GC Pre-recordings, GA Wives Luncheon, Lots of GC Leadership Meetings and of Course General Conference!!!

I'm a day late, but that's OK. It has been an extremely busy week leading up to General Conference. We also have a very busy week AFTER General Conference before things will slow down a bit. On with the recap.

Last Monday we started with our Mission Devotional that features different Zones. We heard from the Church History Special Projects Zone. A couple in our Family Home Evening group are the Zone leaders. Their group gave an awesome presentation. They work on some pretty fascinating research projects. Some are ancient documents, others are artifacts, others are journal entries, and who knows what else. They research the histories associated with the document or artifact. It all sounded so cool. I found myself wishing that our mission could be divided up with 4 months in one zone, 4 months in another and so forth so we could experience it all.

Pre-GC Prep Meeting Luncheon

I continued work on contracts for much of the day. I also attended my last Leadership Pattern class. And I started on the GC Hours report using SQL. I found the SQL to be very frustrating because for some reason my work computer didn't have some features my home computer has. I had worked on the hours report at home over the weekend and was all set to just update the new data and run the report. It wouldn't let me import it and took me forever to get it done. Not cool. I was dreading running it after Conference.

PJ Family Home Evening Night

Family Home Evening was wonderful. We had nearly everyone on our floor there. Sister Burgoyne shared with us lots of fun Family History games that are available on Family Search. She made her famous cinnamon rolls for desert. Heavenly! And to honor our previous Zone leader, Elder Stevens who is home now and had been diagnosed with cancer, we had a PJ FHE. When he was here we used to do a PJ night about every other month or so. Several of us dressed up in our PJs and we took pictures of the whole group and sent them to him to tell him how much we love him and that we are all praying for him. The doctor report after his surgery was pretty good. They got all the tumor and it looks like it only touched one lymph node so he will have to undergo some additional treatment, but it is optimistic it will all go well. Please keep him in your prayers.

Elder Ure giving us a
Tour of Ensign College

Tuesday we had our Zone Devotional lead by Elder and Sister Williams. They are fairly new in the mission. They talked about hearing the word of the Lord. and shared many of the things we have learned from President Nelson since he became the President of the Church. They also shared some fun ways to prepare and listing to General Conference...especially if you have small children.

We had a PRE-Conference Luncheon for our normal GC preparation meeting. We went to Chuck-O-Rama. It was fun and the food was good. However, since we didn't have much of a meeting, Eunlan scheduled another pre-conference meeting for Thursday. lol Not long after we got back from lunch we had our regular Team Meeting. During the course of that meeting we discovered a problem with the electronic General Conference tickets. We were kind of a guineapig project. ALL of our tickets went to Daniel, our manager. He then had to send out all the tickets to the different winners. He sent them to the team first, which was good since we discovered some issues with creating the accounts to then claim the tickets. So we spent half the meeting working on helping other team members access their tickets. Bottom line, I had to create a HELP document to send out to all the winners so they could access and print their tickets. Thankfully the document helped a lot and I didn't get very many calls or emails for help. Poor Daniel, worked all day than then sent tickets all night. He finally finished sending them out Tuesday night. That afternoon he got notification that we had been given an additional 60 tickets, so I did another random drawing to send out more. Bottom line, we got them all sent out by Friday evening. Some of the winners didn't respond so we ended up calling people to see if they wanted tickets. I was able to give Djeryd and Eva two more tickets. They got to go to Saturday Evening and Sunday Afternoon! 

Sister Nicholls at the Tour

In between the meetings I worked on more contracts. Just when I thought I was done a bunch more would come in. I also gave a quick tour to a student from Ensign College and her mother who was visiting from Guatemala (I think). One of our Zone missionaries works at Ensign College and bumped into us after lunch. She and her husband are helping us for General Conference and had been on one of my tours, so she asked if I could give her student and mother a tour. It was a lot of fun.

Our Group that went on the Ensign Collage Tour

That evening we went to Ensign Collage for a tour for our TIPS group. That stands for Tuesday In-Person group. We don't go all the time, but we go when we can. The Nicholls and the Ures all work there and gave us a wonderful and very fun tour. At the end of the night, we were headed down the elevator to go home. We got on the elevator and there were several more that couldn't fit in so they said they would wait for another elevator to go down. Well, Steve and I didn't miss a beat. We immediately started singing "Down dooby do Down Down" and they started cracking up as the elevator doors closed. When we got to the bottom, we decided to wait for them to come down. As soon as the door opened, we started singing again. They loved it! Then we all walked home together. It was a wonderful evening.

Our Luncheon with our New Zealand Visitor

Wednesday was extremely busy. I went from one major task to another all day. Everything was related to General Conference in some way. We worked until 7 PM. Steve and I supported the GA Wives Luncheon from 11 AM to about 1:30. Elder Patrick Kearon and his wife were the speakers. It was very enjoyable. Afterwards I helped an interpreter with her invoices. I did about 30 more invoices. I gave my last Missionary tour around 4. 

Thursday was another Zone Devotional. This one was presented by Elder and Sister Sabey. They are also fairly new to our mission. Elder Sabey was also just put into our Branch leadership. They talked about the Doctrine of Christ and how The Daily ​Doctrine of Christ​ Depends on the Covenants​ of the​ Ordinances​. I loved how he compared the two sacramental prayers together and brought out that in one we are "willing" to always remember the Savior and in the other one we "do" always remember Him. I enjoyed that very much.

Laptops setup for General Conference
for the Interpreters to use

We were "officially" done with contracts, except an occasional straggler. I was "fired". Not really. I was told they probably won't need my help with contracts anymore. We finished several weeks earlier than they usually do for General Conference. I was glad I could be a part of it.

Portuguese Interpreters

We had 8 GCLM (General Conference Leadership Meetings) events on Thursday. The Linfords handled the one in the morning and we did the other 7 in the afternoon and evening. Ours were onesie and twosie events where four of them all happened at the same time in the afternoon and the other three happened at the same time for dinner. It was a little crazy but fun. The afternoon events didn't start until 2:30 call time. We had our 2nd GC Preparation meeting at 2:00, but I was giving another tour for another couple of Ensign students and a family from England. It went into the two o'clock hour before I ended the tour. I wasn't too worried as I didn't have any assignments that needed reporting on. When I went to sign into the meeting, we started getting people for our events and I was busy helping them so I never made it to the GC Prep meeting. I think we were done with our evening events around 7:30 or so and were home around 8. We obviously couldn't watch all the events going on. These there General Authority Leadership meetings mainly with the different quorums of the Seventy. We did watch one that was for Spanish and Portuguese. Elder Gong was speaking. We had a Spanish interpreter doing a side by side interpretation since the bulk of the audience only spoke Spanish. We had an Spanish to English interpreter in the booth to interpret for Elder Gong when people asked questions. At the end of the meeting Elder Gong wanted to bear his testimony in Spanish. He said it would be a simple testimony. Simple does not translate to short. Hahaha. He spoke a long time, and since we were not getting the English translation, I didn't understand much of anything except a few words here and there. Elder Gong has a trade mark. He loves to have the audience raise their hands if they like something. And then raise there other hand if they like something else. And finally raise both hands if they really love it. Well, he does that in Spanish too. It is very endearing. 

The B-Desk sign

On Friday the Linfords did 8 more GCLM events in the morning that ended about 1:30. I spent the day with a few contracts, lots of tickets, getting all the SLC GC interpreters into various reports for various people, tweaking the hours report, and updating my Microsoft list so all the dates and statuses were up to date from all the Contracts I had processed over the last couple of weeks. I had to do that before I could run final reports. Elder Wilcox and I went to a special lunch that some of our Section were putting on for our area language coordinator from New Zealand. His name is Steve Stebbings. I have talked to him over Teams and lots of emails back and forth, so it was wonderful to meet him in person. I actually met him a couple of days before when Ana brought him by and introduced him to us and invited us to lunch on Friday. I thought it was going to be a fairly big group. We were surprised when there was only 11 of us there. We had a very nice and intimate lunch with several big wigs in our Section and Division. 

A Gift one of the Missionaries
gave to me

Funny story. We were also invited to a luncheon held at the Conference Center in the parking garage for all those who were working on General Conference in any way. We didn't go because of our other invitation to lunch; but, the Linfords decided to go after their event ended. They got to the conference center and opened the door to the garage and didn't see anyone, so they looked around and saw some double doors with a sign that said something like "do no open, meeting in progress". They thought it must be the luncheon so they opened the doors. They saw tables and people eating around them and figured they were in the right place. As they started heading down the room to where the food was, Sister Linford started looking at the people a little closer. They were all in suits and ties and she thought they looked pretty dressed up for most of the employees that we work with. Then she noticed that she recognized a few people she was passing, like Elder Bednar, Elder Cook and many others. At that point she realized they were in the WRONG place. These were the same people that had been doing all the Events they just finished supporting. So they turned around and walked out. No one said a word to them or even gave them a second look. They went back to the garage and went in a little further and found all the hired hands being fed.  Hahahaha

Two missionaries that are "Runners".
They will take revisions out to all the
55 booths when something comes up.

Most of the team showed up around 3 or 4:00 to help set up for General Conference. We had to put up agendas and signs in all 55 booths, and hung lots of signs from the parking garage all the way up to the 28th floor. We also put flowers in every booth and lots of other things to get ready. We lugged boxes of badges and credentials and 5 laptops down to the main floor lobby to set up the Check-in and B-Desk Tables for the next morning. B-Desk is for our badges and credentials. Elder Linford, Elder Wilcox, and Eunlan went to the Hotel where the out of town interpreters are staying to hand out per-diem money. After they did that they stopped at Crown Burger and picked up dinner for the team. I had been spending most of my time working on the ticket nightmare so I didn't set up much. Anyway, we finally finished around 9:00 PM.

Eunlan and Aaron in the 
"Command Center"

We were up at 5:30 Saturday morning and at the office at 6:30. My missionary helpers were supposed to arrive at 7:30 and interpreters were supposed to arrive at 8:00. I ran upstairs to print something for Elder Wilcox. When I got back down stairs to setup up the 5 laptops and get ready for our prayer meeting, we already had two missionaries and three interpreters standing at the check in. I tried to get the computers up and running and, of course, for whatever reason they wouldn't work correctly. I had set all of the up two weeks before so they would be ready. They weren't connecting to the internet so that slowed things down. In the meantime I had one of the MLCs open his computer and start checking people in. Eunlan showed up and we had a quick prayer meeting. I went back to getting the two missionaries signed into the computers so they could start checking in Interpreters. I had all 5 laptops ready to go at 7:30 which is when they were supposed to show up in the first place. I laughed about that and told them if they had showed up at 7:30 they wouldn't have had to see me mess around with all the computers and look like an idiot. We checked in over 150 interpreters. It should have been more. We had people skip check in and head straight up to the 26th floor. Plus our program that was checking people in did not register everyone that was checked in.

More Interpreters Prepping
for General Conference

Saturday went well and we had wonderful missionaries to help us all day. As far as I now everything ran smoothly. All our missionaries loved working with us and said they had lots of fun. I didn't get to see or hear much of conference but I had lots of interaction with our interpreters. We also had four visiting Interpreters from Samoa. As far as I know it was the first time for all of them to interpret at Headquarters. It was fun to meet them. They seemed to enjoy themselves. We actually finished a little earlier than normal for a Saturday night. Elder Holland was sick and unable to do his talk on Saturday night so the session ended about 15 minutes early. We hurried home and actually got there about 8:30. Djeryd and Eva were there and we had a wonderful visit with them. Sorry, no pictures. I realized that after they left for home. We stayed up way too late talking and enjoying each other. It was after midnight before I had lights out and even later than that before I finally fell asleep.

Sara in the Italian Booth 
reviewing her talk

We were up at 5:00 on Sunday and at the COB by 6:00. Sunday we do Music and the Spoken word so we start everything 1/2 hour early. We had our prayer meeting at 7:00. I gave the spiritual thought. We did not have any missionaries or interpreters show up too early. We expected a big crowd Sunday morning but only had a fraction of the interpreters we expected to check-in. Unbeknownst to me, one of the MLCs told the Interpreters if they checked in on Saturday the did NOT need to check in on Sunday. WRONG! So instead of having over 150 we only checked in 109. In the afternoon we should have checked in another 41, we only got 14. Consequently, I had all the MLCs check to see if all their interpreters showed up for all the sessions they were assigned to do. Most always do, but there are always a few that can't make it the last minute and this conference was no different. I got to hear a few more talks on Sunday, so that was nice. As soon as conference was over, we packed up the main floor and took everything upstairs. Elder Wilcox was working the B-Desk so we were able to see each other and talk to each other both days. That hasn't happened before. Lol. We managed to get home by 4:30, another first for General Conference. Djeryd and Eva were packed and ready to go. We were able to spend a few minutes with them before they headed out the door to go home. They wanted to beat the weather. After they left, we showered and put on pajamas. We lounged on the couch, fell asleep (at least I think we did) while we watched TV and went to bed at 9.

Me at the Check in desk with my Angel

I hope you enjoyed General Conference. Have a WONDERFUL week.

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox