The Jensons, Welfare Square, Tours, Temple, Wedding Reception, and Mission Social

Elder Wilcox, Sister Wilcox, Leanne, and Ken

This week was more play than work.😊 I started at the Wellness Center and was just getting ready to head up to the office when I got a text from Leanne Jenson saying they were ready to meet up. While I waited for them to arrive at the lobby of the Church Office Building, I decided to check out the recently opened courtyard that we showed pictures of last week. Elder Wilcox took the pictures last week. It was a beautiful morning and I wandered around for about ten minutes and loved it.

Part of my tour group
singing. Sister Aburto
is in Red

The Jensons showed up and we headed over to the Church History Library for a tour. We met Elder Wilcox there. We toured around the library for a while before we decided to head over to the Church History Museum. After we toured the museum for a while, we went back to the Church Office Building for lunch. I had a tour scheduled for a group of Sacred Materials Translators at 1:00 PM and the Jensons were going to join us. Unbeknownst to me, Sister Reyna Aburto was on that tour. I knew she worked for Church Translations, but I was surprised to see her on my tour. Sister Jenson was very happy about that.

The tour went very well, and I think everyone enjoyed it. The tour ended a little before 2:00. After a few pictures with Sister Aburto, the Jensons went back to their hotel room to rest up before they headed to a cousin’s house for dinner. I went back to my cubicle to see what work I could do. We headed home around 4.

Sister Cordon at our
Mission Fireside

After dinner we got ready to go back to the COB for our Mission Fireside. Sister Bonnie Cordon was our speaker. She did a great job and we enjoyed it very much. She talked about how we are all here for a purpose. She showed several pictures of babies during WW2 and had us guess who they were. Turns out they were all apostles that were born in 1940 in preparation for today as they serve as Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She showed several more babies and who they were in history and what good they accomplished. Lastly, she showed about 20 more baby pictures. It turned out they were pictures of 20 of our current missionaries. She said we are all here for a purpose as part of Heavenly Father’s plan. There are no coincidences.

Beautiful roses on our way home!

Tuesday, started with the Wellness Center again followed by our Zone Devotional. I had a Teams meeting with Matt around 10:00. He informed me that he finally got authorization to use Dataverse for our master database instead of trying to use Microsoft Lists. I was told NO when I tried to get it approved about 6 months ago. I guess that is the difference between a missionary and an employee. 😉 He laid out what they hope I can accomplish in the next 5 months before our mission ends. There is one major problem with this scenario. For me to be able to work in Dataverse, I need to have a Pro License. Matt said he would get that taken care of. I asked him on Friday where we were at with this and was told he hadn’t submitted the request yet. So now I have 1 less week to work on this. 😢 Hopefully, he will get that taken care of by this coming week.

Wilcoxes and Jensons at Welfare Square

Right after my meeting with Matt, the Jensons called to see if we wanted to go with them to Welfare Square, so we met up with them again. We had a GREAT tour guide and thoroughly enjoyed our tour. We made it back to the COB for lunch again about 1:00. I had another meeting at 1:30 and then again at 2:00 so I said my goodbyes and headed to my meeting. The Jensons had another dinner planned with friends or family. My 1:30 meeting was with the employee that is taking over PLUNET from us in August. She and her coworker are going to do the Mission Leaders Seminar PLUNET order this month because it is one of our more complicated events. I have a feeling that our Supervisors are going to have to start doing more with PLUNET for things like changing hours, last minute replacements, changing jobs, etc. Time will tell.

The Jensons at
Bountiful Temple

Our 2:00 meeting was very short! Baptiste was in France, so Eunlan ran the meeting. We didn’t have any agenda items, so we just reviewed upcoming events and ended our meeting. Shortly after the meeting everyone that was at the office went home so we went home after that.

Wednesday we pretty much spent the whole day with the Jensons. I did go to the Wellness Center first thing in the morning before we met together and went to the Bountiful Temple. We had a wonderful session. We went to lunch after the Temple and enjoyed a delicious Mo Bettah’s Hawaiian meal. (We brought half of ours home for another meal.)

From there we headed home. After changing we met at our apartment and played games, had dinner and watched a movie. Of course, there was lots of visiting too. We thoroughly enjoyed our day together.

Elder Wilcox, Sister Wilcox, and Curtis

The Jensons had other plans for Thursday and Friday, so we actually had to go into the office for those two days. Hahaha. After the Wellness Center and our Zone Devotional I went to my office. I spent much of the day watching Dataverse training videos in preparation for obtaining my license. I also prepared for my Emotional Resilience class for Friday. At one point I went to update the agenda for our Team meeting for next Tuesday. We have our agenda and minutes in an app in Teams called Meeting Notes. It is great because everyone has access to it so they can add their own agenda items. Well……apparently, Microsoft decided to remove Meeting Notes from Teams and replace it with something called Recap. Recap only works if you record your meetings. I can’t find anyway to add an agenda to the Recap. Soooooo……we are back to keeping our agenda and minutes on SharePoint, which means everyone will send me their agenda items. I will go back to emailing the agenda before our meeting each week.

Curtis's presentation in New York

Steve went to the doctor’s office before going to the office Thursday morning so he could pick up his final paperwork for our mission application. When he got to the office, we checked everything and got it in the mail. Then we checked off the last checkbox on our application and submitted it. It goes to the Bishop and then Stake President for final interviews before it finally goes to Salt Lake City to be evaluated for a new mission call. It will still be weeks before we know anything.

Andrew Ehat - Joseph Smith Scholar

We were supposed to have an event Thursday afternoon, but for some reason at the last minute the event went from doing it at the COB to doing it via Zoom. So, we were not needed. That worked to our advantage as we had a wedding reception to go to Thursday evening. Curtis is one of our Supervisors. He is a Joseph Smith aficionado. His son got married Thursday morning and had his reception Thursday evening. On Thursday night, Curtis (as well as the bride and groom) headed to the airport. Curtis went to New York to present at the Mormon History Association conference in Rochester. He is presenting his forensic analysis of the Larsen Daguerreotype purported to be Joseph Smith. The bride and groom were heading to their honeymoon. While at the reception Curtis introduced us to many people. We also visited Andrew Ehat. He is one of Curtis’s good friends and probably one of the most expert scholars on Joseph Smith. We are currently reading one of his books called Words of Joseph Smith. We had a very enjoyable time at the reception.

Elder Wilcox on the Putting
Green at the home of our
Mission President

Friday, I watched more Dataverse training videos. I had my class at 1:00. We were pleasantly surprised to see Sister Farnsworth show up. She is the one who broke her shoulder several weeks ago. She started physical therapy this week after her surgery the week before. It was so good to have her back. We had a lively discussion. I love my class.

We went home shortly after class and had a relaxing evening. Around 7:30 we got a text message from Leanne saying they were back and wanted to come over so we could say goodbye. We visited for another hour before they left. They got up early Saturday to head back to Washington for home. We enjoyed their visit so much. They are hoping to submit mission papers in October. I’m excited for them.

Saturday, I did some HawkSoft work and worked on turning my blog posts into a book so we will have a hard copy when we come home. We can get a good deal at the document center, which is good because this book is going to be several hundred pages long.

The backyard of our Mission
President's home.

Saturday evening, we went to President and Sister Holmes’ house for a Mission Social. The weather was great, and we had a nice dinner outside and lots of good company. They have a gorgeous yard and home. We hung around for about two hours before it was time to head home.

Sunday, we went to our new ward for the second time. We met the new Bishop. Last week, while we were at the Columbus Ohio Temple Rededication, our Bishopric was being reorganized. Our new Bishop is from Germany and has a wonderful accent. They have asked all the Senior Missionaries to sing a song in July so everyone can get to see us. Haha. We practiced the song right after Church today. The Ward Organist’s son wrote the Pioneer song. It is really pretty good.

After we got home, I worked on the blog. We also watched a YouTube interview that Curtis gave on his forensic study of the skulls and the Joseph Smith daguerreotype. If you have about 3 hours for a fascinating presentation, please check out Joseph Smith Photo the Latest Evidence with Curtis Weber on YouTube or follow this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ-_wHcJ-xI.

Have a wonderful week.

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox