was finishing up on a few things so I thought I would take a look at my hours report. That is when I discovered the problem mentioned previously. We ended up staying until 6:30. 

Saturday was an extremely long day. We started very early so we could setup for our General Conference Preparation meeting. We held our first meeting on March 4th. I spent nearly the entire day on the check-in desk. The training went well. Daniel led the training. He had some creative exercises that were both fun and extremely challenging. For example, they had to sing a song in their own language while at the same time write the alphabet backwards. Once the session started, I had to "check-in" all the Zoom recipients so that can get paid for "attending". That was a challenge for a few that use screwy user names when they sign in. One used Japanese characters. I kept asking the person what their name was in the chat but they weren't answering. Finally one of the MLCs figured out how to put the name in a translator and determined what the name was so I could check them in. Once everyone was checked in, I created a "random" drawing and selected the top 25 people who will be the winners of 2 tickets to General Conference.

After the first session, we went to the 27th floor to have a "birthday" lunch for Curtis. Sister Linford's birthday was March 4th, so we celebrated her birthday at that meeting. Curtis's birthday is March 8th, so we decided to celebrate on the 18th at our meeting when we would all be together. As it turned out, Curtis was sick on March 4th so he missed Sister Linford's celebration. We all signed the card I had made and he showed up on March 8th for a Team meeting so we gave him his card then. We were all set to celebrate during lunch on the 18th. Elder Wilcox ordered a birthday cake too. Well, Curtis was no where to be found. Turned out, he was sick again. So we called him and sang to him. We took too pictures. One of Jarod eating Curtis's lunch and the other of his Birthday Cake. Curtis is our Joseph Smith guy and a couple of months ago he acquired a locket very similar to the one the Joseph Smith daguerreotype is in. That is why Elder Wilcox put "Locket Man" on his cake. We missed him and hopes he feels better very soon. 

The second session went well. Elder Linford started cleaning up our signs and stuff during the session so we wouldn't have as much to clean up after the meeting. We ended up being the last ones to leave as I had to stay until all the interpreters left so I could record the tickets they wanted if they were winners. We got home about 5:30. I did some HawkSoft work for about an hour. I also started getting responses from interpreters that were on Zoom and responded to my email. Lastly, I also finished up my preparation for the Emotional Resilience class. President and Sister Faerber were out of town headed back to Salt Lake Sunday morning. Sister Faerber asked if I could be prepared to lead the class if they were late. So, I wanted to make sure I knew what the lesson was about. Finally, about 8:00 we settled down to watch a few shows before bed. About that time we got a message from Eunlan telling us that the event we were planning on supporting Sunday evening was going to be done onsite instead of at the Church Office Building. We were a little disappointed because our Mission President and his wife are speakers at that meeting. They have a 10 minute slot. We were also a little relieved since we hadn't had a day off in a while.

Sunday morning I got up to do my scripture study as well as start on the blog. At 10:30 I headed to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for my Emotional Resilience class. As we got closer to the beginning of class, the Faerbers hadn't shown up. I texted Sister Faerber to see if they were going to make in time. She asked me to go ahead and start the class. They arrived about 20 minutes after we started and I was happy to turn it over to them, but they told me to continue. I'm so glad I reviewed the module the night before. The class went well. We have great people in our class and the discussions are always so good. This was our last class of the course. It has been so good for me as well as the others in the class. 

Our Sacrament and Sunday School went good as well. One of the speakers is leaving their mission soon. Her husband is in our Branch Leadership. So today they reorganized our Branch Leadership by releasing everyone and calling 4 new brethren. Such is the nature of a Mission. Leadership changes every several months. They don't call them a presidency, as it isn't officially a branch. It is a mission assignment and most assignments only last a few months. Part of that reason is they have all their normal mission responsibilities to do so this added responsibility won't be so overwhelming if it is only for a few months.

After Church, the Relief Society wanted to celebrate the Relief Society birthday. They organized a wonderful social in the lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building with treats and little presents. Since we didn't want the Brethren hanging around or coming in bothering the Sisters, the Relief Society Leadership decided to organize a social for the Elders in another room. They got treats too. Such fun.

We have another very busy week ahead. We have two weeks until General Conference. I have another 7 tours scheduled for next week. We have more events coming and of course more Contracts. 

I hope you have a WONDERFUL week!

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox