Winding Down, 5 Events, 19 Straight Days, and a Day Off

We have pretty much worked 19 days straight from September 25th to October 13th. We supposedly took Friday, October 6th off, but I ended up working the whole day at home. We had General Conference the weekend of September 30 and October 1 and then the following weekend of October 7th and 8th. We again, supposedly had Friday, October 13th off but I still worked at home. I must admit that I didn't work the whole day because PLUNET was down for part of the day, but I did manage to stay busy. 

So, Monday morning we slept in since we worked the weekend. Our Mission Devotional was scheduled for Monday evening because they don't hold a Mission Devotional after General Conference. I managed to go to the Wellness Center again after missing for two weeks. I was still very tired, but it felt good to be back on the treadmill. It isn't as if I didn't get any exercise during those two weeks. My total steps were higher than most weeks. Hahaha. I managed to get everything done on my checklist so that felt good.

We don't normally have events on Monday's, but we had one that day. It was during the day so that was nice. It was for the Leadership Enrichment Series. On Monday we did a Spanish to English interpretation so we could do English to Portuguese and French the following Thursday. It proved to be a lot more challenging than they thought as the "translated" scripts were not very good. Our interpreters ended up doing simultaneous instead. Thankfully it was pre-recorded from the live event in September, so we were able to do retakes until we got it right. It took an hour longer than expected.

Monday evening, we headed back to the COB for our Mission Devotional. Elder Brian and Sister Jill Taylor of the Seventy. Sister Taylor is the only daughter of Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone of the Seventy. They gave a great fireside. They were funny and also very spiritual. We really enjoyed their talks. They focused their remarks on the Doctrine of Christ.

Tuesday was fairly busy. We started with our Zone Devotional. We also had a General Conference retake in the morning for one of our area teams. We didn't have to do anything for it. We had our Team meeting in the afternoon. It went a little long because we cancelled our meeting last week. I spent much of the day adding helpful notes to the Missionary Spreadsheet for the Sapps, as well as, updating the Missionary operations manual for them. I didn't finish the manual until Thursday.

Not long after our meeting we had two evening events that started 1/2 hour apart. The first one was a Post-Recording for the GCLM Instruction by the Twelve Apostles. I think we had to rerecord Korean (SLC) and Mandarin (Tieline). That one was scheduled from 5:30 to 8:30 (counting call time) They ended pretty much right on time. The second event was our monthly MTC Devotional.  This one was with Elder and Sister Gong. It was only 2 hours from 6:00 to 8:00 and went very well. That was the one we got to watch. We sent the Sapps home after the MTC because we needed to hang around for Jeanpierre to finish his production. He had back-to-back productions for Tuesday and Wednesday where he had to work later in the evening and start very early the next morning. So, we let him crash in our second bedroom. Because of the late and early hours, we didn't get to visit much, but I'm glad we could help him out.

Wednesday was another fairly busy day. Just as I got to the COB, I received a text from Ken and Leanne Jenson telling me they were about 20 minutes out. I asked where they wanted to meet, and they said the apartment. At that point I realized I forgot my name badge and my access badge at home, so I needed to go home anyway. Steve was still home because he had a dentist appointment to take care of a couple of small cavities he had. Luckily, the Jenson's arrive before Steve had to leave and they were still there by the time he got back so we were both able to visit for a while. They had lots of questions about the Headquarters Mission as they recently received that call here. They will arrive about two weeks after we go home. We have put in a good word in hopes they can get our apartment. Hahaha. They left around 10:30 and we headed to the office.

I continued working on the spreadsheet instructions and the operations manual. Around 5:00 I got kicked out of EVERYTHING. So did Elder Wilcox. We think it had something to do with our mission ending and somebody just didn't have the right dates. We had another event that night, so I got on the phone with Global Tech to figure out what happened. They told me I was removed from the system. I told him we had 4 more weeks left. He said he needed my manager's permission to put me back in the system, so he called Baptiste. He was as shocked as I was and gave permission to add me back. It took a while to get entered back into everything I had access to, but before too long I was good to go. It was a good thing too, as I needed to help Aaron, our supervisor that night and one of our interpreters. Aaron needed to send a fillable PDF to someone and I'm the only what with authority to create them. I suppose that was good that that happened now so I can put it on my list to make sure someone else gets that program. Our event that night was the Utah Area Educational Devotional. It was really good. Our speakers included Elder Gilbert, Elder Pearson, Sister Emily Freeman, and Elder D. Todd Christofferson. Jeanpierre spent another night with us after his production.

I forgot to mention, when I got to the office that morning, I got a message from Sister Burgoyne. They went home several months ago. Anyway, she asked if we had received a surprise package from them. I said we hadn't received anything. She got concerned, because she said it should have been delivered the day before. I told her I would ask the people on our floor to see if anyone had picked up a package for us. She texted a little later and said it would be delivered that day. When we got home after our event there was a package in the foyer of our apartment complex. Usually someone from the floor will take it up to the apartment it belongs to. When we looked at the address it had no name, but the apartment was #318. We don't have a #318 on our floor. I thought it may be for us, so I looked around the box a little more. I found a from address that had the name of Greg Burgoyne. Then I knew it was for us. When I opened the box, it took forever to get all the bubble wrap off before I could see what it was. To our GREAT delight, Elder Burgoyne made us a model airplane. He has MS, but he loves doing woodworking. He makes all sorts of wooden toys. He could probably sell them and make a fortune, but he loves to give them away, mostly to his grandchildren. Anyway, we have been blessed to be a recipient of this treasured gift.

By Thursday I was feeling someone had it in for me. I tried to use my access badge to get on the elevators and it wouldn't work. I went into the access badge office to see if would give me access again. It appears it was connected to the lockout the night before. I'm sure my badge quick working that night, but I didn't need it to get out of the building. Anyway, they granted me access until the day AFTER we leave so I think I'm back to normal again. Elder Wilcox had to do the same thing.

We had the second half of the LES recording event. This one was for French and Portuguese. Again, it was during the day. They had almost as much trouble as the Spanish team had on Monday. When it was all over, Aaron and Baptiste talked and decided we needed to pay them all a little more than just the normal jobs they did. All of them worked extra hours at home that wasn't accounted for. They asked me to add another job to each interpreter to account for that extra time. I finished the instructions on the spreadsheet and the operations manual. I printed copies for the Sapps, so hopefully that will help them after we are gone. Elder Wilcox and I reviewed everything to make sure it is all in the manual. Of course, that doesn't mean things won't change and they will be asked to do new things that aren't in the manual.

With all of that done, my list was complete. We headed to the Temple. After the Temple I got a haircut. 

We were all taking Friday off (supposedly). I only took care of a few little fires. I answered some emails that came in. I couldn't do any PLUNET stuff because they were upgrading the system and it had been down since the night before. It didn't come back up until about 4:00. So, I spent much of the afternoon working on HawkSoft. I'm all caught up there too. YAY!!! I feel like I can breathe again. It was nice to stay home all day, even though I spent most of the day on the computer.

Saturday, we spent the morning finalizing a few things for our visa for New Zealand. I think we have everything done that we can do up to this point. We can't send in the visa application until three months before we enter the country. So, that will all occur in December. We have our Panel Doctor appointment on December 7th. That is the last thing we must do before we can send the visa application. We also went to the Church History Museum to see the Minerva Teichert art exhibit entitled With This Covenant in My Heart. It was really nice.

Sunday was very busy. We started with Church our meetings. It feels so long since we have been there because of our extra events in the last two weeks.  We had two really good talks. Sunday school was awesome. We talked about Colossians chapter 3. We compared the "natural" man with becoming a "new man" found in verses 10-19. It reminded me of 2 Corinthians 5:17 that says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." We all want to become a "new creature" as we strive to become more like our Savior.

After Church we went to the Park Lane Senior Center. We only have one more time before the end of our mission. I'm sad about that. We enjoyed sharing the Sacrament with them and then a short message. I shared with them a letter that one of our Interpreters received after a weeklong event. It was very touching. When that was over, we headed to the COB Auditorium for our ONE HEART GATHERING where we said goodbye to those who are leaving and hello to those who are new to our mission. They will have one more gathering on the Sunday before we leave so that will be our swan song gathering.

We are hoping with things slowing down again that we may be able to take some Fridays off.

All our Love and Prayers,
Mom and Dad
Grandma and Grandpa
Great Grandma and Great Grandpa
Steve and Leslee
Elder and Sister Wilcox