General Conference Preparation Meeting

FHE Bar-B-Que

Monday was labor day and we actually got it off. I had spent most of Saturday catching up on things so it was very nice to have Monday off. We went shopping and bought some folding chairs. We needed them for our FHE group as well as for the bar-b-que we had with our apartment floor. All the missionaries chipped in and we bought a bar-b-que for the apartment complex. So, for FHE Monday night we had a wonderful potluck bar-b-que. The weather was perfect and the company grand. The food was delicious too. We visited and played some games. It was a lot of fun.

FHE Bar-B-Que

Tuesday started with our Zone devotional. Most of the day was spent preparing for our Saturday Preparation meeting. At 3:00pm we had our weekly General Conference team meeting. Things are progressing nicely. Several weeks ago, Daniel had told us we couldn't use any additional missionaries to help with General Conference. We told our friends and they were sad. At our meeting we were told that we will be able use missionaries after all. We need to figure out how many and when. Hopefully we will get that information this coming week so we can start scheduling the extra help.

 

Daniel at our Training Meeting

Tuesday evening was our monthly MTC Devotional. This time it was with Elder Uchtdorf. We had a very nice event. I always enjoy listening to Elder and Sister Uchtdorf. We had three languages, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. We always have all 4 of us missionaries work the MTC devotionals even though we don't have that many interpreters. As missionaries we can participate in any event we choose. We usually split the events, however, there are a number that we always do together. The MTC devotional is one of them. 

Aaron getting ready to present

Wednesday was a full day. We started with a PSD All Hands Meeting for our big department. It was a wonderful meeting. I felt the Spirit so strong. We had a musical number by Reed. He is our retiring finance manager. He plays the piano and bore his Testimony through a medley of hymns. It was so beautiful. It really brought the Spirit to the meeting. Next we heard from a delightful sister who shared a wonderful spiritual thought. She works with the Sacred Materials Music team. She told us briefly what they do and then shared one of the tender mercies they get to experience. She said they received a special request to translate a single hymn into Irish. We don't normally translate into Irish. She gave a brief history of the Irish language and how at one point it was basically declared illegal to speak. In recent years it is beginning to be legal again to speak. Anyway, we didn't have any Irish translators so they had to arrange a "team". She, as the team lead, called the area staff over Ireland to see if there was anyone in the area who could translate. They didn't have anyone; however, they gave her several names of people who might be able to help. After many calls she found a 13 year-old-girl who could do it. With the help of her father they made a team. They were trained on how to translate hymns. Within two weeks they had a translation. The next phase was to have a test group sing the hymn. They got a small group of people in the branch (or maybe it was a ward) to sing the hymn, "Faith of our Fathers". What occurred after that was hard to relate in words. She said the feelings the people had as they heard this particular hymn in their native Irish tongue about their their ancestors was indescribable. Needless to say, I don't think there were very many dry eyes in the meeting. The rest of the meeting was no less spiritual. We had a video report for our Asia Pacific area. It was fun to see people that I only email. They talked about their area, which includes New Zealand, Australia, and all the South Pacific Islands. The video was beautiful and the spirit conveyed was wonderful. It ended with a wonderful story from our PSD director.

Sara and Ljiljana

Our afternoon was our weekly team meeting. It almost ended on time, until Daniel finished with a few words that lasted 30 minutes. Hahaha. Consequently I missed my PLUNET meeting again. The rest of the day was spent working on our General Conference Preparation Meeting. So much work we had to do.

Thursday we started with our Zone devotional. More General Conference Preparation Meeting work. The deadline for signing up for the Saturday meeting was September 1st; but of course, we had more RSVPs after September 1st then we had before. Lots of work!

Daniel presenting and
Venky running Zoom

At 1pm we had our monthly Section Meeting. We went to the Conference Center for that meeting. It turned out to be very good. Xenia is the Sacred Materials Team Lead and they were in charge. She was also just made our new Section leader so for a while she will be doing double duty. I am working with her on the new invoicing process. We were supposed to go to the Temple right after our Section meeting, but we had so much work to do before Saturday that we ended up canceling our appointment. We will go next week for sure. Right after the section meeting we had another meeting with Sara and Venky to go over logistics for our Saturday meetings. The Saturday meetings were both In Person as well as Zoom so we needed to arrange the technology for the Zoom meetings. Sara called the IT people to tell them what we wanted. We were just asking for a portable camera that we could use with a large TV monitor in one of the wings of the 26th floor where we were going to hold our meeting. They said they would look into it and we were to call on Friday to see what they found out.

Sister Linford and Sister Petty
setting out credentials, access
badges, and parking passes

So, on Friday I spent much of the day on the phone and in chat and in person with IT people as well as adding more last minute people to our preparation meeting process. Add to this a General Conference Preparation video rehearsal meeting at the same time that I was on the 26th floor with an IT person setting up the video device they brought for us to use on Saturday. It was a little crazy for a while. On top of all this we had to print multiple copies of two different talks in the different languages that were being represented for all the interpreters that were coming, and put them in folders for each language. I think we used about three reams of paper. We finished a little after 5:30 and finally headed home. 

