Mission Devotional, Zone Tour, TIPS Devotional, Welfare Square, Bountiful Temple, and Old Testament Tabernacle

Looking at the title, I guess it was a good thing we didn't have many events this week. It was very busy with other things. 

Monday morning started with our Mission Zone Devotional in the COB Auditorium. Our Zone was featured. Our Zone Leader, Elder Johnson started with a short slide show presentation with pictures of several of of the departments in our Zone and the missionaries who serve there. We have 13 different departments or sections. He selected 4 to be represented. Some of our sections are so sacred, the missionaries have to sign a non-disclosure document that says they will not talk to anyone about what they do. They did not give a presentation in our devotional. 

Elder Johnson also shared a brief bit about where he and Sister Johnson work in the Self-Reliance section. In addition to Elder Johnson, Elder Ure talked about what they do at Ensign College. He shared a few stories from some students there. Elder Ricks talked about his work in the Prison Ministry. He shared some excepts of the many letters they receive from the prisoners and how the Gospel is changing their lives. I especially loved the ones that said they started to pray again and they could feel the love of the Savior and Heavenly Father for them. They know they are not forgotten. Sister Matson works in the Missionary Department. She helps couples and senior Sisters get through the process of actually getting on their missions. There can be delays for numerous reasons and she helps them deal with that. Sometimes they request the delay, other times a health issue may delay it for them. In our case it was COVID. She started her talk with how she was delayed due to a medical issue that needed to be taken care of before she could serve. She said she wondered "why me" when all she wanted to do was serve her mission. She had already sold her house and had no where to live for the 6 to 8 weeks it took to resolve her issue. When she got out of the hospital a friend let her stay with them while she recovered and she finally got on her mission. When she found out where she would be working, she realized, at least in part, why she had to go through what she did before she came. She understands very well what the people she works with are feeling and how best to serve them.

I was the concluding speaker, giving a brief description of what we do. I started by "correcting" President Faerber when he called us the Headquarters Support Services (HSS) Zone and said we think of ourselves as the Headquarters SECRET Services Zone because no one know what we do. As I said above, there are some departments that can't even SAY what they do. I went on to share some statistics of our section such as how many events we do, how many interpreters we have, and how many languages we interpret. I shared some of the responsibilities we do such as, obtaining access badges, parking passes, and feeding them. I mentioned the Linfords do the work to get them paid. I mentioned the best part of our job is visiting with the Interpreters and learning their stories. I concluded by sharing a spiritual experience one of our Interpreter's had when he was STRONGLY prompted to turn into the Church Office Building one day instead of going home to do his Zoom call. The result of following that prompting was he was asked to go to Elder Renlund's office to assist in a Setting Apart of a new Mission Leader Couple. That was cool enough, but in the middle of the Setting Apart, they all experienced a very profound feeling that brought tears to everyone's eyes. After the the Amen had been said, Elder Renlund asked if they all felt that. No one could speak, so they just nodded. He then told them that they felt the presence of the Savior in the room. Hearing stories like that is priceless. I love our Mission.

After the Devotional and the Wellness Center, I spent much of the day working with Elder Linford on Invoices that had been created but not paid yet. 

We had a wonderful Family Home Evening with the Ipsons in charge. We talked about how Jesus taught the people and how we receive His word today. We briefly talked about General Conference as evidence of receiving His word. We were then tasked to write our own Parable. They presented a tray of items as ideas to get us started. Of course we could pick any topic we wanted. Our parable was about "the mouse caught in the trap". There were some funny parables, but all had a good message and we had a lot of fun.

Tuesday I went to the Wellness Center and watched our Zone Devotional at the same time. Around 10 AM Elder Wilcox and I joined Elder and Sister Johnson and Elder and Sister Allen on a Zone Tour. The Johnsons were showing the Allens around as their assignment is to promote the Headquarters Mission. It is one of the best kept secrets in the Church. There are so many wonderful opportunities to serve here and most people don't know anything about it. So they are visiting each of the Zones to learn a bit about what they do, so they can update the Church's Website with information about the different places to serve. Since I was writing the Zone History, I asked if I could tag along and hopefully see some of the sections that had not sent anything to me yet. Elder Wilcox decided to tag along too. We didn't see all 13 sections, but we did see a bunch. It was nice to see where people work and hear a bit about what they do. There were a couple we could only see the closed door where they work because they work in a locked room. But all in all it was a fun experience. I was able to complete my Zone History and get it sent in by Thursday.

I spent much of the day reviewing the General Conference Preparation Meeting PLUNET order as a few things came up when I was working on Invoices with Elder Linford the day before. At 2:00 we had our Team Meeting. 

At the end of the day, we had a TIPS Devotional on the 26th Floor. TIPS stands for "Tuesday In-Person Social" that our mission (mostly our Zone) started just after COVID was opening up again. Most missionaries had been working in their apartments and never saw anyone so finally getting to have in-person get togethers was wonderful. Anyway, we had several missionaries who wanted to hear more about Curtis's research on the Joseph Smith Daguerreotype, so we set up a Devotional for them. We had around 50ish people show up. Curtis did a great job. There were lots of questions after, and once again I learned something new. Every time I hear his presentation I get something new out of it. He ended his presentation by sharing his comparison of Elder Wilcox and Joseph Smith and he showed his "aged" Joseph with Elder Wilcox's features. Everyone got a kick out of that.

Wednesday was the only event we had and the Linfords did that one. It was the GA Wives Luncheon and Social. At 1:30 our Section meeting was a tour of Welfare Square. Several of us rode in a van with Aaron. Two Sister Missionaries gave us a great tour for all the different buildings on Welfare Square. We saw the Bishop's Storehouse, Employment Center, Dairy, Warehouse, Deseret Industries, and more. It was very interesting.

Thursday, after the Zone Devotional, I worked on my Power Apps for my Microsoft Lists. I am just about done with the complete rework that I have been working on. This will make it more flexible for using the same master list for all our teams, Interpretation, Translation, and Sacred Materials. The only MAJOR problem with the whole thing is I can't automate the update of any of the fields from PLUNET. It still has to be done manually. They (IT) will not give me an API that will allow me to access the data I need to automate the field updates. With my years of doing computer programming, that does not make sense to me and is very frustrating. After work we went to the Bountiful Temple to do Sealings and an Endowment. I'm glad it is open again.

Friday was more of the same. I worked on Power Apps. At 12:30 I headed to the 27th floor to prepare for my Emotional Resilience class. We have such wonderful people in the class. Everyone participates in the discussion. I haven't seen anyone hold back and not contribute. It is great as the more the individuals participate, the more they will get out of the class. I highly recommend taking this class to anyone and everyone. Even if you feel you don't really need it, the benefits will be GREAT!

Friday evening we headed toward the University to tour the traveling replica of the Tabernacle of Moses. We saw it last year in Bountiful and decided it was worth seeing again. We really enjoyed it again. The weather was gorgeous. The presenters were great. We will attend the fireside next Tuesday to finish up the experience.

Saturday was the "chillest" day ever! I don't think we did anything except hang out at home. Elder Wilcox did grocery shopping  and I did work on some Scripture Study. We called Montana up to sing Happy Birthday to him. I can't believe he is 24. My grandkids are supposed to stay "KIDS". lol They are all growing up so fast. 

The weather has been so nice this week. We even hit 80 degrees one day. I'm not ready for Summer yet. We haven't even had Spring! The flowers are blooming and everything is so beautiful. I love it.

Sunday, was a beautiful day and Church was very nice. The talks were great and we had a combined meeting for the second hour. President Holmes presented an important announcement that effects everyone in our mission. About five months ago, the mission joined a program called HomeTown. Basically, it encouraged any missionaries that wanted to be assigned to various wards in need throughout the Salt Lake Valley to assist the ward in anyway they can. Today, President Holmes announced that the entire mission was going to be assigned to 15 or more different wards in the Salt Lake Valley. At least 15 missionaries will be assigned to each ward. Our assignments are simple as they don't want to overwhelm us when we all have very busy and taxing work to do throughout the week. So, we will attend the Sunday Meetings and assist in whatever they ask us to do during the 2 hour block, such as, teach Sunday School, Young Women, Priesthood, or Relief Society. We may give talks and help out in many other ways that may arise. There are also 8 to 10 Service Missionaries that are assigned to each ward as well, and they are assigned to work up to 20 hours a week helping to reactivate and minister to the members. Their only assignment is to help the Wards.

It was kind of a shock at first. We LOVE our branch and meeting together each week. We feel it is our own little Zion. However, we were told this has been in the works for over a year now. Elder Christofferson is the Apostle in charge. They even talked to President and Sister Holmes about it last June when they were at the New Mission Leader Training at the MTC in Provo. The Lord's hand is in this and the timing for it is just as it should be. I'm actually pretty excited by the change as it will give us an opportunity to meet more people and have more "missionary" type activities. They figure they will have everyone assigned by May 21st...or the 28th at the latest.

Have a Wonderful Week and enjoy the GREAT weather (hopefully you have great weather where you are too!😇).

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

New Manager, Zone History, and Emotional Resilience Class

President Nelson in the Auditorium in Nov. 2022

Construction has moved to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. As a consequence we have been booted out of the Chapel for our Mission Devotionals. We still get to have Church in the Chapel as the construction workers don't work on Sunday. We had a wonderful Mission Devotional Monday morning in the Auditorium on the main floor in the east wing of the COB. We have our Publishing Services Department (PSD) meetings there once a quarter. It is a very nice auditorium. Many of the events that we support are also held in that auditorium. President Nelson has spoken at the pulpit in that auditorium. Before they announced the first speaker for our devotional, they pointed out that many of the General Authorities have spoken at that podium.  Then he said; "No Pressure." All the talks at the Devotional were very good.

After the devotional I headed to the Wellness Center to exercise. As soon as I walked into the gym, I got a Team message inviting our team to a video conference call. I clicked to join the call and saw our supervisors. As soon as they saw me, Curtis jumped in and said, "Oh Sister Wilcox, we are not ready for you yet." So, I quickly jumped off the call and went to exercise, expecting them to call me back. I finished my exercise and went to my office. When I got there I could tell that the Linfords and Elder Wilcox were all on the call and I was told to join. When I did, Curtis was still on the call. All the others had left. Two of the MLCs and all the Missionaries had joined Curtis. He proceed to tell me the news that he had already shared with the others. Daniel, our manager, was appointed to a new position called Global Interpretation Trainer. He would report to a completely different Section. 

Baptiste Prevot 
Our New Manager

Our new manager is our very own Baptiste Prevot. Baptiste was one of the Supervisors when we started on our mission. He was the one who called us the day after we received our call to tell us all about what we were going to do. He was our mentor and above all our very good friend. We LOVE Baptiste. A little over a year ago he was abruptly moved to the Translation team and we were given a member of that team in a trade. No real explanation, only they wanted to broaden their experiences. Now, Baptiste is back and our Manager. We are very happy. The change took effect immediately. The rest of the week was filled with lots of talk. We will miss Daniel, but we couldn't be happier that we have Baptiste back. When we first started our mission, Baptiste ran the team much of the time so we know he will do a GREAT job.  

We had a wonderful Family Home Evening. Elder and Sister Farnsworth were in charge and we played a fun game to help stimulate ideas for writing down our family history. It brought a lot of laughs and interesting stories.

Tuesday started with a Happy Birthday text to Season. Then I went to the Wellness Center to workout. Near the end of my workout I joined our Zone Devotional on my cell phone as I headed upstairs to join the Zoom call on my computer. I was interrupted several times by Baptiste as he was trying to get his temporary desk set up and needed my help. He has a temporary desk because Daniel is on vacation this week in Texas running the Memorial Hermann Ironman and won't be back until sometime next week. He has been working so hard for months. He took a total of time of 15:35:43 to finish the race that consisted of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and a 26.2 mile run. He started at 7:13:10 AM and finished at 10:48:53 PM. I can't imagine how hard that was.

I made a Thank You card for Daniel for his service as our manager and a Birthday Card for Baptiste as his birthday was on the 19th. Everyone but Ljiljana came into the office so they were all able to sign the cards in person. I had Ljiljana send me her written note for both cards. I found a program that would strip out the background so only the writing would show and I pasted it into both cards. It worked pretty slick. Then I printed the cards for the others to sign. A little later, Eunlan stopped by Elder Wilcox's desk and asked if he could get dinner for the second part of our HRD event from the week before. Last week, the Samoan team was supposed to do tieline while we had the other four languages in the COB. They had problems so we didn't get them recorded. So the Salt Lake City Samoan team was going to do the recording on Tuesday night, but Ljiljana couldn't get any SLC members to work it. We needed two brothers. It was turned back to the tieline team so we didn't think we had anything to do. Eunlan was coming in for the tieline team to try again and asked for dinner for her and Eric, the engineer. Then she said she wanted us to be there too, to support her. lol So Elder Wilcox got everyone's order for Crown Burger for dinner.

We had our Team meeting at 2:00. We had a lot to talk about so our meeting went over. I don't think that will be the norm with Baptiste, but there was much to discuss on Tuesday. After the meeting, Elder Wilcox walked home to pick up the car so he could pick up dinner later. We got to hang out with Eunlan and Eric all evening. It was fun. After we got home we called Season so we could sing Happy Birthday to him. We had a very nice call. I love my family so much.

Wednesday morning, while I was studying my scriptures at home before heading into the office, Baptiste saw I was active in Teams and asked if I was already in the office. I told him I was home and he asked if I could see him when I got in. He needed me to finish setting up his laptop with all the programs he will need in his new position. He had to leave at 9:30 AM so he only came in so I could help set up his laptop. 

We had a fairly low key day with no other events and not much in the works. I worked on a few things like gearing up for my Emotional Resilience Class that was happening on Friday. I also worked a bit on my PowerApp for my list. And I started work on the Zone History I have been asked to compile. That one is a little more challenging. We have 13 Zones in our Mission. 12 of the 13 Zones are made up of only one team. There is the Church History Library Zone and the Discovery Zone and the Church History Museum Zone and Special Projects Zone, several different Family Search Zones (European, Canadian, etc.), and other Zones that I don't know anything about. There are many people in each of those Zones. We are the Headquarters Support Services Zone and we are actually made up of 12 different departments. Each department has only a few people it it. Our departments include:

• Ensign College
  
• Missionary Department
• ICS Temple
• Welfare/Self-Reliance
  
• Specialist Operations
• Temple
• Farmland Reserve
• Global Interpretation
• Military Relations
• Office of General Council
• Prison Ministry
• Service Mission Office

It is impossible for me to know what goes on in each department so I have been trying to get someone from each department to send me a little write up. It has taken forever, but now that I have begged and told them I have to turn it in soon (I thought it was last Friday, but found out it is NEXT Friday) they are sending it in. I only have a few missing at this point. I'm hoping to get the rest of them filled in by next Tuesday as I will be joining a little tour with our Zone Leaders to visit all the different departments in our Zone for a Missionary Couple who is tasked with promoting Senior Missions and is trying to learn what all the areas of service are. (Sorry, that was a long sentence.)

Near the end of the day, Elder Wilcox had to go to the Post Office about 10 miles away from where we live. It appears we have not been getting any mail for the last three weeks. Somehow the key to the mail room door was either lost or the previous mailman took it with him. Nothing has been done to get it replaced. It is supposedly being worked on now, but in the meantime, we have to pick our mail up at a post office that is 10 miles away. It was mostly junk mail. I left the office at 4:00.

Thursday was a short day. We got to have a one-on-one meeting with Baptiste in the morning. He wants to meet with everyone regularly. Daniel only met with the employees (Supervisors and MLCs). In the nearly two years we have been here he only met with us twice and that was shortly after all the changes occurred when we were put into the new Section. It was supposed to be monthly but after the second month it didn't happen again. Baptiste wants to meet every other week for a while until he gets a handle on things and then monthly after that. I know he will follow through. We had a wonderful meeting. We also had a duck and cover earthquake drill that morning where we had to get under our desks. I worked on the same things I worked on the day before and we left around 2:30 for a Temple appointment at the Jordan River Temple. The Bountiful Temple is closed for two weeks. We had a very nice session.

Friday was very slow. I updated our video display screen with several quotes from General Conference. It is a PowerPoint display that shows our upcoming events. We hadn't even turned it on for a week because we haven't had any events, then all of a sudden Curtis dumped about eight new events on us that are happening soon. So our screen is full. I added quotes so we have a nice little display to see. I got comments on the quotes I picked. We had an early lunch because at 1:00 I had the new Emotional Resilience class. We have 9 people. I'm hoping to get one more so everyone has a partner. Right now I partnered with one of the members of the class. I think the class will be great. Everyone seems eager and willing to share. That is what makes a great class. Several members are in our apartment building, so that make it fun. They are also in our FHE group.

Two from our Spanish Team

We were all set to go home shortly after the class was over when I got a call from Sister Nichols. She works at Ensign College. She had some friends she wanted to bring up to see where we work and learn what we do. I think she goes out and finds people to go on my tours. This is about the 5th one I have done for her. 😁Anyway, we waited around for a while until she brought her friends up. It wasn't  really a tour, but we did share what we do and had a wonderful time visiting with them. It was a lot of fun. We left shortly after that, but it was closer to 6 then we originally intended. 

Saturday was time to get haircuts and run a few errands. We spent the afternoon visiting with Vicki and her daughter Holly. We had such a good time and talked for a couple of hours. They are planning on a visit to Salt Lake City when the weather is consistently nicer so we can show them where we work and give them a tour of the Top of the World. Vicki used to work in the cafeteria in the COB. She also worked banquets during the holidays. It will be fun for her to go to lunch in the COB and relive some memories.

Elder Evan A. Schmutz

Sunday was a little more relaxing day. Church was good. In Relief Society and Priesthood we talked about General Conference talks that impacted us the most. Sister Holmes led our discussion. It was GREAT. I have only studied Saturday morning and afternoon so far. I can say that each talk has impacted me as I am learning something from each one that I can apply in my life. On Saturday, I studied the talk by Elder Evan A. Schmutz of the Seventy. He titled his talk, "Trusting the Doctrine of Christ." He summarized it by mentioning the five key elements of the Doctrine of Christ found in 2 Nephi 31-32. They are:

1. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his Atonement
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost
5. Enduring to the end

He mentioned that President Nelson invited us to have the Doctrine of Christ rooted in the marrow of our bones. My first thought is, “I have done all of the first 4 things and I’m working on enduring to the end. I’ve got this.”  But then I thought, "That does not sound like the Doctrine of Christ is rooted in the marrow of my bones. So, what does that mean?"

I spent the next hour pondering and studying his words and realized I need to do my own study of 2 Nephi 31-32 to see what the Spirit is teaching me. So far, this is a talk that has impacted me a lot. 

Sierra around 2

I was also able to actually hear President Nelson's talk on Sunday morning of General Conference, "Peacemakers Needed." That was a wonderful talk too. I couldn't help but think about Sierra as he was talking about Peacemakers. She was always the peacemaker in our family. I remember so many times when things were a bit stressful when the kids were driving me crazy and she would grab my hand and drag me to the rocking chair and say, "rocky time mommy." I would sit in the rocking chair and pull her up into my lap and we would rock. It would calm me down and help me to be a better mom. She helped her siblings to not be contentious too. She brought peace and calm to our home, even at the tender age of 2.

I love General Conference and the wonderful messages we receive twice a year to help us become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. 

All Our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Mom and Sierra

Spring...Sierra and Shonee...Snow...Spring Again and a Service Project

Brigham City Temple

We have had such a gorgeous week, with the exception of snow on Thursday! We even got to 82 degrees on Tuesday. It has been slow on one hand and busy on the other hand. I spent most of the week working on my Microsoft list again. 

When we started the week we didn't think we had any events. On Monday we added four events for that week. Monday I worked all day on my list. It was somewhat frustrating and a lot of trial and error. Just before the end of the day I made some progress. At the end of the day we went to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for our Elijah Choir Easter Concert. It was a beautiful program.

Jarod behind the hood and Curtis

Tuesday morning started with the Wellness Center and our Zone Devotional. I went back to work on my list until about 11:00 AM. Our team headed to Ombu Grill, a Korean BBQ for our Post General Conference Team Luncheon. We had a wonderful time. In the center of each table was a round grill. We ordered up to 39 different foods from meats, to vegies, to rice, egg rolls, squid, and numerous other things. We got 10 food items at a time which we put on the grill and cooked them. I was surprised at how good everything was. I did NOT eat the squid but others said it was good. It was fun and busy as we tried this and that and shared food with one another.

Eunlan and Ljiljana cooking our food

Our team meeting was cancelled so I went back to working on my lists. Near the end of the day, Eunlan asked me to research the list Elder Linford put together of invoices that had not been paid yet from October 2022 General Conference. So I worked on that for the next couple of hours. When I finished it was time to get ready for the MTC Devotional with Elder Andersen. It was a good evening.

On Wednesday Daniel asked Elder Linford to submit all the outstanding invoices. Elder Linford asked me to help and we quickly took care of the list. I suggested Elder Linford ask Daniel about all the other unpaid invoices over the past year. Supposedly in the next few months the invoicing system will be fully automated, making it easier for our interpreters to get paid. That is the ONE thing I wanted to get fixed before the end of our mission. I was beginning to think it would never happen. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath.

Curtis, Aaron, and Daniel

We left around 4 so we could get our showers out of the way early. Sierra and Shonee arrived around 6:15 or so to spend the night. They were headed to the Saint George area for a half marathon that Shonee is running in. Since they were early enough we took them over to the Church Office Building (COB) to give them a short tour of interpretation. We had the building pretty much to ourselves with the exception of a few custodial personnel. My bad, I didn't take any pictures. My excuse is I was doing the talking. Lol.

Mom, Dad, and Sierra!

After we got back to the apartment, we visited until 11. Shonee stepped out for a bit to meet up with his cousin. It was so nice to visit with them. We talked about where they wanted to have breakfast the next morning. They needed to get on the road. We mentioned a few different places Elder Wilcox goes when we need to supply breakfast for a weekend event. They asked where we usually go and we told them the COB cafeteria. We checked the menu online and they said they would like to go there. This time we walked to the COB. It was a little drizzly but not too bad. We had a nice breakfast and lots more visiting before it was time for them to pack their things and get on the road. We gave them a key so they could get their stuff. As they left the COB the drizzle had turned to light snow. Will winter ever end? After they packed their stuff, we met them in front of the COB so they could give the key back and we could exchange hugs again before they headed south. We went back to work.

Helpers filling bags

Helpers making a condiments pack

After breakfast I headed to the Wellness Center for my elliptical workout. I worked on debugging my problem from the program I created the day before. I fixed one problem only to come up with another one. At the end of the day we got ready for another evening event. The Linfords did events Tuesday and Wednesday morning and we covered Tuesday and Thursday evening. Our event was actually three different sessions for the same event. The first one involved two sisters for 4 languages in a discussion and started at 5:00 call time with the event running from 6 to 7. The next session had a call time at 6:00 with one brother in the 4 languages and went from 7 to 8. The single speaker they were interpreting for was from Australia with a heavy accent. And he was some kind of physical therapist. He was also the Tennis coach for BYU when they won some championships. He talked about motivating and lots of stuff about the brain. Our poor brothers had a really hard time with their interpretations. The final session was another single brother in the 4 languages. Their call time was 7 and their session went from 8 to 9. Their speaker was a rugby coach for BYU. His name is Larry Gelwix and the movie "Forever Strong" was made about him. He also spoke about motivating his team, but it was much easier to understand him. These video clips are to help our work force move to the next level. They will see them on April 19th then it gets released to the Church workforce. 

Brigham City Temple

Friday we slept in a bit. After working out I started work about 9:30. Things were pretty slow so I didn't feel bad about going in a little later. The Linfords left at noon to go visit their sister-in-law who is in the hospital. I solved a few more of my program problems and felt pretty good about the day. We left around 2 or so to go to the Brigham City Temple. My Emotional Resilience class was going as a group. It is a little over an hour away and Steve was worried about traffic so we went early and had dinner in the city. It was nice to be in the Temple with friends. That Temple is "President Packer's Temple". There is a little office next to the Bride's room that some say was his office. There are a couple of his bird paintings in the room. He has several other paintings hanging in the Temple. We only saw the ones in the little office.

Brigham City Temple

Saturday I pretty much stayed home all day until about 5:30. I worked on cleaning up my lists and on my blog. Steve went shopping. At 5:30 we went to the first half of a service project. We prepared 200 sack lunches for the homeless. We will meet again tomorrow right after Church to put the sandwiches together and put them in the sacks before we hand them out. It was fun.  

Filling bags with dry goods
like water, oranges, chips,
granola bars, and cookies.

Sunday was a BEAUTIFUL spring day. The sun was shining and the temperature was mild. We drove to Church because after Church we were heading to the meeting house in downtown Salt Lake City where we were preparing the lunches for the homeless. It was a good day to mingle with the people and provide a much needed service. We try to do service projects whenever we can. We had a ton of people show up to help. We made over 200 sandwiches in about 30 minutes. We had three different assembly lines set up so it went quite fast. It was amazing. Then many of us boxed up the bags and dropped them off at different homeless shelters. We kept about 50 bags at the meeting house for those that were coming by to pick them up. It was a very nice afternoon. This particular center was originally founded to help the refugees that were coming to Salt Lake City. They provide computers to teach the children, sewing machines to teach the mothers a skill, English lessons for the parents, and so many other things. It has been so successful, they are opening another one in Ogden.

President and Sister Holmes in the front
Missionaries making sandwiches in the back

I hope you have a Beautiful week.

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

More missionaries making sandwiches

Sister Steel and others folding the tops
down on the bags to make it easier to handle.

 

Happy Easter and Life After General Conference

A beautiful "Spring" morning 
After General Conference

There was no Mission Devotional on Monday because of General Conference. We will have our evening devotional next Monday evening. It will be our Elijah Choir Easter Concert. I'm looking forward to that.

We had another big snow storm so we decided to work from home. It had snowed all night long. We slept in a bit because we were still so exhausted from General Conference. I started working on the hours report for GC, but ran into some issues. For some reason our check-in program didn't check in everyone it should have. When I ran the report, I knew I had checked in several people who were not on the report. I also know I helped the missionaries that helped with check-in with certain people who were also not on the report. Not only was that a problem, but we had a number of people who simply didn't bother to check in. They were supposed to check in on the main floor, but they decided to go up the freight elevator from the parking level and bypass the main floor. In the end I figured out we had 16% who did not check in on Saturday and 43% percent that did not check in on Sunday. We heard that someone told the Interpreters that if they checked in on Saturday, they did not need to check in on Sunday. 

Our walk home on Tuesday

What all that meant was I had to have our three Multi-language Coordinators verify who was at Conference for each of their languages. By three in the afternoon, they all gave me their preliminary report. With that, I ran the hours report. We had a few other corrections and by end of day. I sent the report to Elder Linford so he could input all the hours for Conference. 

I remember my first General Conference in October 2021. It took me three weeks to get all the hours calculated and updated. With each Conference we got quicker. It took Elder Linford two days to update all the hours. That meant we were done three days after General Conference. The BEST time ever. We had a couple of additions and corrections over the next two days, but the people hadn't invoiced yet so the correction was easily taken care of.

I also worked on my blog on Monday as there just wasn't time over the weekend. Monday night, we had a wonderful Family Home Evening. Elder and Sister Ure were in charge. Our evening was centered on General Conference and we had a wonderful discussion. I love our FHE group so much. We always have a fantastic time.

Waiting for the Award Ceremony to begin

Tuesday morning and afternoon we had two events that Elder Wilcox and I support and a third event that evening that the Linfords did. It was still snowing very hard in the morning, but since Elder Wilcox had to go pick up breakfast (the timing didn't work for the interpreters to use the cafeteria), he dropped me off so I didn't have to walk in the snow. I was able to go to the Wellness Center before the event, so that was good. The first one was for Music and The Spoken word. Normally that is always done at the Conference Center so we were surprised when it was in the COB and we were supposed to do breakfast. It was the Easter Special, so that kind of explained why it might be done in the COB. The weather was still pretty bad and most of our interpreters were very late. It was a good thing we do an hour call time, meaning the interpreters report an hour before the event starts. As it turned out while we were eating breakfast, we were concerned because we didn't have any Spanish interpreters yet. Eunlan called to see where they were at. Also, our Engineer hadn't shown up either. What we found out was the engineer and Spanish team were at the Conference Center wondering where the French and Portuguese teams were. Apparently there was a misunderstanding and the whole thing was supposed to take place at the Conference Center like usual. Eunlan was supervising the event because Curtis was on vacation. She got the  signals mixed up.

Venky's Leadership Award
for Business Intelligence

So, the interpreters headed to the Conference Center and we went back to our cubicles until the second event started two hours later. That one went off without a hitch. Several of the interpreters that were for the morning one, stayed for the afternoon event. That event was a General Conference Leadership Meeting (GCLM): Luncheon with General Authorities and Area Organization Advisors. It involved training for the Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society. It ended around 3:00. We went home right after that as the snow was still coming down and had been all day. When we looked out the window on the 28th floor it looked like a terrible storm. It was very windy and we could hardly see out the window. When we got to the ground floor to walk home it was actually quite beautiful. There was no wind. It was even a little sunny and only lightly snowing on our walk home. 

After Venky received his award

Wednesday, we worked from home again. Part of it was snow and part of it was still just being tired. We didn't have any events to support so I was able to send out nearly 500 thank you emails around the world. I included all of our SLC Interpreters, all the missionaries who helped out with General Conference, all our staff who helped, all the engineers and others not in our department who helped, and all the area language supervisors. I used a power app but was having a problem with it sending out to email addresses outside of our Church network...which was MOST of the emails I was sending. I have a "white list" authority that allows me to send out emails outside of our Church network using a Power App as long as I use "General Conference Preparation" in the subject line. I got this because I send them out to the areas a couple of months before each General Conference so they know who they need to make sure is activated in PLUNET. Anyway, it wasn't working. I contacted a guy to see if I was deactivated since it hadn't been used for a couple of months. It was. He reactivated it and everything worked great. It was very sweet to receive "thank you's" back from so many people.

Venky with his award

Thursday we went in. The weather was better. It was cold, but the snow had stopped. The sidewalks were clear. I went in early to go to the Wellness Center and then listened to our Zone Devotional. We missed it on Tuesday because of our events. I created a "congratulations" card for Venky. He graduated from Ensign College. I spent much of the day working on numbers for General Conference. We wanted to know how many Interpreters we had for each session as we felt we were ordering too many meals. Even though we can do 55 languages in Salt Lake City, we don't do all 55 for each session. We were at least 50 less than we figured for each session. I was also able to use my numbers as a comparison with the hours report I gave Elder Linford and found a couple errors as mentioned above. We left work around 3 to attend an awards ceremony for Venky.  He received a Leadership Award for Business Intelligence. Since he is from India, he doesn't have any family here so we, the Linfords, and Eunlan got to be his family. It was a very nice ceremony.

Venky's Graduation

Friday morning was the Graduation Ceremony, which was held at the Tabernacle. The Linfords went to the graduation, and we supported the event in the COB. It worked out perfect for all of us. They are a little closer to Venky so it was nice they could be there for him. After the event, I attended a pizza party for the "Contracts" team that worked so hard before General Conference. We all tried to work in the afternoon, but all of us were just brain dead. I think we were all falling asleep at our desk. Just before the end of the day, Sister Faerber asked me if I would be willing facilitate the next Emotional Resilience class that will be starting soon. Since we are heading into a slower period, I said yes. We all left around 4:00.

I managed to do my HawkSoft work throughout the week so come Saturday, I didn't have anymore to do. So we took a nice little drive to Duchesne, Utah. We had to take a picture of a sign in honor of Season. Lol. The weather was beautiful. The sun was shining and the temperature was around 60 degrees. I think it was actually Spring! Duchesne is kind of a hole in the wall. We had lunch in a unusual little place. It looked like a warehouse with an area set aside to eat. Very expensive. But not "expensive type" food. We each had a grilled ham and cheese and it was $20 bucks. Not much to see in Duchesne. On our way home we stopped in Heber to get some ice cream. The cashier took our order, asked us about our mission and then told us we got a missionary discount. Our bill was 0 dollars. What nice treat that was. 

A nice war memorial in Duchesne

Easter Sunday was BEAUTIFUL. The sun was shining, the snow was almost all melted. Our Sacrament service was wonderful and spiritual. President Holmes spoke to us about the last week of the Savior's life. He then invited 4 Sisters to come up and bear their testimonies of the Savior. All were very touching. We had a wonderful musical number by a men's ensemble. They really blended well together. After that, President Holmes invited 2 Elders and 2 more Sisters to bear testimony. He shared a few more closing remarks and said he was inspired to invite 1 more Elder and Sister Faerber to bear testimony. We concluded by singing "I Believe in Christ". I LOVE that song. I'm not sure there was a dry eye in the congregation.  

I love this quote by Elder David A. Bednar. “The Resurrection is the ultimate triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, and life over death. It is a reminder that we can overcome anything through the power of Jesus Christ.” It reminds me of the scripture found in Proverbs 3:5-6 that says, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Because of Him, we can overcome all our trials and even the world. May you have a Wonderful Easter because of Him!

We only had Sacrament meeting but didn't get home until almost three. We talked a lot after Church.  We invited one of our apartment couples over for Easter dinner. If we couldn't be with family, it was great to be with our Missionary family. 

We hope you had a wonderful Easter and that Spring is finally here for you too! (At least this next week is going to be Spring like! 😊)

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox