The Week After

BYU Law and Religious Symposium

We are almost back to normal. We were able to sleep in Monday morning. Sister Sapp took the day off. We went to the office around 9. I wasn't able to get as much done as I had hoped to. Elder Sapp and Elder Wilcox asked a lot of questions and needed help most of the day. 
I spent as much of the day as I could reconciling my reports to make sure I had all the people that attended General Conference and the hours they worked. It was confusing because we had a number of people who checked in and weren't assigned to any talks. There were others that were assigned talks verbally, but were not in Event Central so they didn't show up on any reports. It took most of the day to get it all figured out. 

Lunch between Temple Dedications

We had a wonderful Family Home Evening led by Elder and Sister Slack. We had a great discussion on Light; The Light of Christ, The Light of the sun, The Light of understand and how they are all connected and come from God. We were joined by our two new missionary couples in our apartment complex. We enjoyed both of them very much. After FHE, I jumped on the computer and worked until 1:00 AM.

Tuesday started with our Zone Devotional. I finished with all the problems I was having with the reconciliation. I was finally able to start updating hours and delivering jobs in PLUNET. We had two different events during the day and the Sapps took care of them so I had time without distractions to work. I got about half of the jobs done by the end of the day. I got home a little after 6, took a shower and actually relaxed for a little while before going to bed.

Eric, our Engineer

Wednesday, I started to work from home to see if I could finish up the PLUNET order. When it came time to go to the office, I decided to say at home and finish. I'm glad I did. I was all done by 9:30 AM and headed into the office. Once in the office, my plans for the day went out the window. I ended up working on other requests from people and fixing the missionaries' spreadsheet several times. The Sapps are still overriding the formulas in the spreadsheet so it doesn't work the way it was designed to work.

I found out on Wednesday from Baptiste that the Church is NOT going to hire a full-time coordinator to do the work the missionaries were doing. I'm not sure who is going to take over PLUNET. We talked about me serving a Service Mission for a few more months until they can figure things out, but Baptiste said they are going to cut me loose in November. The Sapps are still not going to be authorized to manage that and they are not adding an additional full time missionary couple. I'll keep you posted on what is going to happen.

Thursday was a little slower day for me. I still stayed busy all day, but I mostly worked on getting caught up on the things I couldn't do while I was focusing on General Conference. I still didn't finish everything, but a least I wasn't feeling quite so overwhelmed anymore. I gave a quick tour for Sister Nicholls and one of the students at Ensign College and his parents. It was a very quick tour and a lot of fun. After work, we went to the Temple. It had been three weeks so it was very good to be there again. 

Baptiste gave everyone off on Friday, but of course almost nobody took it off as we used the day to get caught up. We just didn't go into the COB. I planned on just working for a bit in the morning and then spending the afternoon on HawkSoft since I haven't done anything in about two weeks. What actually occurred was working on Church work until nearly 3:00 and then only spending about 3 hours on HawkSoft. I still have some finish work to do for General Conference, but for the most part I'm done.

Sister Wilcox and Maritza from the Spanish Team

Saturday we started the day with the Modesto Temple groundbreaking ceremony. We finished with at around noon and headed home. I managed to finish updating all the PLUNET templates while at the event. When I got home I spent the rest of the day on HawkSoft and completed all the certifications I had to work on. I am almost caught up with everything that has been on my plate for while. Now we can start concentrating on the loose ends for our mission to New Zealand.

Sunday was spent at the Church Office Building with two Temple Dedications. Two sessions were for the McAllen Texas Temple and the other two sessions were for the Feather River California Temple. They were all very nice. Elder Utchdorf presided at the McAllen Temple and Elder Soares presided at the Feather River California Temple. We did Spanish for both Temples and added Hmong for the Feather River Temple. I was able to work on my blogs during my time there. We finished up around 4:00 PM. We started a little after 7:00 AM. We had a nice relaxing late afternoon and evening.

It is hard to say goodbye to some of our interpreters that I won't see again. At this point, I don't know who I will see again. We don't have that many events scheduled in the near future. 

I hope you have a great week and enjoy this beautiful Fall weather.

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

McAllen Texas Temple

Feather River California Temple