Sister Wilcox at Check-In

Saturday was LONG and hard. We started at 8 am so we could finish our setup. We had the Events team set up all the tables and chairs for the meeting. They also set up a few tables for snacks and check in; however, we decided we needed several more tables for the talks and to hold all the credentials, access badges, and parking passes we needed to pass out. So we were there 2 hours early. So much to do. We had some people arrive very early so we were still working on several things to finish up our set up. At first, everything was working perfectly. But then they started arriving in waves and it was very close to when we needed to start the meeting. We couldn't keep up as we only had two people checking in and 2 or 3 people passing out all the other stuff. So we had everyone write their names down so they could go into the meeting. We added them to our spreadsheet. I then had to give a short presentation in the meeting before getting back to finish checking in everyone. We also had to get all the people that were on the Zoom meeting listed so we could get them paid as well. It gets complicated when they sign into Zoom as "iPhone" or "Luke Skywalker". 😁 And to make matters worse we had 15 or 20 people who were not on the list but just showed up.  We had about 130 people in person for the morning session and almost 60 on our Zoom call. In addition to all that we were tracking how many people wanted to be in the drawing for General Conference tickets. I had to get it all entered into the spreadsheet so I could produce two reports for Curtis. One for In Person people who wanted to be int he drawing and one for Zoom people for the drawing. Curtis was doing the drawing before the end of the meeting and needed all the people. I got it finished barely in time for him to be able to do the drawing. 

Curtis waiting for me to send
him the drawing participants

Between the morning session and the afternoon session we spent time brainstorming on how we could improve the process. The group that was passing out all the stuff decided to create a separate manilla envelop for each person that we had credentials for. That way we could set them out alphabetically and people could help find them on their own. I also want to clean up the records of people we have in the files that are no longer active. If we could thin out the list, it will be much easier. For check in, I decided to put the afternoon session people on a new spreadsheet with a check in time and request for GC tickets drawing. I put a blank line between the languages and printed three copies of the 4 page document. That way I could put all twelve pages out on a table and be able to check in 12 people at a time if it was very busy. The afternoon session went much better. However, part of that was because we had a little less than half the people attend. We will refine the process before General Conference and hopefully have it much easier. We also want to only have the credentials for those that are coming to General Conference so we don't have to sort through EVERYONE we have in the file. We finished at 6 pm after cleanup and some debriefing.

Elder Linford enjoying the meeting

A little after 7, Djeryd and Eva arrived. They were in Salt Lake City for a mission reunion for Eva. It was so much fun to see them and visit with them. I wish I had taken some pictures, but of course I didn't think about it until they left. Hahaha.

Sunday was very nice. Church was good. Our second hour was more like a 5th Sunday forum. President Holmes conducted a joint meeting. We had a wonderful discussion on ministering. We all feel we are already living in Zion. Since most of the missionaries live it 4 different apartment complexes, we are very close and can easily care for one another. It is truly a unique circumstance and we are all very grateful for the experiences we have on our missions and the close, family-like feelings we have for our fellow missionaries. 

Curtis presenting and Venky fixing something. 

Have a FANTASTIC week!

Love 💖Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

 

 

Temple Leadership and Global General Conference Training

Since Monday was the fifth Monday of the month, we didn't have our normal Mission Devotional. Our day was pretty low key. We have a busy month ahead so we stayed busy setting up events. Our Monday evening was a wonderful Family Home Evening. One of our brand new missionary couples gave the lesson. The Ipsons live in Utah; however, they actually come from Gresham. Sister Ipson looked so familiar to me, so when I found out they were originally from Oregon, I asked her if she ever worked at the Temple. Sure enough she did. I then asked if she ever substituted for the Tuesday evening shift and she said yes. She asked if I was the coordinator and I said yes. If was fun making that connection.

Tuesday was a very busy day. We had an event Tuesday morning that the Linfords covered. It was originally supposed to be Tieline only; however, our French SLC team and Sara from the Italian team came to the COB so we provided support. There had been a great deal of confusion about Tuesday morning. We were originally told it was Tieline only. They we were told French would be there. Then we were told French would come Tuesday night. Lastly we were told they be be there for Tuesday morning after all. In actuality, The French team were just as confused as we were. The French sister showed up at almost 8:30 thinking that was the call time. Call time was actually 8:00. Neither of the brethren were there. They thought it was Tuesday night. So after some quick calls the other two brethren showed up. One lives only a few minutes away. The other one arrived about 9:05 after the event started. Needless to say, everyone was frustrated and confused. The interesting thing is we had brought it up to the Supervisor and MLC on Monday because we were still confused. Elder Wilcox didn't know what meal he needed to put the French team on. We were assured they were coming Tuesday morning; however, the French team didn't get the same reassurance. We need to do a better job of communicating to our teams.

Elder Wilcox and I started with our Zone Devotional. We had an initial panic as no one could sign into the Zoom meeting. We weren't sure what was going on. I decided to see if it was the link or Zoom that was having the problem. I started a new meeting and sent the link to our Zone leader. He was able to get it so I immediately sent the link to everyone else in the Zone. We didn't get everyone, but we did get a little more than half of the people we usually get. The Merrills did the devotional. Elder Merrill was a Captain in the Marine Corps 
and shared how the Gospel helped him many times in his military career. After the event, we realized the Zone leaders Zoom link had expired. He sent me a new link and I updated SharePoint with the new link.

Throughout the day, I worked on our continual clean up of our systems. Later in the day we had our General Conference preparation meeting. We are on target to get everything done in time for General Conference. That evening we had the Tuesday evening session of the Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, September 2022. We had about 4 different languages in SLC. The rest of the languages were Tieline. After we ate, they did mic checks and got ready for the event. About the same time, I got prepared to participate in the first session of the October 2022 General Conference Preparation (East) Teams meeting for the areas in the East. This meeting was put on by the Translation team and we were invited to participate. Eunlan gave a great presentation about Interpretation. We fielded lost of questions and it was a good meeting.

Wednesday we had our weekly Team meeting in the afternoon. Daniel brought up the problem we have with some of our Interpreters being unable to take the mandatory annual workforce training. I've been passing the information on to a person that was supposed to be working on the problem. A day or so before, I decided to take the problem to someone else. I have been sent back and forth between the Training team and the Global Services team. No one wanted to responsibility for the problem. Anyway, I finally got someone to actually help me. I had opened a ticket with 5 people on it in hopes more than one reporting the problem would get some attention. The tech that called me back and together we figured out what the problem was. Long story short, there are two active records for those who cannot take the course. He signed in as each of the 5 people and selected the account that had the courses assigned to it. He sent me a new link and had me have each of the 5 sign in and try it again. IT WORKED! Daniel said he gets hundreds of emails throughout the month of those who cannot take the course or those who no longer do work for us. He decided to turn that task over to Sara and me. I was happy to report that the problem is solved for those who could not take the courses. So now when he gets an email, he forwards it to me and I send it to the team who can reset the account so they can take the course. 

The second problem of people who no longer work for us presented a new problem. In the past when Daniel would send those to me, I was told to make sure they were inactive in Event Central, PLUNET and ITI. Most of the time they were already inactive in those systems. However, we found out with the previous problems for not taking the courses, that they are also in ANOTHER system that does not talk to any of our other systems. So now we have to make sure they are deactivated in another database. Sara and I had a meeting with our HR head and came up with a plan. Alan sent me a list of all the people in Daniel's downline. I compared it with our ITI list and sent back all those who are inactive in ITI so they can be deactivated in the HR/Training system. Hopefully, both of these things will drastically drop the number of emails Daniel gets from these two problems. 😊

Later that evening we had the last session of the Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, September 2022. The Linfords covered that event. We actually went home early and had a relaxing evening. We went to bed early, as we had an event very early the next morning.

Thursday started with the 2022 Live Temple Leadership Seminar. We started at 5:00 am. The cafeteria doesn't open until 7:00 am so we had to go off campus for breakfast. Elder Wilcox and Elder Linford picked up breakfast and Sister Linford and I set up the area in the cafeteria so we could feed everyone. We had 42 people for breakfast. We had 11 languages. It was a lot of fun with so many people. Many of the teams we don't see that often. We got to watch most of the event. They had a panel discussion where they answered questions from the Temple leadership. Unfortunately, I missed the last part of the meeting and the talk by Elder Bednar because I had to participate in the second session of the October 2022 General Conference Preparation (West) Teams meeting for the areas in the West. This one was in the morning to accommodate that part of the world. It was a virtual duplicate of the other meeting. It went well. Again, Eunlan did a great job. A few of our team were able to answer questions via chat or actually online. Because of both events, we missed our Zone Devotional which was also at the same time! We were able to leave at 3:00 pm so we could go to the Temple. It was so nice to get away and bask in the Spirit of the Temple.

I spent much of Friday on video conference calls. Most were ad hoc calls to tackle specific things that have come up all week. I think we accomplished a lot of work and made good progress. Unfortunately I didn't get all the physical work done during the day so I had to postpone it until Saturday. As much as I hoped to leave early, we didn't get out until after 5.

Saturday, I worked all day. It was nice that I didn't have all the interruptions I get throughout each day. By 6:00 pm I had finished everything left over from the week. I even put in a little time on HawkSoft. Sara chatted me later in the evening to let me know she added more people to our GC Conference Preparation meeting that we are holding on Saturday, September 10th for all our Interpreters. We are getting a great response and expect to have about 100 people in person and nearly that many on Zoom. We will be holding two session on Saturday. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. Anyway, I had spent much of the day adding the people to our PLUNET order. I told her I would take care of the new ones on Monday. I needed the evening off. We watched Harry Potter #2 Saturday night. We will finish the series this week (I hope.)

Sunday was a good day at Church. We missed Music and the Spoken Word. Well go again next week. We didn't have our monthly Break the Fast dinner at the apartment because we are having a Labor Day Bar-B-Que on Monday. We started a new Sunday School class. This one is taught by a member of our Mission Presidency. We decided to check it out. We loved it!

I hope you have a GREAT week!

Love, 

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Piano Guys!

Once again, we started our week with a wonderful Mission Devotional on Monday morning. Later, I participated in a video conference call on Power Automate apps and tools. I have used this tool to be able to send out emails to all the different areas around the world to get ready for General Conference. I am trying to learn if there are more ways I can use these power tools. They mentioned a free in person seminar that was to be held on Wednesday. I asked Daniel if I could go and he said YES! 

Monday evening we had a fabulous Family Home Evening. The Hiltbrands were in charge. We had our biggest turn out ever with a total of 18 people in attendance. I think there are only 8 more on our floor if we could get everyone. Elder Hiltbrand put together a wonderful Jeopardy game for us. We laughed so hard and had so much fun. Going into the "final jeopardy" the Sisters were ahead by 1000 points. We should have wagered just a little less than half our points but instead we wagered only 500. The Elders wagered their whole amount. We both got the answer right but since they wagered everything they took the lead. It was GREAT fun. After the game, Elder Hiltbrand then  presented a beautiful "lesson" on the value of the Sisters in the lives of the Elders and how they would not be the men they are without their wives. It was so sweet and beautiful and brought tears to my eyes and I think several others. Sister Hiltbrand served a delicious strawberry shortcake with homemade shortcake.

On Tuesday I had several meetings. The first was our Tuesday morning Zone Devotional. It was a wonderful presentation, although I can't remember exactly what they talked about. They are in the Church Communication department. They had a couple of slides that I really want. They are supposed to send me their PowerPoint, but I haven't received yet. I post the PowerPoint presentations on our Zone SharePoint site. At noon we had a "brown bag" luncheon in the main floor auditorium where we heard a wonderful presentation by one of the Translators who is an expert in the Bible. He presented a history on the King James Version of the Bible. It was really very fascinating. He is supposed to send me his PowerPoint presentation. He had lots of statistics that I want to keep. 

Later in the day I had a meeting with our new Finance director and Baptiste about PLUNET and Event Central. As Dave Rich (the Finance director) spelled out the problem and asked for potential solutions, I was happy to report that I had already been working on a solution for the last couple of months. He seemed grateful that we had already addressed the problem and were working hard to keep the two tables in sync with one another.

Tuesday evening we had a last minute event. The Linfords covered it as we had tickets for a play with several other missionaries. We met with 7 other couples for a delicious dinner at the Olive Garden. It was such fun. Then we headed to the theater to see Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. They did such a wonderful job. We enjoyed it very much. I wish I had some pictures. 

Wednesday was spent in the ROB (Riverton Office Building) for the all day seminar on the Power Apps and Power Automate tools. It was very interesting. My mind was racing as I tried to think of ways I can use the new technology to help our team. Unfortunately the first thing I thought of is not possible. Not because the technology can't handle it, but because to use it all parties must have a Microsoft 365 license. Since I wanted to use it with our interpreters it wasn't going to work. The second reason was because the interface I wanted to connect to isn't possible...at least not possible now. So, now I will have to rethink what I may be able to do. hahaha

The Jensens gave the 
Zone Devotional 

Thursday morning started with another wonderful Zone Devotional. This one was presented by a missionary couple in the Military department. They shared some wonderful interactions and stories of the experiences they have had. They had some technical difficulties when they tried to share their PowerPoint presentation so I had them send it to me and I was able to share it for them.

We left early so we could go to the Temple. We managed to have appointments for Initiatory, Endowment, and Sealings. It was so nice to get so much work done. I got everything done except a few sealings that we ran out of time to finish. The Linfords went with us. It was a very nice evening.

Friday, was a fairly slow day. I was able to finish my research on the new invoicing process and posted it to my group. It showed that even though it was not 100% of emails that will be sent to TRLInvoice automatically, it was still a much higher number than what is currently done manually. I pointed out that I would continue to monitor the process once it goes live so we can identify those that are not getting sent into three categories. 

    1. Those where the interpreter does NOT click the Submit for Approval button.

    2. Those who are NOT supposed to click the Submit for Approval button because they have special circumstances that require they do it the old way.

    3. And those that have a problem with their email in PLUNET. NOTE: these are the ones we need to identify and research.  

The feedback was good and I thought we were ready to turn it on. When I asked when that would be as I had several people to remind they needed to create invoices and I wanted to send the new instructions, I was told not yet. We need to solve the email problem first. Needless to say, I was not happy. The current process make it hard to identify the problem until we turn it on. PLUS more people will get their invoices submitted if we turn it on. I don't understand their reasoning to continue to wait. 

Saturday, after working on HawkSoft, we visited Vicki and Roy again. We were told a week ago they both had COVID so we couldn't visit them. Saturday, Vicki told us only she had COVID; however, they quarantined Roy for 14 days just to be sure. He never got it, which was a good thing because his health is already compromised. They had hospitalized Vicki because of her COVID; however, they determined that in addition to COVID she had had a heart attack only they didn't identify it as such. On the day she was supposed to go home, she had another more severe heart attack. They rushed her to surgery and saved her life. They said if she had not already been in the hospital, she probably wouldn't have made it. They put two stints in her heart. She is home now and recovering nicely. We visited with Vicki first. I hope we didn't wear her out. We had a very nice visit with her. Then we headed to Ogden to visit with Roy. He continues to improve slowly. They just got their insurance to grant another 30 days in the rehabilitation center for him. They have him on some pain killers that tends to make him groggy. He was very tired and his speech was somewhat slurred which made it difficult to have a conversation with him. Nonetheless, we had a nice visit before we headed home.

Sunday started with Music and the Spoken Word with The Piano Guys as the guest performers. There were at least twice or more times as many people as usual. We went early to make sure we could get a good seat. It was a good thing. The program was wonderful. What you don't get to see on the actual program are the little things The Piano Guys do when they are not on camera. They both pretended to lead the choir at different times. Steven Sharp Nelson shared several little quips before and after the program. Unfortunately we didn't get to hear most of them, but the choir did and they laughed. We also got two extra treats after the program was over. They invited those that wanted to stay to watch while they did some filming behind the scenes for one of their behind the scenes videos that The Piano Guys do. They will be doing the Hallelujah Chorus with the Tabernacle Choir at Christmas time and were putting together the behind the scenes footage. Of course we didn't see the final product, but it was fun to watch the recording. After that Jon Schmidt and the Choir organist played a duet for us called Waterfall. It was BEAUTIFUL. Then, as we were leaving to go home a Sister stepped out of a row and put her arm around me and called me by name. Kerrie Hadfield (Conover) was there with her family. We chatted for awhile. It was so nice to see her.

Sister Lloyd, our second speaker

Church was good as well. Our two speakers gave great talks. The first speaker talked about the simplicity of the Gospel and how it worked throughout his life. The second speaker talked about how the Lord has been in her life. She came from Africa when she was 25 to go to school. Her uncle sent her to get an education. She left 4 children back in Africa. About 7 months after she arrived, civil war broke out in her African home and she had to apply for political asylum. Her uncle was arrested and she had to wonder for nearly 7 years how her children were getting along. At the end of seven years she had saved enough money to send for all her children. She pointed out how the Lord had been with her in every step of the way. She has also suffered from health problems and had to return home a few months after she arrived on her mission. She recently returned to her mission and again pointed out how much the Lord has been with her. It was such a beautiful testimony that our trials are for our growth and not punishment. That the Lord can comfort us and helps us through all our trials and can make us be closer to the Lord. I was humbled listening to her talk. I need to repent of my grumblings when things don't go as planned. I need to trust MORE in the Hand of the Lord ALWAYS.

I hope you have a wonderful week. 

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Meetings, Temple, and Mission Party

We started the week with our Monday morning Mission Devotional. I spent much of the day working on more Event Central clean up from several more areas. I also worked with a few people on their invoices. And we called Laila to sing Happy Birthday to her. We had to leave a message.

Monday evening, we had a fun Family Home Evening. Elder and Sister Ure were in charge. After our discussion we played a version of Mafia we called Gadianton Robbers. Elder Ure kept getting the instructions wrong. We were laughing so hard. I finally looked up the instructions on google and we proceeded to play the game. We had a lot of fun.

Tuesday started with our Zone Devotional. Not long after the devotional we had a Translation Division meeting. We had a nice report from one of our area supervisors. I spent part of the day trying to get someone to work on the continual problem we have been having with our Interpreters not being able to take their annual training. This has been going on for months. They keep telling us it is fixed and then the next month they get the same error message that won't let them take the course. I've got at least 5 specific interpreters I've been working with. I know there are a lot more with the same problem. Anyway, I've opened a new ticket to get the ball rolling to fix the problem. We'll see if we can get any results this time. Later in the afternoon we had our first General Conference meeting. We went through our checklist to make sure we are on track to get everything accomplished. We will have a full complement of interpreters and support with up to 300 people for each session. It will be very exciting.

Yummy Food at our Mission Social

Wednesday was full of meetings. At 9:00 am I participated in a Power Apps meeting. I was interrupted in the middle of the meeting and missed most of the rest of the meeting. At 1:00 we had another New PLUNET Invoicing Process meeting. We decided to run another test. In our last test at least one of the interpreters couldn't send the email automatically. That is why we are still testing. I am compiling data to see how many of the invoices created over a three day period were manually sent to TRLInvoice, as well as automatically sent to our test email address, as well as how many didn't get sent at all. I'm still waiting on data from our test email account. Caleb was out of the office on Thursday and Friday, so he hasn't sent me the last of the list. Hopefully I'll get the rest of the data on Monday. Later that afternoon, we had our normal Team meeting. Daniel and Sara were both gone and our meeting was almost done on time for a change.

Elder Wilcox and the original
Joseph Smith daguerreotype

Thursday, we had another Zone Devotional. I spent time working on trying to match the OLD Event Central table that has LDS Account names in it with the NEW Event Central table that no longer has LDS Account names. I was able to match the majority by matching names. However, I have a couple hundred where the OLD Event Central table shows question marks instead of the characters and Cyrillic alphabets that I was able to bring in with the NEW Event Central table so that the names would not match. Those had to be done mostly manually. Not fun! We left early on Thursday so we could go to the Temple. We had a nice session. We managed to get there earlier than our appointment, so we were able to go on an earlier session.

The daguerreotype with 
Elder Wilcox's face merged

Friday was another quiet day. I continued working on Event Central most of the day. I had a meeting at 2:00 thinking it was going to be pointless; however, it may have turned out to be a very promising meeting for me. I mentioned last week about a new reporting program called Tableau that I was hoping would be valuable for me, only to find out it wasn't going to do what I needed it to do. Another member of the Tableau team scheduled another meeting for Friday. I met with two of their developers and told them what I had hope to get out of Tableau. I also told them about my problems with connecting PLUNET, Event Central, and ITI together. I honestly didn't expect anything to come from it. When I finished my explanations, they started talking. I had mentioned that I was hoping to get a report out of Church Finance that would allow me to check if invoices have made it to the Church Finance system. I was told last week that I couldn't access the Church Finance data without special permissions. Well, Ben and David both said creating the Invoice report for me would be no problem at all. They will work on it during their next sprint (NOTE: sprint is for Sean. A sprint is a two-week period where the team works on specific projects. New projects have to go on the next sprint.) I was very excited. We talked more about the connections between Event Central and PLUNET and they think there may be something behind the scenes already in place, but unused for several years. I'm not holding my breath on that; however, they did say they would work with both the Event Central people and the PLUNET people to create a link between the two systems. I know it won't happen right away, but at least it is now on somebody's radar. 

The walkway leading to the Mission
President's home.

On a side note, I was tasked with cleaning up Event Central to sync with PLUNET. They are unaware that I have already been working on this for months. Anyway, Baptiste called me on Friday to tell me that he and I are going to be working on the clean-up. He was actually tasked with the problem, and he told them that "Sister Wilcox is probably already working on it." So now I'm part of the team. We will meet next week. 

Enjoying good company at the
Mission Social

After my meeting, I got to give a nice tour for one of our Sacred Materials Music translators and his family. It was a lot of fun. Just as we were starting the tour, Curtis was getting ready to leave. He knew the translator, so he jumped in and shared his findings on the new Joseph Smith daguerreotype. He is so very excited about that. He even took a picture of Elder Wilcox because he said he has some of the markings of Joseph Smith. He threw the picture into his software and did all the same tests on Elder Wilcox that he did with the Joseph Smith daguerreotype. His final piece was to overlay Elder Wilcox over the death mask and the daguerreotype. The results were amazing. Curtis is convinced that Elder Wilcox is related to Joseph Smith!

This was in the front 
yard of the house 
next to the Mission
President's house

After work on Friday, the Linfords went with us to the home of our mission president, President and Sister Holmes. They have an absolutely BEAUTIFUL home. They had a wedding that week and decided to have a mission party since it was still all set up for the reception. The weather was cooler than it has been and threatened rain; but, other than a few drops, it was a perfect evening. They had Café Rio cater the event. We had a wonderful time.

We were planning on visiting Roy and Vicki on Saturday, but they both have COVID so we didn't go. Hopefully, they will feel better soon. So, we stayed home. Steve did manage to do a little shopping. I worked a bit on HawkSoft and then spent the rest of the day working manually matching over 400 interpreters from Event Central to PLUNET. We were able to match almost 300. Elder Wilcox helped me.

Sunday morning, we went to Music and the Spoken Word. It was very nice. They sang The Sound of Music. It is one of my favorite songs. I always enjoy Music and the Spoken Word. Church was good. We studied some of the Psalms in Sunday School. We listened to a Psalm by the Tabernacle Choir. We also recited a chant or song that one of our missionaries put together. It was an interesting way to study Psalms today.

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

 

MTC Devotional and Washington Temple Rededication

Washington DC Temple

Monday morning started off with our weekly Mission Devotional. We had several speakers talk about how they have seen the Hand of the Lord in their lives. A couple of them mentioned seeing His hand in their Mission Call. I can relate to that. I spent most of the day working on cleaning up Event Central. I have had a good response from all the areas. I worked on it all week as they trickled in. I still have 30 more languages to go. Most of those are from just a few language coordinators who each have 5 or 6 languages a piece.

Enrique conducting our
Section Meeting

Monday evening we had a very fun Family Home Evening. The Durrants led our discussion. We played a fun game to start it off. We haven't played games in a long time. I can't remember ever laughing so hard. We had a huge turn out with several new couples joining our group. We used to cross apartment buildings, but have been asked to keep our groups within our own apartment complex. So I sent out invitations to everyone on our floor.  Almost everyone came. It was AWESOME.

Tuesday morning started with our Zone Devotional. The Bentleys gave a great devotional about Joy. They played one of my favorite songs entitled "Joy in the Morning". Later that morning I had the second meeting with the big bosses for the new invoice processing system. We got the go ahead to move forward. FINALLY. We immediately went into scramble mode as we had to prepare a new document of instruction. Caleb, our tech guy, also created a video showing the process. It is all so very simple now. There are two exceptions that I was unaware of that won't use the new process, but they already know how to continue using the old process so no big deal. 

Tuesday evening we had two events at the same time. The first one was Eunlan's event called "2022-WSR:Family Services Core Services". It was just the Spanish team doing some self reliant videos. We expected it to go to 9:30 but they were great and didn't have any retakes. They were  done by 8:30. The other event was Aaron's. It was the "MTC Devotional with Elder Gerrit W. Gong". That is the one we got to watch. I love Elder Gong. He is so personable. One thing that has become his signature is asking questions and having the participants raise their hands. For example he may ask if they like their instructors at the MTC then raise their hand. If they think they are doing a good job then raise both hands. And if they really love their instructors then raise both hands and shake them in the air. It is always good for a chuckle. He will ask questions like those at nearly every devotional that he gives. He is also very conscientious of the interpreters and speaks slowly and deliberately so they have no problem interpreting him. His messages are always  very sweet too. On Tuesday he took the time to show a scripture study technique that was very good for the new missionaries, but also for us old timers too.

The rest of the events we had for the week were either Language Coaching or ASL that didn't require support on our part. 

Fennec Fox

Wednesday was spent in meetings almost all day. We started with a PSD Operations All Hands meeting. One fun thing happened in that meeting. They were spotlighting one of the members in our PSD Department. To describe this particular individual he talked about the unique qualities of a Fennec Fox. They are so adorable. He talked about how they have adapted to their environment. He then called up Amanda, who just happens to be part of our new section, and presented her with a cute little stuffed Fennec Fox, at which point Amanda blurted out that the Fennec Fox is her absolute favorite animal. She had been sitting near to us and whispered to the person next to her that the Fennec Fox was her favorite animal and was totally surprised when they presented that to her. I think she was probably the only person in the auditorium who even heard of the Fennec Fox. The presenter thought she was just saying it was her favorite animal, and was surprised to learn it truly was her favorite.

Our Section Meeting

Shortly after that meeting I had another meeting to learn how to use a query program called Tableau. Unfortunately, I can only use it to access already created queries. I am not allowed to create my own reports. The second problem is I am not able to access the invoicing system, meaning, I can't get a list of invoices in the system to be able to see if our interpreters actually submitted their invoices or not. It has been a pain since they took our access away so we can't check. Not long after that meeting I had another meeting with Caleb and Silvia on what documentation is needed to roll out the new Invoicing Process.  And finally after that we had our normal Team meeting. That meeting is supposed to be 1 hour long; however, we always go long. Wednesday was no different; but, this time we went a whole hour longer. Consequently I missed the PLUNET meeting that I'm supposed to be in every other week. I haven't been able to attend in months because I take the minutes of our Team meeting. On Wednesday I needed to bring something up in the meeting so I posted a question in the group chat. I was so happy they addressed my question and posted an answer in the chat. I was able to report the answer in our meeting because we went over so long.

Quote by President Monson

I had to give the Spiritual Thought for our Team Meeting. Elder Wilcox asked that I post it in the Blog.  So here it is:  Quote by President Monson, “God left us the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged, and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.”  

I learned a valuable lesson in my youth that has served me well my whole life. As the only girl in my family with 4 brothers, I was very spoiled. My Dad pretty much gave me everything I wanted. I worked for my Dad in the donut shop he owned. He didn’t give me a paycheck, but instead just gave me whatever I asked for. I even got a brand-new car for my birthday. My older brothers had to work and buy their own car. Pretty sweet, huh.  

Actually, it was not in my best interest. I didn’t learn money management or responsibility. Later when I got a different job and a paycheck of my own, I had to start paying for things like car insurance, gas, clothes, and anything else I wanted. I became responsible and independent. I also learned the value of doing things for myself. I LOVE the glories of creation. I am glad things are no longer just handed to me and that I have to work for them. It makes me appreciate my life even more. I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who left us the world unfinished and the canvas of our lives unpainted.  

Our Section Meeting

Thursday was filled with more meetings. I continued working on cleaning up Event Central. We had our normal Thursday Morning Zone Devotional. Our afternoon was very fun. We had our monthly Section meeting. This time it was a potluck lunch and "getting to know you" games. Since we have so many from different countries, they were encouraged to bring dishes from their home countries. Normally I am NOT a very adventurous eater; however, I tried almost everything that was brought. I even liked almost everything I tried. We had dishes from Korea, Mexico, Hungary, Taiwan, Italy, Japan, and of course the United States. One of the games was a list of 7 questions that we were to choose one and answer and then ask someone else to go next. This was designed to get to know a little about each other and spark some discussion. The next game was entitled "I am...". We would say something like, "I am a grandma." and those that are grandparents would take a step toward that person. Or "I am a Missionary Mom." and everyone with a missionary (or past missionary or is a current missionary) could take a step toward that person. I took about 5 or 6 steps because I had children, grandchildren, a brother, nephews, and am currently serving. Everyone got a good laugh about that one. The last game was like Speed "Dating". We had an inner circle of chairs and an outer circle of chairs. We had two people who joined us remotely and they got to participate in the games, too. for the "I am..." game we had pictures of them and attached them to a music stand or chair that we could move closer or further away from the people declaring their "I am..." statement. They even got to say their own statement. For the Speed "Dating" we put a laptop on one inner chair and a phone with a Teams call on another inner chair. We asked each other questions to get to each other. At three minutes the outer circle rotated to the next chair to the left until we had all visited everyone in the inner circle. It was a very fun "meeting". Next month we have to be more serious. hahaha.

Those who could not attend our
Section Meeting

Friday we intended to make it a short day because we didn't have very much to do. We had one meeting in the afternoon and hoped to go home right after that meeting. This meeting was with our third team from our new section. We enjoyed learning what they did and they learned what we do. When the meeting was over, the Linfords went home. However, after that meeting, I had another meeting with the new invoicing process team. They insisted on doing a live test with a couple of contractors, just to verify everything will work as expected. I told them if we had contractors process an invoice, it would turn the system on for everyone, not just them. The new system worked perfectly; HOWEVER, PLUNET is having a problem sending some emails. I reported that issue several weeks ago, hoping it would be fixed before we went live. The email did not get sent for the first person we had test the system. However, someone from the outside processed an invoice in the old way and we were able to see the new process work perfectly. Their email went through. The other test contractor also went through. BUT, since the first person didn't go through everyone is hesitant to go live until the email problem is resolved. I totally understand. The problem is it is a hit and miss so it is very hard to identify and fix. So we are on hold until it can be resolved. We were supposed to go live on August 15th.  After that meeting we were ready to go home, when Daniel called and gave me an assignment that needed to be done right away. So I jumped in and took care of that. We left 5 minutes before 5 so I guess we did get to leave early!

Saturday we did NOTHING! Steve went shopping, because he likes shopping. I stayed home because I like staying home. We listened to a book on tape and after dinner we watched a couple of movies. It was a great day.

Washington DC Temple

Sunday started very early. We were at the COB by 6:00 am for the Washington DC Temple Rededication. We had three sessions throughout the day. The first one started at 8:00 am. The second started at 11:30 am and the third started at 3:00 pm. President Nelson was present for the first session. That was so cool. We currently have 51 Temples under construction. He talked about ancient Temples as well as current Temples. It is so AWESOME to hear the dedicatory prayer and then participate in the Hosanna Shout. We got to do that three times. President Oaks and President Eyring presided and said the dedicatory prayer for the other two sessions. It was an AWESOME Sabbath day.

And lastly I have to take a moment to "publicly" wish Happy Birthday to so many of our loved ones. Happy Birthday to my daughter-in-law Kylee (12th), sister-in-law Debbie (13th),  granddaughter Laila (15th), grandson Garren (18th), daughter-in-law Sara (18th), and grandson Erik (20th).  Also a Happy Anniversary to son-in-law Sean and daughter MyLiege (22nd) and brother Keith and sister-in-law Debbie (28th). 

I hope you all have a FANTASTIC week. 

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Temple Leadership Seminar

Over the Beech's door

This has been a long week. I received a lot of response from all the areas about the inactive resources in PLUNET. Most said we should deactivate them in Event Central so we were able to clean up a lot of resources. Last Friday I sent out an email to our new section director as well as several managers in the Finance team. The guy we have been working with since we got here retired. Well, he supposedly retired, but he is still working. He is finally down to 1 day a week. He is the one who has been hesitant to make a decision about our new invoicing process because he was leaving. Anyway, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Sara and I talked about it last week and agreed we needed to send an email. Well, our section director was all for it; however, he wanted to make sure we had buy in from the rest of our new section. So, I set up a meeting for Monday with the different teams in our section as well as representatives in a couple of other sections. The meeting went very well and all were in agreement that we need to do something and if the proposal works they way we hope, then we have 100% support.

What you see when coming
out of the elevator 

Last Monday evening we had a wonderful Mission Devotional. President Holmes took a page out of President Leptich's book of devotionals. The format was one of discussion and not of talks. President and Sister Holmes walked around the floor and not on the stand. I loved it. He gave us three different talks to read and be prepared to discuss. One of the talks was one President Holmes gave in a BYU Devotional back in 2017. All the talks pertained to the Doctrine of Christ. It was a great Devotional.

Early Tuesday morning we helped support the first of six sessions of the "2022 Temple Leadership Seminar Pre-recordings." We were able to watch our Zone Devotional Tuesday morning while still supporting the event. The 3 morning sessions were Tieline with the exception of the French team that was at the COB. They were interpreting several different videos that will be shown in the first week in September for the LIVE Temple Leadership Seminar. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the videos. It was a 4 to 5 hour session, depending on who needed to do retakes, and we supplied breakfast and lunch. 

The two apartments at the
beginning of the hall

Just before the end of the session, I went upstairs to hold the second meeting I scheduled for the new invoicing process. This time it was with our Section director and the finance people as well as a few others who are directly involved. The meeting went very well with only one hitch. I had hoped to change the process to do just two things. 1. click the "create invoice" button and 2. click the "submit for approval" button. Unfortunately, I found out in the meeting that it is necessary to click the "print invoice" button. That not only creates an RTF file, but it also creates the AP file that finance needs to reconcile their reports. NOTE: that AP file does not actually go to the finance system. It is just to reconcile PLUNET. They still have to manually enter the data into the finance system. Luckily, however, the majority of "resources" (interpreters and translators) already click the "print invoice" button. They will no longer have to download the RTF file or email it to finance. So the new process will consist of thee clicks. 1. Click the "create invoice" button. 2. Click the "print invoice" button. And 3. Click the "submit for approval" button and be done. That should eliminate nearly 90% of the problems we currently have. There will still be a few who won't click the "print invoice" button and we will have to go back and do that for them, but at least their invoice will now be sent to the people who have to input it into church finance. So, even though I didn't hit a home run, I think I hit a solid triple. 

This is in front of the Burgoynes

At the end of our work day we got ready for the first of the three evening sessions of the "2022 Temple Leadership Seminar Pre-recordings." These were all SLC teams with the exception of Tongan which did Tieline. We fed about 30 people. Again, we didn't get to see the videos. That is always a bummer. The engineer learned a lot from the morning session, and from what he learned, the evening session went much more smoothly. We finished in about 4 hours. I think we left a little after 10.

Curtis's personal copies of the death masks

The Linfords supported both the Wednesday and Thursday morning sessions.  Both mornings also took 4 to 5 hours, depending on retakes, with a breakfast and lunch provided. Wednesday we had our Team Meeting. Curtis gave us an update on his research and findings with the new Joseph Smith picture. He also brought in his personal copies of the death masks of Joseph and Hyrum. It was pretty cool. And right after our meeting we began to get ready for our evening session. We had even more interpreters for this session. Paul was our engineer and he managed to show us the Videos to watch. The Linfords also supported all the three evening sessions with us. We tried to talk them into going home early since they had supported the morning session; but, with being able to see the videos they wanted to stay. I don't blame them. We loved the videos. The instruction was very good. I loved the stories they shared. We heard from several leaders. We left near 10:30 that night. This was supposed to be the longest evening. It was scheduled to end around 11:30 so we did good leaving at 10:30.

Thursday was similar to Wednesday. We had the last of the videos on Thursday. The morning session finished before noon. We still fed them lunch even though they ended early. We believed our evening session would also be quicker than the previous two nights. Most of the languages finished early and were done by 9:00 pm. There were three languages that had to do retakes. We did Spanish first because we figured they would be very fast; however, they took 30 minutes. It surprised everyone. Next we did the Tongan team and they took nearly 30 minutes as well. The last team was Ukrainian. They kept having problems. We weren't sure what was going on. Paul was so patient and understanding and worked so well with them. They repeated the same talk over and over again. It was a talk by Sister Aburto. Finally, Paul made a suggestion that made all the difference in the world. Paul recognized that the Ukrainians simply could not talk fast enough to fit all the syllables in the same time that Sister Aburto spoke. When we are doing videos, the interpreters have to make their talk be the same length of time as the original speaker. Sometimes the engineer can stretch or shrink the audio track to fit the length of the video; however, there are sometimes when the engineer simply cannot shrink it enough to fit without distorting the audio track. That was the case on Thursday night. He finally suggested the Ukrainians modify the script and cut out parts that could be eliminated without changing the meaning of the talk. They took about 10 or 15 minutes to rework the script and did one more take. It worked perfectly. They finished at 11:30. I asked them how the syllables differed and they gave two examples. The words Relief Society is 7 syllables in English; but, in Ukrainian it is closer to more than 10. The words Young Women is only three syllables in English; but, in Ukrainian it is closer to 15. Anyway, by the time we finished cleaning booths and submitting the jobs for approval it was close to midnight before we left. Sister Linford left at 10. Elder Linford left much earlier.

Friday, we slept in. No alarm! We managed to get into the office a little after 10. I did do a few things at home before heading in. We also left early so we could go to the Temple with the Linfords. We didn't have a lot of work to do so it all worked out well. At the Temple we managed to do some Initiatory, an Endowment, and finally some Sealings. It was a nice afternoon and evening. We got home by 7:45. The earliest night in the whole week!

Saturday, I worked on PLUNET a bit and did some work for HawkSoft. Around noon, we headed to Ogden to see Roy and Vicki again. Roy is back in the hospital with some internal bleeding. They can't seem to identify the source. They are still running tests to find the cause. Roy is looking better. He was nice and alert and we had a wonderful visit with them. They are also looking into a new rehabilitation center he can go into when he leaves. They are hoping to find something closer to Bountiful.

We missed Music and the Spoken Word this morning. We just needed a morning at home. Church was good. They announced a social on August 19 that will be held at the home of our new Mission President. That should be fun. I enjoyed the Testimonies that were born. In Sunday School we talked about Job. The discussion was very good in how we can liken Job's experiences to ourselves. And lastly, we had our monthly Break the Fast with our apartment floor. I absolutely love this event each month. We have so much fun getting to know everyone. We missed some of our old timers and welcomed several new couples to our group. I look forward to getting to know them. Elder Wilcox has been busy making everyone feel welcome with their own personalized signs. Everyone loves it. Apparently now when they move onto our floor the word spreads that Elder Wilcox will make them a sign. He is having to back track a bit because there are several that have been here a couple of months that don't have signs and they want one too! He enjoys thinking of something clever to put on their signs. I hope you enjoy the wave of new signs he has made. Oh, and when they leave he gives them a big envelope with a brand new fresh sign to take home. They also take the one hanging by their door. 😊

Have a GREAT week!

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox