Pioneer Day, Meetings, Doctor Appointments, Temple, HawkSoft, and Vicki's 75th Birthday Party!

Leslee and Vicki at Vicki's Birthday Party

We didn't have any events this week. Well, we had four on the calendar, but one was Language Coaching, two were ASL, and the last one was Music and the Spoken Word. None of those are ones we have to support.

Monday was a holiday in Utah because it is Pioneer Day. With things so slow we actually had a day off. Our FHE was going to be about pioneers, so I did some study on that. I actually have a few Swedish ancestors that crossed the plains in the 1860s so learned about them so I could share my pioneer ancestry. Most of my life, I thought I was the first member of the Church in my family. I was happy to find out that isn't true. 😊

Elder and Sister Bradford

In the morning I received a text from one of the sisters who used to work on my Temple Shift at the Portland Temple before our mission. They served a two-year mission to Australia during Covid. They recently were called on another mission to the Missouri Independence Mission serving in the inner-city branch in Kansas City, Missouri. Ellen reached out to me because they have a sister from Liberia that they need to teach Temple Prep classes to. She doesn't speak English and Elder and Sister Bradford don't speak Grebo or Kru. She reached out to me to see if I can help set her up with someone who could help. I spent the morning reaching out to my team and then the area to see if we could get her some help. We don't interpret either of those languages, so I checked with Translation. We don't translate either of those dialects yet either. So, we reached out to the area representative. He didn't have anyone he knew of, so he reached out to the MTC. Unfortunately, still no luck.  

In the afternoon we went to the movies to see the new Mission Impossible movie. Lots of action. It was 3 hours long. And that was only part one. Part two comes out next year.

We enjoyed a fun filled evening with our Family Home Evening group. We didn't have a big group, but we had a fun group!

Tuesday was filled with meetings. We had our Tuesday morning Zone Devotional. After that I wrote up another User Story. At 10:00 I had my weekly meeting with Matt where I showed him the User Stories I have written up. He seemed excited about them and said he would be presenting them to the development team. I asked if I could sit in on that meeting and he said yes.

Vicki in the '64 Mustang

An hour later, I had a meeting with Xenia. We talked about some of the same things, and I also showed her the User Stories. She, likewise, thought they were good and was hopeful to see them get programmed and implemented. My guess is the programming will take place after we are gone...if at all.

Baptiste is out for the next three weeks. He and his family are in France visiting family. He canceled our Tuesday meeting. Things are slow so I think we are good. Besides, if there is anything that needs attention we can always chat or email. I did have to fix a job for the Mission Leadership Seminar we did the end of June. Other than that, I don't think there was any more work I did. We went home early.

Wednesday, we started our day with doctor's appointments. Since our mission is over in November, our doctor wanted to see us at six months which is this month. We love our doctor. We had a wonderful visit. She had a new intern she was training so that was fun. They did a memory test on Steve, and he actually did pretty good. He scored one point below normal, so she wasn't worried. We determined that was probably more because of his hearing then his actual memory. He has hearing appointments in September. She said they have come such a long way in dealing with tinnitus that she is sure he can be helped with hearing aids. So that was good news. She recommended that Steve do some exercise besides just walking back and forth to the office. So, Wellness Center, here we come! My blood pressure is still a little high, so she decided to start me on a low dose of blood pressure medication. I am hopeful that I can lose some weight and get off the medication. But it is HARD to lose weight on this mission. Maybe it will be easier on the next one. 😇She did say we are doing great, and she has no problem about us going anywhere in the world for our next mission. Although she did say she would miss us. 😊

We stopped at the Wellness Center on our way to work so Steve could get registered and see what they have to offer. He tried out a few machines and promised to continue. Then we went to our cubicles. I worked on some HawkSoft in the afternoon while Steve finished up some work he had to do. After that, we went home early again. I could get used to this. 😉

Thursday started with our Zone Devotional and then the Wellness Center. I waited so I could go with Steve...to make sure he actually got to the Wellness Center. I may have to go with him for a while to make it a habit. Haha. I worked on HawkSoft most of the day because there is nothing else to work on. It was good, because I had some questions, and I was able to contact Darrin. We even did a video call and included Sean to work out a problem. I can't do that on Saturdays, so it was good I did it during the week. We headed home right after lunch so we could head to the Temple for our weekly visit. On our way out after the session, we ran into the Steels, Nicholls, and Sister Thompson. It is always fun to see people we know and love at the Temple. 

Friday was another slow day. After I studied my scriptures in the morning, we headed to the COB and to the Wellness Center. Whoo-hoo, three days in a row for Steve! We later watched the funeral services for Sister Patricia Holland, wife of Elder Jeffery R. Holland. The service was beautiful and very touching. We know the brother who played the piano for prelude and the songs, not the special number. If you didn't get a chance to see it, I think it is available on the Church website.

Apparently, they didn't have the developer meeting like Matt thought. Hopefully they will have it next week. I am anxious to talk to the developers and see just what their intentions are. I have lots of ideas, but who knows it if will meet their expectations. So far, the user stories I have written up are simple and straight forward. I have other, more complicated ideas that I need to know if they are willing to entertain. In other words, are they going to develop a usable and sustainable system that will meet the needs for years to come, or are they just creating another band aid that still requires way too much manual labor? We shall see.

More HawkSoft work in the afternoon and another video call with Darrin. Sean has given me a long-term project I can work on whenever I have time. It will probably take months, if not a year or so to complete it. Especially since I can only work a few hours a week. Anyway, that is good. That means I always have something I can work on, even if Darrin doesn't have any certifications for me to do. 

Saturday was a lazy day. Steve did his normal grocery shopping and I dabbled on the computer. I worked on my blog book for a while and then I did some more HawkSoft. We lazed around the afternoon after Steve go back and watched some TV. Then we went to a party!!! Vicki's daughter threw her a 75th Birthday Party. Luckily the weather and cooled a bit since the party was outside. She had a good turnout, and it was a lot of fun. One of her son's surprised her with a two-week vacation to Hawaii that she will take in November. A grandson arranged for a friend of theirs who has a vintage '64 mustang to bring the car over. Vicki used to have a '64 mustang and had been "missing" her car. She was thrilled to sit in the car and have lots of pictures taken. We presented her with a copy of the beautiful picture Steve took outside the Bountiful Temple last October. She loved it. 

Steve gave Vicki a copy of the
picture he took. Disregard
the reflection of Sister
Wilcox in the picture. LOL

Sunday was good. All the talks were great and we had a 5th Sunday forum which was also good. Later in the afternoon we went to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for our monthly One Heart social to say hello and goodbye to missionaries. We are loosing two our our missionary couples from our floor. The Durrants and the Alders. One lives right across the hall from us and the other is two doors down. They both leave near the end of August so we still have a few more weeks with them. We enjoyed visiting after the short meeting. Lots of yummy treats and great company. It was a very nice day.

Oh, we also called and sang Happy Birthday to our beloved granddaughter, Alena. I can't believe how grownup she is. She has been living in the apartment at Auntie My's house since she has been working an internship in Portland. That ends in August. She is applying for a job in Canby this coming Thursday. I hope she gets it!

Enjoy the sunshine. We are headed into a week of rain and still hot temperatures. I'm not looking forward to the humidity. 😒

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Elijah Choir Concert, Temple Leadership Pre-recordings event, User Stories, Dinner with the Burgoynes, and the Movies

With that title, there isn't much else to write. Hahaha. I started Monday at the Wellness Center and then headed up to the cubicle to work on Dataverse. I had a meeting scheduled with Matt and I hadn't touched it for at least two weeks. While I was mapping some fields so I could import data from PLUNET, I emailed Matt a few questions I had. After I shared the fields, I thought we needed to capture and he shared the fields they had already decided they wanted, I told him I would get right on adding the fields to the Contacts table so I could import the PLUNET data. He wrote back and told me not to worry about adding them. He was going to do that. And ICS was going to be doing some of the programming. I responded with "What am I supposed to be doing?" Don't get me wrong, I have felt this whole project needs to be done by employees and not me since I will be leaving before it ever gets close to being done. Long story short, I don't need to worry about all the things I THOUGHT I was supposed to be doing. I will be writing up User Stories of what Interpretation needs in the new system. FINALLY, something I can do that won't require me to learn a brand-new system that I will never use again. YAY!!! 

Monday evening, we went to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for the Elijah Choir Pioneer Day Concert. It was nice, but some of the songs were a little different. I wasn't crazy about them. Several Choir members shared pioneer ancestor stories and that was really good. I think I liked the music from past years better.

Tuesday was a very long day. We started with the morning session of the first of three days for the Temple Leadership Pre-recordings event. It was supposed to be Tieline, but France couldn't do it, so our SLC French team had to come in. We had other Tieline languages recording as well. We were able to watch our Zone Devotional with President Jackson. He gave a great devotional. He showed us how he had marked 2 Nephi 31. It was AWESOME. I think I want to do that in one of my Scriptures Study times. 

At 10:00 I had my video meeting with Matt. That is when I learned about doing User Stories and such. I felt better after that meeting. The morning event ended just at noon, so we headed for lunch. I spent whatever time I had during the rest of the day between meetings and our evening event working on by Blog/Book. I'm making good progress. If I can find time, I could be all caught up in a few more weeks. 

Cattle Drive down North Temple

We had our Team meeting at 2:00. Baptiste went over the new language model we are launching on August 14th. It involves the areas taking over managing the 22 languages that have teams in both the Areas and SLC. This will make for a more cohesive team experience. There will be lots of bugs to be worked out so that General Conference will run smoothly. At the same time the full-time employee will start taking over the PLUNET jobs from us. There will be even more bugs to work out on that front. Hahaha. In the long run this will be much better and easier for our team and more especially allow us to add more and more languages to our team without having to add more employees. I think it is a good thing and I'm glad they are starting now so we can work out the bugs before General Conference and before we leave. Tuesday evening, we had the second event for the day. It was the local languages and two Tieline Area Pacific languages for the Temple Leadership Pre-recordings event. We had 3 brothers from the Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai teams. We also had Samoa and Tonga on Tieline. We finished a little after 9:00 that night. It was so fun to interact with the brothers during dinner. I was not familiar with the Thai brothers at all so that was very nice.

Wednesday was an easier day for us. The Linfords did both Temple Leadership Pre-recordings event sessions for Wednesday. We worked in the morning and then went to the Temple in the afternoon. We had a miracle experience before the Temple. Our appointment was for 4:30, but since things were slow, we decided to go right after lunch. We needed to go the apartment before heading out so I could change. When we got to our elevator, we rode up with the Alders. Elder Alder just had surgery on his foot and was still a bit groggy from the procedure. He had crutches and Sister Alder had a walker for him. Neither were set appropriately for his height, and he was struggling. After almost falling on the crutches, he switched to the walker. That wasn't working very well either. Elder Wilcox then adjusted the crutches. About that time, Elder Bailey came up behind us and together Elder Wilcox and Elder Bailey had Elder Alder put his arms over their shoulders and they pretty much carried him to his apartment. They are almost as far as we are down the hall. When we got to the apartment door, we had Sister Alder get the office chair with wheels on it so Elder Alder could sit. We then rolled him into his room and put him to bed. 

As we were going our separate ways, Sister Alder thanked us for being there to help her as she said there was no way she could have done it herself. Elder Bailey, who lives between the Alders and us, told us how he just happened to be there. He forgot his phone that morning and tried to go the day without it. After lunch he was bored with what he was doing and looked for a way to escape. Then he thought about his phone and realized he may need it if he had to get into some programs that required two step verification, so he headed back to the apartment for his phone and some chocolate. We told Sister Alder that we were headed to the Temple, but our appointment wasn't until 4:30. We decided to see if we could catch an earlier session and just happened to be there at the exact time she needed help. Was it a coincidence that we all just happened to be there at that exact time? I don't think so. Sister Alder said it was a miracle and we all agreed. Heavenly Father knows each of us and will put people into our lives at the exact time we need them. We are happy we listened to the promptings to go to the Temple earlier that day.

Our Portuguese Team

Thursday was kind of a repeat of Tuesday, minus the extra meetings. We did the final two Temple Leadership Pre-recordings event sessions. One morning and one evening. This time we had all sisters for both events. In the morning we had one German sister to help the German Tieline team as well as our French team. The session went great and we finished just before lunch. I spent part of the morning after the Zone Devotional working on some User Stories.

Curtis in France

Curtis was back from his two-week France vacation, so he decided to get a jump start on General Conference. He is in charge this conference. We had a short General Conference prep meeting. Our evening event went much longer than expected. Two of our Thai sisters were brand new. This was their very first event. Elder Wilcox was able to get their badges and parking passes ordered so they were able to pick them up. He was unable to get their picture credentials. Hopefully they will be here by General Conference.

Dessert for our Event

The sisters' meetings were difficult in several ways. Even our very experienced French team in the morning took about 45 minutes longer than expected to do retakes. Our poor Thai sisters didn't have a chance. The two main problems were 1) The sisters that were speaking tended to talk very fast. Sister Yee is currently one of the fastest speakers we have. Fast speakers are NOT easy to interpret. 2) two of the sisters that were in the panel discussion had very heavy English accents. I even had trouble understanding them. And they both answered a lot of questions and made lots of comments. 

Portuguese and Spanish finished up around 9ish, which was the expected time. They may have done a miner retake or two, but all-in-all, they were done on time. Our poor Thai sisters had to redo the panel discussion several times. I think we finished at 11:00 PM. We told them not all events were that hard and to not give up. They were all so very nice. I look forward to working with them again. We have two other Temple Leadership events so I'm sure we will get to work together again.

We slept in on Friday because we were so late on Thursday. We managed to get to the office around 10. We did some work, but it was really slow. The Linfords left at noon. I think we left at 2. We lounged at home for a while before we went to the Burgoyne's house for dinner and games. It was SO MUCH FUN to see them again and visit with them. I couldn't believe how fast the time went and it was after 9 when we finally went home. They invited their next-door neighbors over for dessert. We enjoyed meeting and visiting them too. It was a great evening.

Saturday, I was up by eight. After doing my scripture study, I started on HawkSoft. I had three certifications to do. Testing everything for both version 5 and version 6 and comparing them to each other takes some time. I put in nearly 4.5 hours. We finished just in time to head to the movies to see the first feature film from the original Studio C cast called "Go West". It is only open in Utah and Idaho for now but should open up in a month or two around the country. It is a funny spoof on traveling on the Oregon Trail. We enjoyed it. 

On morning Sunday, we spoke in Sacrament meeting. They had three Senior missionaries speak. Sister Smith spoke first and talked about pioneers. She shared several pioneer stories from her ancestors. She gave some fascinating statistics about crossing the plains to Utah. I shared how for years I thought I was the Pioneer in our family being the first to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Recently I found out that I actually have some pioneer ancestors that came from Sweden in the 1860s and crossed the plains to Utah to be with the Saints. However, I didn't talk about them. I shared how I learned to "Hear Him" through many experiences throughout my life, but especially since being on our mission. Elder Wilcox talked out July. He said 19 days ago we celebrated the 4th of July, our country's independence. Then 9 days ago was the French revolution celebration of Bastille Day that he celebrates with a couple of our French co-workers. And then tomorrow is our own celebration for religious freedom as we celebrate Pioneer Day. He shared two of his favorite poems. He read "Ode to Oregon" by Garrison Keillor at the beginning of his talk. He then read “Ragged ‘Old Flag” by Johnny Cash at the end of his talk. Between the two poems he talked about several experiences in our lives where we could see the hand of the Lord leading us where we needed to be at particular times in our lives. He tied everything together beautifully.

I hope you have a wonderful week. Please know how much we love you. We will let you all know as soon as we receive our new mission call. We expect it to come in the next couple of weeks. 

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Back to Normal, Temple Leadership, Tabernacle Choir Summer Concert, and Park Lane Senior Living

Monday started bright and early with our Mission Devotional in the COB Auditorium. Our speakers were wonderful. Two of the talks particularly touched me. All the talks were about how the Spirit touches them. Sister Thompson talked about her experiences trying to get to her mission while COVID was rearing its ugly head. She faced setbacks, headaches, and other problems. The last time her Bishop called to say he was finally ready to submit her papers; and did she still want him to proceed, she was ready to tell him "No". She felt the Lord didn't really want her because of all the problems she had been through. When she opened her mouth to tell him "No" she couldn't believe she heard the word "yes" come out of her mouth. She knew she hadn't said it, so where did it come from? When her call came and she arrived at the Headquarters Mission, she knew Heavenly Father knew her and this is where she needed to be. Sister Thompson works in the Prison Ministry.

The Ures and the Durrants

Sister Gabbard told the story about how she got on her mission as well. It was completely different from Sister Thompson's path. Hers started years ago when her older brother enlisted in the Army. He had tried several times and was rejected because they told him he had heart issues. After the third rejection, he went to the doctors, and they told him his heart was fine. He was just so excited when he would go to enlist that his heart was racing. With a note from the doctor, he tried again. This time they had him wait for a while before they did his exam and found that everything was just fine. He loved the army and serving his country. After a couple of years two soldiers came to their door with the news of his death. He was a pilot and was shot down. Fast forward many years to Sister Gabbard submitting her papers for a mission. She was called to Military Relations. She never served in the military, but felt the Spirit tell her that she is now serving to finish out her brother's tour. It was a very touching story.

I managed to get to the Wellness Center, and it sure felt good to be back. I spent much of the day working on redoing the PLUNET order for the Temple Leadership Seminar. I had a short meeting with Darrin and Brita about Carrier Setup in HawkSoft. It was fun to talk to them. Just as we were ready to go home, I got projects from both Baptiste and Eunlan. Neither project was long, so I sent Elder Wilcox home since he had to go get refreshments for Family Home Evening and I stayed to finish up those two projects. Again, as I was ready to walk out the door, Baptiste had another project for me. This one he needed by Wednesday so I went home and said I would work on it Tuesday.

Adassa from Encanto

Our Family Home Evening went well. We have two new couples on our floor. The Pynes are from Colorado. The other couple had other plans so we will hopefully see them in a couple of weeks. (No FHE next week due to the Elijah Choir Pioneer Day Concert.) We started with the Pynes introducing themselves to us and then we all introduced ourselves to them. We had a wonderful time asking questions of each other and getting to know everyone better. We played a few games and then had strawberry shortcake for dessert. It was a lovely evening.

Waiting to pass out tickets to the Concert

Tuesday started with the Wellness Center and our Zone Devotional. I spent the day working the various projects Baptiste gave me in between a Division Meeting, a tour of the Mission Office, and our Team Meeting. That pretty much took up the whole day. That evening we had the second session of the 2023 Temple Leadership Seminary Pre-recordings event. The first session was that morning with tieline teams. We were supposed to have an MTC devotional but that got cancelled. We expected the event to go until 10:00 PM but were presently surprised when it ended almost an hour early. We got to hear presentations for the First Presidency to the new Temple Presidents around the world. It was very cool. Next week we have three more days where we will hear from various leaders in the Church.

The project Eunlan had me do on Monday was to setup the Tabernacle Choir Summer Concert 2023. On Monday we thought it was only going to be Saturday night. The performances were both Friday and Saturday night. We had tickets for Friday night. On Tuesday we got a rush request to have a Spanish interpreter on site in the Conference Center to "help" with the program. The concert was to be in both Spanish and English and she was to help coordinate and coach how that would work. Wednesday and Thursday were rehearsals, and Friday and Saturday were performances. They wanted her there all four nights! So, on Wednesday I modified the PLUNET order I set up on Monday to accommodate the extra Spanish Interpreter.

Passing out Tickets

I started Wednesday at the Wellness Center and spent the morning modifying the report Baptiste needed that morning. I gave him a little more information and tweaked it in a different format. We had our One-on-One with Baptiste in the afternoon. He mentioned that the producer wants to close the April General Conference soon, so he tasked me to work with Elder Linford to get all the invoices taken care of. The Linfords were going to be back in the office on Thursday, so the timing was good. Once again, as we were heading home, Baptiste chatted me with an urgent PLUNET order for Music and the Spoken Word for Friday. Normally this is an event that Curtis does, but he is in Europe on vacation, and it sort of slipped through the cracks. When we started, Baptiste was one of our supervisors. He handled Music and the Spoken Word, so it was a piece of cake for him. I used to do the PLUNET orders for him, so it was a no brainer for us. Sister Linford has been making those orders, but they were still out of town. Aaron was going to cover the event. I took care of that before I left.

Thursday was another Wellness Center and our Zone Devotional. The Linfords were back so they took over PLUNET stuff again. Since we did the Tuesday event, they were going to do the Saturday Tabernacle Choir event. They had their one-on-one with Baptiste where he told them about doing the invoice cleanup for April General Conference. I was working on the report while they were having the meeting so when it was over, I gave Elder Linford the SLC report. Baptiste wanted me to create separate reports for each of the Areas around the world, so I worked on that. We left around 3 to go to the Temple. It was so good to be back since we had missed about 2 weeks.

Friday morning was spent on the Area spreadsheets. As soon as they were done, Baptiste had me working on another report validating the PLUNET status and type (volunteer or contractor) of nearly 400 interpreters. I finished it by the end of the day, even though he didn't need it until Tuesday morning. Around 9:45 AM we got a call from President Leptich. He got a call for the SLC Mission office from one of our missionaries who lives a couple of doors down from us who works in the Mission processing office for Senior Missionaries. She had so follow-up questions for President Leptich so they can finish processing our new mission call. I haven't had a chance to talk to Sister Ipson yet to see what she knows. LOL She can't tell me anyway 😒

On Thursday we were told we had 10 tickets for the Tabernacle Choir Summer Concert for the Interpreters so they could get a handle on what they were going to be doing. They were put on Elder Wilcox's desk and suddenly we became responsible for distributing the tickets. The multi-language coordinators contacted their interpreters to see if any wanted tickets. At first, we only had 5 takers so that left five tickets for staff. 😊We had nosebleed tickets so the chance to change them for center front plaza tickets was AWESOME. Then we got another interpreter who wanted 4 tickets so that knocked the staff out. 😢

On Friday, we got word that the Saturday night Spanish team was requested to be there on Friday night so we could record the Spanish to English interpretation for the other teams to use on Saturday night. That way they could interpret simultaneous instead of delayed simultaneous waiting for the Spanish team to interpret before they could interpret. Pretty crazy! The Linfords were already covering Saturday night so they just got dinner for the Friday night people (only two interpreters, Aaron, and the engineer) and then headed to the concert since we were passing out the tickets on Friday night and couldn't cover the event.

We were also told we had 14 MORE tickets that were still center front, only they were in the place section right behind the first set of tickets. Still FABULOUS tickets. So Linfords, Eunlan and her husband, and the Wilcoxes all claimed tickets. We tried to find takers for the other 8 tickets. I contacted the rest of our team to see if they wanted tickets. No takers. Eunlan said we could give them to other missionaries. I managed to give away 6 more tickets to some of our FHE group. Then the interpreter who wanted 4 tickets cancelled on us and I had four more to give away. I went to the street to see if I could give anymore away. I only gave 2 away before I had to go in and get my seat. The concert was incredible. It was in English and Spanish with subtitles for whichever language was not being spoken. The music was so fun with songs from around the world. It was mostly English and Latin American songs, but they had a few others in the mix. I was so impressed that they sang all those songs in the language of the song, not in English. They also had several Choir and Orchestra members from Latin America do part of a presentation. 

Alex Melecio is one of our interpreters. He was also the Host of the concert, and he sang the amazing final song. The choir sang the backup. It was so beautiful and exciting and awesome. Everyone turned their flashlights on their phones on and waved them around. It was so cool. As we were leaving, we ran into a couple of our interpreters who were not the ones we gave tickets to. They weren't doing the concert on Saturday. It was fun to see them in a nice casual setting.

Saturday, I stayed home all day! I did a little work on some Interpretation projects, but most of the day was spent on HawkSoft certification. After such a busy week it was nice to have a relaxing evening. 

Sunday was awesome. The Missionaries sang a Pioneer song that was written by our pianist’s son. It turned out really well. The sacrament talks were great, and we thoroughly enjoyed Sunday School. At 1:00 we went to the Park Lane Senior Living center to give the Sacrament to the residents there who wanted to attend. That will be our assignment on the 1st and 3rd weeks of every month until we leave. I'm so happy about that. We will have one of the counselors and their wives attend every other month with us so there will always be 4 of us. One of the four of us will give a very short talk on the 3rd week and we will have a Testimony meeting on the 1st week. The residents are so sweet. I know we are going to love this assignment.

I hope you are all enjoying Summer. It sure has been hot around here. I'm so glad we have air conditioning. LOL

All our Love and Prayers,
Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

More Oregon, Family, Great-Granddaughter, and a little bit of work

Clan at the Molalla 4th of July Parade

Monday was a pretty laid-back day. We got more pictures of our beautiful great granddaughter. She is so cute!!! I also worked with Sean on getting the new version of HawkSoft installed and a quick little training on all things new. I managed to even work a couple of hours to get to know the new way of doing things. Sean wants me to retest all our previous certifications in the new version so it looks like I will have plenty to keep me busy for a while. 

Tuesday was the Fourth of July. It has been several years between COVID and our mission since we have been able to attend the Molalla 4th of July Parade. We took Anna, Alyx, and Elle with us. Our oldest son, Douhet set up two big canopies so we could all sit in the shade. I think there must have been nearly 40 people under the two canopies. We had lots of fun and Elle got lots of candy. She sat in the front row and was right on top of it. 

Baby Ruth Talei Hawkins

After the parade we stopped at our house to pick up something we needed before heading back to our daughter's house. We just lounged around and even dosed for a while. I can't remember the last time I took a nap. Lol 

Sierra and Shonee showed up around 4:30. Alena showed up an hour or so later. We had such a wonderful visit with them and enjoyed a delicious dinner. We checked out Alena’s apartment since we haven’t seen it since they added the second bedroom. It all looks really nice. We told Alena she can stay there if she gets a permanent job locally so that eased some of her worry. Her temp job ends in August, so she is looking for something more permanent. After the Langfords went home, I jumped in the shower. Sean took the girls to the middle school close to the house to watch fireworks. We ended up just watching some TV.

Douhet at the Parade

We decided we were going to go home by way of Idaho Falls so we could have some time with our new great granddaughter. We were going to stop overnight so we were in no hurry to leave at the crack of dawn. We finally got on the road around 10:00 AM. With some construction on the normal road home, Steve decided to take the scenic route by going around the backside of Mt. Hood. We had a couple of slowdowns with some traffic and then a low tire indicator. We added air to the tires, reset the indicator and were on our way only to have the indicator come on again. We were afraid we had a nail in the tire. We found a Honda dealer and got it all checked out. They reset the indicator again and sent us on our way. We had no further issues. 

Shonee and Alena on the
4th of July

We stopped in Mountain Home, Idaho for the night. Djeryd said they had a baby doctor's appointment in the morning and could we come in the afternoon. So, again we made it a leisurely morning getting on the road. We rolled into their place around 1:00. We had a wonderful visit and I got to hold baby Ruth to my heart's content. I even got great grandpa to hold her too. Such fun. We had another appointment to see two of our granddaughters who are attending BYU-I so we hit the road again. We met up with Madison and Audrey at a frozen yogurt shop and visited for almost an hour. it was so fun to see them. Audrey visited us a couple of weeks ago and we were trying to talk Madison into visiting before our mission ends. We arrived home around 7:30 Thursday night.

Technically, we were still off on Friday, but we checked in to see if there was anything that was needed. The Linfords had left for their vacation, so it was good that I checked in. Originally, we were supposed to be back to work on Thursday. Baptiste and Xenia each had something for me to do. I took care of Baptiste's request in the morning and then we went to the movies to see the latest Indiana Jones movie. We went to dinner afterwards. That was fun. By the time we got back, Xenia had sent me her request, so I took care of that for her. That was the extent of my "work". 

Saturday, Steve went grocery shopping, and I went to work on HawkSoft. It actually took most of the day. Darrin had several certifications for me to do and now I must check them in both Version 5 and Version 6 until everyone is officially moved over to Version 6. That could take up to a year, probably sooner. It was nice to settle down for the evening. 

Elle at the Parade

Sunday we were up early to attend choir practice in our new ward. They are having all the missionaries sing a song for Pioneer Day. Actually, we will be singing next week, but it is a Pioneer Day song. It is an original. The son of the sister who is playing the piano for us wrote the song. It is pretty easy, once you learn all the codas and such. Lol We sounded a whole lot better today than we did the last time we practiced. I think we will probably do just fine. We have been asked to help with visiting the care facility every other week until our mission ends. I'm glad about that. We will go again next week. We have also been asked to speak next Sunday so that will be fun.

Eva, Great Grandpa,
and Baby Ruth

Sunday afternoon we attended a One Heart Gathering at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to mingle with our mission. Since they dissolved the branch and put us all in different wards, we don't get to see our missionary friends much anymore. We only see the ones we either work with, sort of live with, or attend Church with. There are lots of other friends we have made that we never get to see anymore so they decided to have this One Heart Gathering at least once a month so we and mingle together. It is a way to welcome the new missionaries into the mission and say goodbye to those who are leaving.

Well, we are getting back to normal. We have an event on Tuesday and three events the following week. July is pretty slow. I don't see anything else on the calendar.

Anna, Elle, Grandpa, Grandma, and Alyx

I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July!!! Enjoy your Summer!!!

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

OREGON!!! WEDDING!!! FAMILY!!!

UPDATE First Great Granddaughter!!!

Monday started with a wonderful Mission Devotional by the International Zone. We actually had it in the JSMB instead of the COB auditorium. The problem we ran into, was all the badges were disabled so we couldn't get into the JSMB. They have started reconstruction, so they want to keep everyone out. We had to get the Security guys to open the doors for us. Anyway, one of the Elders that spoke is from Hong Kong. He shared several things going on with the Chinese research. He then showed a family Temple card that he took to the Temple a little while ago. He asked us to notice the date. He was born in 3030 BC. I can't even fathom that. All of the speakers were great. 

Once back at my cubicle I did some work on the Mission Leader Seminar as well as helping Sister Linford with a problem she was having with receipts. We left right after lunch as we had an in-home health appointment for our insurance company. The doctor was running a little late, so we ended up taking the rest of the afternoon off. There wasn't much going on so it was no big deal. That evening we had Family Home Evening. Elder Wilcox did the lesson that he presented in Elder's quorum a few weeks ago. He said it was much better at Family Home Evening because he had a lot ore participation. We had a wonderful discussion.

Tuesday started with our first in-person Zone Devotional in the COB auditorium. We decided we may do this at least once a quarter if not more often. President Jackson and his wife presented a great devotional. After the devotional I went to the Wellness Center. I studied scriptures, worked on the Zone quarterly history, prepared for our Team meeting, and had a short meeting with Matt. 
Tuesday started with our first in-person Zone Devotional in the COB auditorium. We decided we may do this at least once a quarter if not more often. President Jackson and his wife presented a great devotional. After the devotional I went to the Wellness Center. I studied scriptures, worked on the Zone quarterly history, prepared for our Team meeting, and had a short meeting with Matt. 

In the afternoon I worked on debugging the Receipts spreadsheet. I couldn’t find anything wrong with it except perhaps an error in the naming of it. I think it should be fine now. Then we had our team meeting. Silvia finally showed up to tell us what we were doing wrong with “training” our interpreters how to do their invoicing. Frankly we are not doing a single thing wrong. The system is the problem. I have brought it up for over two years now and they still insist the interpreters are not trained. It is complicated and even walking them through it step by step several times, some still just don’t get it. Apparently, Venky and Elder Linford are working with the interpreters now so, it is not my problem anymore. We came home early to pack for our trip tomorrow.

Wednesday started the day by getting up at 5:30 in the morning. We were on the road by 5:40. For the most part we had a very uneventful drive. We ate breakfast in Tremonton. We got a Dairy Queen blizzard around lunch time. We made good time until we got to Portland. Then it took almost two hours to finally make it to Canby. We had a nice visit before finally going to bed. 

Thursday, I got up early so I could watch the Zone Devotional since Sister Robison was supposed to do the presentation. However, she was not feeling well so Elder Johnson covered it. He had surgery on Monday to have 4 stints put in his heart. He looked much better then he has in a while. His presentation was about the Leadership Pattern course. For some reason, my microphone quit working. I could hear, just not talk. After the devotional I tried a Teams video call with Aaron and still couldn’t use my microphone. After that call, I went to the HP support app, and it fixed my microphone!!! I finished up my work with the Mission Leader Seminar. I don’t think I have any other work to follow up on. I did a few things for the Zone SharePoint site.

When that was done, we went out to Laila’s house so Steve could pick up his shield for Montana’s wedding. We had Elle with us. We stopped for lunch and then went to Deseret Book so Steve could get some new garments. Then we came back home. I sat outside with Elle while she played in the hot tub. Then we got ready for dinner.

Sassie, Paul, Carol and Erik all came over for dinner. We had a lovely evening eating outside and visiting with each other. Once everyone left, we did dishes, visited a bit more and then headed for bed.

Friday, I got up and did my scripture study first thing this morning. I played the Wii with Elle for a while before we headed back upstairs to work on a big puzzle. 

A little later, Sean took me to lunch with Paul and Jason. They meet for lunch every Friday for a HawkSoft business lunch. It was nice they let me tag along.

Once back home we spent the rest of the day working on the puzzle. We finally finished it just in time for dinner. At three thirty, Sean, MyLiege, and Elle went to pick up Anna and Alyx from the Trek. When they got back, MyLiege had to rush off to do wedding rehearsal pictures. The girls told us lots of things about trek. It was fun to see how much they were touched by their experiences.

The girls took showers and Sean picked up pizza. Then we had dinner. After dinner we watched the last of the Star Wars movies before finally heading for bed. 

Saturday was the BIG day for Montana and Lauren.  I got up and did my scripture study first thing in the morning. I did my nails a little later. We watched an afternoon movie called The Lorax and ate a famous grilled ham and cheese sandwich that Elle made. She is 9 years-old and made the perfect sandwich. Then we got ready for Montana’s wedding. We had to be there early for grandparent pictures, so we got there at 4:00. The wedding wasn’t until 7:00. They had a light dinner for us.

Around 6:30 more people started showing up for the ceremony. I was pleased that Season, Sara, and the boys came. Douhet, Kylee, and Alyson came. Laila and Tyus came. And of course, Sean and the girls came. MyLiege and Anna were taking all the wedding pictures, so they were already there.

The ceremony was somewhat Celtic in nature. It was very nice. Lauren’s wedding dress was gold and very regal looking. She looked beautiful. Elder Wilcox did a short Sword presentation to Montana and Lauren as well as the rest of Montana's immediate family.  Lauren had her own sword, so they took a lot of pictures with the two swords. It was perfect for what they wanted.

After doing some back and forth with President Leptich's Executive Secretary and Stake Clerk we finally got an appoint scheduled for Sunday morning to finalize our new Mission paperwork. 

Sunday morning started with our interview with President Leptich. It went very well, and it was so good to see him in person for our interview. He said he would try and submit it that day. After the interview, we headed to Molalla to attend our home ward. Since the trek was last week all the testimonies were from the kids and just a couple of adults. It was amazing and I was greatly touched. Then singing several patriotic songs just topped off a wonderful meeting. It was fun seeing so many people we know and love. We had an enjoyable evening visiting and playing games.

Baby Ruth!!!

FLASH!!! Our first GREAT Grandchild, Ruth Hawkins was born about 10:44 mountain time. I don't have any statistics yet. Mother and Baby are doing great. 

All our Love and Happy 4th of July!!!!
Mom and Dad
Grandma and Grandpa
Steve and Leslee
Elder and Sister Wilcox