MTC Devotional, President Holmes, Farewell Potluck, Moroni, and More Packing 

Moroni and Sister Wilcox

I thought we would be winding down this week, but we have been busy training the employees to cover all our responsibilities. I think some things will be simplified and even eliminated after we leave. Baptiste is already working with management to simply things so they can function without missionaries. But until that happens, they must know what we do.

I spent most of Monday setting up the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. We will be doing 40 plus languages, but so far only 6 or 7 will be in Salt Lake. Of course, that is subject to change the closer we get. I have to show Ljiljana how to change a language item from IN COUNTRY to SLC in PLUNET. After we were done, we headed to the COB Auditorium for our Mission Fireside. Elder and Sister Martinez spoke to us. He is a member of the Area Presidency. They were both delightful and funny. We enjoyed them very much.

Tuesday was an extremely busy day. We started with our Zone Devotional. Elder and Sister Slack presented an awesome devotional, finishing with Elder Slack playing and singing A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. It was very beautiful. We are so glad we got to know them, even if only for a little while. We loved having them in our FHE group.

Elder and Sister Slack

Not long after the devotional we had our exit interview with President and Sister Holmes. What a special experience that was for us. We absolutely loved having them as our Mission leaders. Of course, we loved President and Sister Randall too. Each brought their unique gifts and talents to the mission. We had a wonderful interview and felt so much love from them. After the interview, we gave some goodbyes to several people we know at the NOB (North Office Building). We will miss them.

We went immediately from our interview to our Team Farewell Potluck luncheon. That was a special time. Jeanpierre, Daniel, Sara, and Sister Petty all came to wish us well. It was so fun to visit with them. Eunlan, Jarod, and Xenia missed our meeting, but we will see them next week. Elder Wilcox made special double-sided "credentials" for each one highlighting their native country or interpretation language. I think they really liked them. I made a card for each one. We, in turn, received several gifts from our team. Each one was so thoughtful, and we think we may be able to take them with us to New Zealand. We will have to see how the packing goes. Lol.  We moved from the potluck luncheon into our Team meeting.

Almost as soon as the meeting was over, we got ready for two back-to-back events. The first was the Utah Area Broadcast - Pre-recording event with Spanish and Portuguese. It went from 4 to 6. That went immediately into the MTC Devotional with Elder Uchtdorf that went from 6 to 8 and included Spanish, Portuguese, and French. The Spanish and Portuguese interpreters did both events. We had a nice dinner at 6 for the call time. It was wonderful visiting with the interpreters. We got lots of pictures after the event was over and hugs from everyone. It was a wonderful day!

On Wednesday, we called Sierra to sing her Happy Birthday after our day was over. The day was busy, and I accomplished quite a few things, even though none of them were on my to-do list for the day. I did some training with Curtis on how he can get and input hours for the next General Conference in April. We discovered after the "big clean up" of all the cabinets we have on the 27th and 28th floors that the talks for our screening events disappeared. We still had the GC Prep meeting talks, but not the screening talks. So, I spent much of the day finding and printing talks in 12 different languages for all the people to be screened. 

Just as we were getting ready to go home around 5:30, I got an email stating that the power was out at our apartment building and wasn't expected to be on until 7 or so. I decided to do a few more things in the office where it was light and warm. Hahaha. I scanned all the previous screening documents and save them in a folder on SharePoint. I will scan in the new ones after our screening event on Monday evening. We got home a little before 7, and the power was still off. We looked for a lighter so we could light some candles so I could take a shower. I also turned on my phone flashlight. Hahaha. Just as I was getting ready to get in, the lights came back on. YAY!!!!

Thursday morning started with our Zone Devotional. Sister Gabbard did a spotlight on Elder Wilcox. She did such a wonderful job. I had her send me the PowerPoint so I can share it with the family. I spent much of the day finishing up the operations manual and the PLUNET manual as well as a simple checklist with links to all the "normal" things we do. For the "once in a while" things, they can look those up in the manuals. I put everything in a single folder on SharePoint and sent everyone a link to the folder. At this point, I think that is about all I can do. After lunch, we went to the Bountiful Temple for the last time. President Randall was the officiator on our Endowment session. That was a treat. He told Elder Wilcox that he prayed us there. It was an earlier session than we normally go to, so perhaps he did pray us there. I prayed he and Sister Randall would be our Session officials. I got half a prayer answered. Hahaha. I ran into Sister Randall in the locker room after our session, so I had a nice visit with her. We hugged and said our goodbyes. It has been such a blessing to see them almost every week when we go to the Temple. 

Friday was a little lower key. I did some updates on PLUNET orders. I tried to set up a new one but couldn't do it without a PRJ number. I'm hoping to get that on Monday since they have already started the project. It covered 4 days: Friday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I got my work laptop transferred to Ljiljana, at least in the system. I tried to get it set up for her, but I kept running into problems. We will have to take care of that on Monday, when she comes in for training and the screening event. I also transcribed some notes for Baptiste. The first set was some notes Curtis wrote on the whiteboards that Baptiste wanted to make comments on. Later, he sent me some notes he took at a conference he went to last week in Miami. I told him what he really needed to hire was a personal assistant. He agreed. That is pretty much what I have been doing for both Daniel and Baptiste for the last 2 1/2 years. I also managed to put in a little time on HawkSoft. I had to finish that up on Saturday.

Oh, I forgot to mention two special treats we had on Friday. When Elder Wilcox arrived at the COB Friday morning, he ran into Moroni. Moroni used to manage COB Catering. We worked with him for our first year or so and WE LOVE HIM! He transferred back to the MTC because it was closer to home. We were sorry to see him go. I was thinking of him just a day or two earlier thinking maybe we would see him when we go to the MTC in February. Well, Moroni has transferred again and works for an event planning department in the Church that is even closer to his home. He does some traveling all over the world. He was in Salt Lake for a big event about the Temple Construction project. So, Elder Wilcox was able to visit with him for a little while before coming up to the office. He told me to go downstairs and see Moroni. What a treat that was. We exchanged contact info and he said he will come and visit us in the MTC. YAY! Then, when we went to lunch, we saw another one of our favorite people who has been out on paternity leave for the last two months. He and his wife just had twins. I was afraid he wouldn't be back before we left for home. He was at his checkout stand. Needless to say, we hugged, and he showed pictures of his twins, and I showed him a picture of our little Baby Ruth. We will see him next week too. I'm so excited.

Saturday was spent PACKING. I didn't think we had that much stuff, but it is amazing how stuff you can accumulate in 2 1/2 years. Of course, we gave a LOT of stuff away. That last of it was the extra dishes and kitchen things we purchased. Most everything has disappeared. Whatever is left on Wednesday, we will take to Deseret Industries. We are trying to have EVERYTHING packed except for the last-minute things we will need for the next few days. Our upcoming week is very busy, so we won't have time to "finish" packing. We reconnected with one of the Temple workers on our Tuesday shift in Portland who now lives in Utah. We kept talking about getting together and it never happened. He is finally going to visit us on Wednesday. I'm excited to see him again too. After our visit with him we will head home to load all our stuff in the car except for what we will need the next day. I also finished my HawkSoft work, and then we headed to the COB to pack up our cubicles. I didn't want to wait until the last minute. I think we are in pretty good shape.

Sunday was a good day. We had our final day in the 12th Ward. They had their Primary Sacrament Meeting Presentation. They did a fantastic job, even though they only have 4 little boys in Primary. They each gave talks, including the little 4- or 5-year-old. The leaders helped with the singing and two gave short talks as well. The closing song was a new one I have not heard before. It was beautiful. They had the Aaronic Priesthood join them on that song. All two boys we have. We don't have any young women or girls in the primary. Well, a new family just moved into the ward, and they have 5 kids that will just about double our youth and primary. And they have a couple of girls! Anyway, they did a beautiful job.

We had our One Heart Gathering on Sunday afternoon. Our apartment building was responsible for refreshments, so Steve baked cookies on Saturday. We bought two tubs of Toll House Cookie Dough. We had SOOOOO much food. They do an introduction for all the new missionaries coming into the mission, and those that are leaving give a brief testimony. We shared things we learned and felt on our mission. I think that is the last official thing we have to do. Oh, we still have two events to support before we go. We have the Screening event on Monday night. And on Thursday morning we are supporting the Salt Lake Temple Construction Worker Devotional event. I supposed technically we don't have to do that one since we are leaving that day, but Elder Wilcox has been following the reconstruction of the Salt Lake Temple since we got here, and he wants to see that devotional. So, we will leave 4 hours later than originally planned. 😉

So, technically, this is the last post from our mission. I am having all my blog posts bound into a book, and I must turn it in Sunday night to get it back by Wednesday. I'll recap what next week will look like to finish our mission.

Monday - PLUNET, training Ljiljana, anything else that comes up, and the Screening event.

Tuesday - PLUNET, training Ljiljana, Team meeting, lots of hugs and goodbyes and probably tears. We may be able to finish up anything that is still not packed.

Wednesday - PLUNET, whatever anyone wants that I can help with for the last time, visiting with Brother Foster, picking up the rental car, loading both cars, doing a last load of laundry and hopefully getting to sleep before midnight.

Thursday - The Salt Lake Temple Construction Worker Devotional event first thing in the morning, drop all out keys off and check the apartment one last time, jump in the car and drive 12 hours to get home!

All our Love and Prayers,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Fire Alarm, Potter Boy, PSD Potluck, Luz De Las Naciones, Park Lane, and Break the Fast

Things are getting a little crazy around here. We don't have very many events except for Language Coaching jobs, but this is still plenty to do. We had a beautiful Mission Devotional Monday morning. We learned more about one of our Zones. I love hearing about their "Elijah" moments. One of the brothers in their zone presented an incredible organ song. I loved it.

I spent time on some special projects I was working on. I will talk more about them after they happen. We had a very fun Family Home Evening. Elder and Sister Farnsworth were in charge. It is the last one we will have in our apartment. I'm so sad. 😪 Next Monday is our Mission Evening Fireside so we won't meet as a FHE group. The following Monday, which is our last Monday on our mission, we will be working a screening event. It was supposed to be later in November, but I think they bumped it so we would be here. 🤣 We had a great time. Sister Farnsworth put together a fun General Conference Jeopardy game. We laughed a LOT. We had our largest turn out ever. We took lots of pictures. I'm going to miss them all so very much. That group has been a highlight of our mission.

As I was getting ready to leave our apartment after our Tuesday morning Zone Devotional, I heard this faint high-pitched sound. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Elder Wilcox couldn't hear a thing. He put in his temporary hearing aids and then he could hear it too. It didn't sound any louder in any part of the apartment. I opened the door to the hallway, and it was LOUD. Emergency lights were flashing too. I didn't see any smoke or anything, but I went back in and told Elder Wilcox he had better hurry and get ready and get out. I went back in the hallway to leave when the alarm stopped. I went back to tell Steve he didn't have to hurry quite as fast. I left down the back stairs by our apartment and walked down the walkway that runs the length of our building. When I got to the street, I saw the fire truck and several firemen trying to get into the building. My guess is someone had something burning on the stove and it triggered the alarm. A little excitement is always a good way to start a day. Hahaha

I worked on PLUNET and finished up my special projects. We had our Team meeting in the afternoon. Not long after our meeting, we left for the day. We decided to go visit our Stake President's place of work. He is a potter and has a shop behind his house. It is called Potter Boy. He had a lot of very cool things. We couldn't really use anything he had since we can't take it with us to New Zealand, but we wanted to buy something. He makes these cool little "love" rocks that you can keep in your pocket or purse. We picked out two we really liked and bought those. 

Victoria, wife of one of our interpreters 

Wednesday was a day of not much work. We started the day with a PSD Meeting in the COB Auditorium. We have this meeting once a quarter. Jeff, our department manager, briefly started the meeting and then rushed off to meet with the Quorum of the Twelve. He pre-recorded a longer message for us that was played near the end of the meeting. We heard from two of our teams and then from Jeff. He announced several organizational changes in our department but didn't elaborate on them because they don't really know what it is really going to look like. This is all to move closer to the "Area Centered, Headquartered Supported" model that we are all moving towards. That is part of the reason they haven't planned on hiring any new people on our team. We are reorganizing too. 

After the meeting we had a short "linger longer" activity in the lobby with treats. Then we went to an open house for the Service Project Shop (SPS). This group is full of service missionaries of various ages that are geared up to help any and all teams within our PSD department. I have a feeling we will be using some of these service missionaries to fill in the gaps that our going to occur with no missionaries on our team. The new missionaries that were just assigned are being reassigned elsewhere with no plan to bring on any new missionaries. We will be working out how that will work in the next week or so. Almost everything we have been doing will either be given to the translation team or spread out to the employees on our team. I have training to do next week. LOL

After the tour we had a brief 1/2 hour in our cubicle to do a few things before heading back down to the lobby area by the auditorium for a huge potluck luncheon for our division. It was fun to see so many people from other teams and visit with them. The food was good too.

Thursday started with our Zone Devotional. We only have a couple more to attend. I did a little work in PLUNET and then tried to organize what all needs to be shared with the rest of the team. The Sapps were attending the GA Wives Luncheon. We had a one-on-one meeting with Baptiste where we talked about what all this is going to look like. I think it will be very doable, especially if they get some service missionaries to fill in the gaps. The huge advantage of having the employees take things over is not having to retrain missionaries every year or so. The employees already have the big picture of what goes on for our events. The only things they need to learn are the spreadsheets and that will be very easy for them since they already use a bunch of spreadsheets. I actually feel very good about this moving forward. Of course, they will still need help with things like General Conference, but that can easily be covered with service missionaries to help out.

Some of our Portuguese Team

After lunch we headed to the Temple to finish up our sealings and do an endowment session. I had a very nice visit with Sister Randall before she gave me the new name for my endowment session. After we did sealings, a sister came up to us and said she could just see the love between us because we look at each other over the alter. It was a very nice complement.

Friday, we worked from home again. We had planned on visiting Vicki, but she was going to lunch with her sister so we told her we would visit on Saturday. Steve spent most of the day sorting and packing. We put a lot of things in the hallway by the elevator. It is sort of a mini swap meet. Whatever doesn't go after a few days is either taken over to the monthly missionary swap meet or giving to Deseret Industries. Most everything we have put out has disappeared quickly. I'm not sure we have anything left to put out. Things are looking bare. All the pictures are either packed to go home or put out to be given away. We will sort through our kitchen stuff this coming week. We were given some basics when we got here and are only supposed to leave this in the apartment when we leave. Everything else that we have accumulated has to go. Most of that will be put out for whoever wants it.

Lluvia and Emma

I thought I would be able to work on HawkSoft stuff, but received several requests that kept me pretty busy all day. I had to set up a Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults that will take place the day we leave. There will be two sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening. There are 42 languages, most of which are Tieline so that helps. I think there are only 5 or 7 that will be in SLC in the evening session. Anyway, with that many languages, it took me quite a while to get it all set up. 

After we ate dinner, we headed to the Conference Center to watch the Luz De Las Naciones program. PSD got some really good tickets, so we had great seats. This is the first performance that our friend and interpreter, Alex Melecio, was not in in fifteen years. He is back east for a soccer tournament for one of his kids. I was sad we weren't going to see him perform. We did get to say goodbye, last week to him. The entire performance was in Spanish. We forgot to get headsets, so we didn't understand a single word. HAHAHA. The singing and dancing were GREAT. It was so fun. We sat next to this very fun sister. She introduced herself to us and we told her we were serving a mission in Global Interpretation. She then said that her husband interprets. She is Spanish so I figured her husband was on the Spanish team. I asked his name. Sure enough, he is one of our regulars. We see him all the time. We took pictures and she sent it to her husband who was interpreting for the event that night. We had a great time with her all evening. After the event was over, we saw a bunch of our Portuguese team walk by. We all slipped into some rows so we could visit. It was so fun to see and talk to so many that we know and love. 

Cristina and Helena

Saturday, I spent working on HawkSoft. It took quite a bit longer than I expected but I got it all done. I worked for part of the day before we went to visit with Vicki. After Vicki, we stopped at Mo' Bettahs to pick up dinner for the second session of Luz De Las Naciones that we were supporting. The Sapps were able to attend the performance Saturday night. We had a wonderful time with our Interpreters and Curtis. I worked some more on HawkSoft during the event, but still didn't quite finish it. After the event we took a bunch of pictures and talked with the Interpreters. There were lots of hugs and some tears. They all want to keep in touch so I will be sending out an email with our personal emails so we can keep in touch. After we got home, I spent another hour on HawkSoft so I could finish it up. Whew!!!

I was glad that daylight savings ended, and we were able to get an extra hour of sleep. I woke up without an alarm, so I guess I slept enough. Church was good. I enjoyed the testimonies and Sunday School. Later, we headed to the Park Land Senior Center for our Sacrament and Testimony meeting with the residents. We have enjoyed meeting with them a couple times a month since we have been assigned to this ward. It has been a GREAT blessing in our lives. We will miss them very much.

Spanish and Portuguese Teams

Then, not long after we got back it was time for our monthly Break-the-Fast potluck dinner for our apartment floor. This will be the last one we get to attend. Oh, how we are going to miss our floor. Everyone has become such great friends. Even the new people just fit right in. We are hoping Ken and Leanne Jenson will get our apartment when they start their mission here the first week in December. We let the housing missionary know they would like our apartment and he has made note of it. Fingers crossed they get it. Of course, we told them if they get the apartment, they have to host the FHE group because it is the biggest apartment. Hahaha

Have a GREAT week and start thinking of all the things you are thankful for so you can share them with your family at Thanksgiving. 

Fernando and Curtis

Our Love and Prayers are with you!

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox