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