MTC Devotional, More RootsTech, GA Wives Luncheon, and GC Preparation Training Meetings

Interpreters at our training meeting

 It has been a very busy week. We started Monday with our Mission Devotional. Since it was the last Monday of the month we had speakers from one of our Zones. We learned about the Lookup Project in one of the Family Search Zones. They have thousands of documents and books that contain valuable information. They will get a request from a patron for some information and they are tasked with doing the research and looking up the information. They can then give it to the patron. They shared some wonderful Spiritual experiences they have had, and even miracles that have occurred as they perform this valuable service.

Ljiljana, one of our MLCs

Later, I gave a demo of the Year at a Glance app for Daniel and Xenia. We finally got authorized to use it, only to find out that we didn't get all the approvals we needed. I found out on Friday, that we never actually paid for it yet so we have been in trial mode. Since the higher ups wanted to cancel the purchase it looks like that project is dead.

I spent the rest of the day working on a spreadsheet for the General Conference Preparation Training meetings that we are having on the 4th and the 18th of March. I am tracking all the RSVP's so we can get them in the system to be paid.

Venky, one of our MLCs

Just as we were getting ready to go home, Daniel called and asked me to create a 3 page PowerPoint slide show to be used in the PSD Translation and Interpretation department meeting the following morning. He needed it no later than 8 PM. So I stayed for a little while longer to get started and then headed home to finish. We had to get ready for Family Home Evening that night. I think it turned out pretty good. The three slides were as follows:

I finished just as FHE was starting. The Ipson's led our discussion that night.

Eunlan, one of our Supervisors

Tuesday started with the Zone Devotional. Because I had so much to do I went early to the Wellness Center and watched the Devotional on my phone while I worked on the elliptical. When that was done we had our GC Preparation meeting. It took nearly an hour. Then we headed to the 26th floor for an hour and a half meeting with the Translation and Interpretation teams. That is where my little slide presentation was. We got to meet all the different teams in our department in one way or another. The first group blew us away by making a very cute video presentation. The rest of us were "boring". hahaha. After the meeting portion we played some fun get to know you games. It was a good time.

Daniel, our Manager

Then we headed to the 27th floor where Venky had made lunch for us. He is from India and he loves to cook. He made some rice and some curry chicken and a few other things. I'm not really crazy about curry, but he made it more mild for us wimps so it was pretty good. Just as we were finishing that, the rest of our section joined us for our section meeting that was supposed to be from 1 to 3 but actually went to 4:30. Needless to day I didn't get a whole lot of work done, but it was a fun day. 

For the "activity" of our section meeting we went to the Church History Library for a tour. I have wanted to do that since we arrived on our mission. It was AWESOME. They gave us the GRAND tour. Like I said, we were supposed to end at 3:00 but they continued for another hour and a half. We saw original documents from the early Church, including an account of the First Vision in Joseph Smith's own hand. He didn't like to write so that is a rare find indeed. They had original copies of some early books in the Church. They took us to the freezer that is kept at -4 degrees where they store vary fragile things photographs and films. People are only allowed to work down there for 30 minutes or less and that is after bundling up in some serious snow gear. We were only in there for about 10 minutes. They gave us heavy coats to put on. It was fascinating. We saw how they restore old documents and books. We were instructed on how they preserve and even restore old audio recordings and films. All of it as incredibly interesting.

Dinner with our MTC Devotional
Interpreters

Elder Wilcox had to leave the tour a little early as he had to go pick up food for the MTC Devotional we were supporting that night. As soon as the tour was done, I headed back to the 27th floor to get things ready for the event. I also jumped on the computer on that floor that I use so I could start on my days work. I continued to work on the GC Spreadsheet. We had nine interpreters for our event and got to eat in the "library" on the 27th floor. I'm not really sure why it is called the "library" but that is the main room we work in to support events. At General Conference time we call it the Command Center. President Ballard spoke and it was a very nice event. His daughter and son-in-law were with him so he had them speak too. His daughter talked about how nice it was growing up in her family and the wonderful things she learned. Her husband had a funny story to tell. He said the first time Elder Ballard called him up to speak shortly after he joined the Ballard family, Elder Ballard asked him to sing a solo. So, he sang a hymn acapella. He didn't tell us his musical background so I don't know if he was a member of the Tabernacle Choir or had some other special skills. He said he was happy to just bare his testimony that night. President Ballard talked about the things he learned as a young missionary and how they have helped him throughout his life.

Our Section at the Church History
Library. We couldn't take any
pictures Inside.

On Wednesday I had a couple of meetings with HawkSoft to learn about a new program I will be using in a few weeks. It was nice to see them on our video call. I spent the rest of the day between the GC spreadsheet and adding missionaries that are going to help us with General Conference to the General Conference schedule I am working on. It keeps me busy. The Linfords supported a couple of RootsTech events in the afternoon.

Thursday I did the whole Wellness Center/Zone Devotional thing again as it worked so well on Tuesday. From there we had another General Conference Preparation meeting. This one focused on our training meeting for Saturday. Daniel decided to do things differently this training meeting so we had a whole new set of talks to prepare. They had picked two talks from the last October 2022 General Conference that he thought were particularly hard. Mainly because the speakers speak fast. That makes her harder for Interpreters to Interpret. He prepared several "games" that would help train the interpreters for what to expect in GC.  As soon as the meeting ended, Elder Wilcox and I supported the GA Wives Luncheon. I was tasked at the meeting to save the two talks in the specific languages we were going to have in attendance at the training meeting. I put them in a folder with the name of the language and the number of copies we needed. Sister Linford then printed all the talks and put them in folders for each of the languages. We had a few languages they didn't have those two talks translated for last conference so Venky reached out to the team to get them translated before Saturday. We got three back. The fourth one is coming on the 18th so they have a little more time. It took us two days to get that all done. I finished saving all the talks about the time the event ended. After that we went to the Temple that evening. I really needed it. 😇

Taking our section through
the secret tunnel to the
Church History Library

On Friday I had three meetings back to back. The middle one was in person in the East Wing of the COB, so I took my laptop there to join the first meeting on Teams before the second one. The only problem was for some reason I could NOT connect to the Internet on my laptop. So, I ended up joining the Teams meeting on my phone. It was a fairly productive meeting...I think. It didn't turn out quite like I had hoped, but I think the solution will help a lot. I was hoping to get APIs set up for PLUNET and Event Central. An API is a way to pass data from one program or system to another when the two systems don't talk to each other. I wanted to automatically get the contract expiration date, status, engagement type, and name from PLUNET into my Microsoft List. I then wanted to automatically the status from my list to update Event Central. Right now all this is done manually by me.

More Interpreters at Training

I was told they could not do the APIs. I was not happy. However, they talked about adding several new fields to Event Central that may help, even though they would have to be manually updated. They won't do anything until after General Conference. (I hope they don't forget.) They will add the contract expiration date, engagement type, and PLUNET ID #. We will use the PLUNET ID# to connect with PLUNET. They will color the expiration dates RED when they are expired and another color when they are a month or less from expiring so people will know they can't use them or they have to work on getting them renewed. The manual part will be updating the expiration dates and/or anything else that may change that comes from PLUNET. But at least this will help a lot. Right now I have to monitor the date and then request that Event Central be deactivated if they have expired. I can't deactivate them myself. Someday, I really hope they will get a system that will do these things automatically. It would say a lot of headaches and rushing around to get people activated because they have been assigned to a job and they are going to or already are expired. 

More Training

SATURDAY! We spent all day at the COB for our GC Preparation Training meetings. I was responsible for checking everyone in. Even though we asked for everyone to RSVP and tell us what session they were going to attend and if it was going to be in-person or on Zoom, we had tons of people who never RSVP'd as well as a ton more that either didn't tell us which session or changed the one they told us and showed up in-person or on Zoom. It was a little crazy. Then when the zoom portion of the meeting ended and the interpreters went to the booths for the live training, I was told I needed to do some kind of random "drawing" for conference tickets for those in attendance. Curtis normally does that but he was home sick. So I called him and asked what he did. He basically said he just used a random number generator and applied it to the list of attendees. So I added a new page to my spreadsheet and set up the "ticket drawing". I had it done by the time the live training was done so Daniel was able to read the names of the winners. I then got the requested session they wanted and told them they would be emailed their electronic tickets sometime in the near future. After I got home I worked on HawkSoft for about an hour before finally relaxing for awhile. After the first session, the team went to the 27th floor library for lunch. It was Sister Linford's birthday so we tried to make it fun for her when we ate lunch. It was Sister Linford's birthday so we tried to make it fun for her when we ate lunch. Then we did the whole thing all over again with another group of Interpreters for the afternoon session.

More Interpreters at training

Sunday started with my Emotional Resilience Class. It was great, as usual. President Faerber was not feeling good today so I got to to help with the technology in class. We had our Fast and Testimony meeting for Church. The testimonies were inspirational, especially the ones they shared about experiences at Roots Tech.  It was followed by a nice Sunday School lesson. We talked about the miracles of Jesus Christ and how we can recognize them in our own life.  And lastly we had our wonderful Break the Fast dinner with our apartment floor. We have several new missionary couples on our floor so it was nice to meet them. We decided to do something different this time and instead of just doing a potluck we decided to do Hawaiian Haystacks and everyone brought something to put on them. It made be think of Christmas Eve as that is our traditional Christmas Eve dinner every year with the family. I love it.

My Emotional Resilience Class

We have some very busy weeks ahead of us from now until General Conference which occurs on April 1st and 2nd. On Friday, I was trained on how to process contracts because we are very behind in getting these all caught up to date. The only problem is I didn't have authority for any of the programs I will need to use. By the end of the day I got authority for two out of the three programs. I can't begin to help until I have all three programs. I hope I get it soon or I won't be much help for them before General Conference.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and stay warm. Perhaps we can look forward to spring in a few weeks. Maybe then we can all thaw out. 🤣

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Movies, Snow Storm, Canceled Events,  and Another New Assignment

Monday was a Holiday. We actually had a day off! A friend of ours recommended a movie that she said was really good. It is called, A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks. So, we decided to go to the Movies on Monday. We went out to eat after the movie. And we managed to get home in plenty of time for our Family Home Evening night.

The Chew Toys we made for
the Animal Shelter

The Burgoyne's were in charge and they chose to do a service project or our evening. They brought over bags of cut up t-shirts and some tennis balls. We were given instructions on how to create several different chew toys for an animal shelter in Salt Lake City. They got the tennis balls from a tennis court that gave them "flat" balls. They aren't really flat, but after several games by really good tennis players, the balls are no longer good enough for really good tennis players. They work perfectly for chew toys for pets.

Elder Wilcox and Elder Durrant

We made a small knot chew toy for cats. We made a foot long braid for dogs. We also made an "octopus" toy with a tennis ball for the head and eight braided tentacles. We had a lot of fun. As we ate our treat, we played a Hangman type game. We guessed correctly the scripture, "when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." (Mosiah 2:17) and we all acknowledged that animals are our fellow beings too.

Elder Ipson's shoulder, Sister Ipson,
Sister Durrant, Sister Wilcox, and 
Sister Burgoyne in the front right corner

Tuesday we started the day with our Zone Devotional and then I headed to the Wellness Center to work on the elliptical for 25 minutes. I have been enjoying my morning workout every weekday. The rest of the day was spent in meetings and work on Rosters for our SLC teams. The first meeting was General Conference Preparation. We spent most of the time talking about the GC training meeting we have coming up on March 4th and again on March 18th. In the past Ljiljana sent out all the invitations and tracked the RSVPs so we could make sure everyone that participates gets paid. This time Daniel decided he wanted the Team Leads to extend the invitation and track the RSVPs and send those to us. We pointed out that the Team Leads don't necessairly know everyone on their team. 

The Scene from our Window
the night of the storm

So, I was tasked with creating a list of team members for each of the SLC teams AND they needed to go out on Wednesday. So, as soon as the meeting was over I used my Microsoft list to put together a list of all active team members. We have some interpreters that interpret for more than one language. Long story short, I needed help it adding a delimiter to the list of languages so I could separate each language into a separate record. Since my time was very short, I reached out to two of my Excel wizards (Season Wilcox, and Eric Andresen from HawkSoft). Season's answer was one I was working on, but running into some difficulty. Eric played with it a bit and then sent me a formula that was AMAZING. It worked perfectly. By the end of the day, I had the separate spreadsheets for each language.

On Tuesday night we had a big snow storm so we worked from home on Wednesday. I spent the bulk of the day working on tweaking my Power App that sends out mass emails and attaches files to the email. I used it for the Areas a couple of weeks ago. I just needed to duplicate it and tweak it to go to our Salt Lake City Team Leads. I ran into several problems, but finally finished sending them out before 5:00. Now we just have to see if the Team Leads actually send out the invitation and how many RSVPs we get back. I'm nervous that we won't necessairly get the RSVPs ahead of time and that I will be entering people as they just show up to the training meeting.

A scene from our other window

Thursday we went into the office. There was still a lot of snow, but the sidewalks were still a bit icy so I walked very slowly. I actually went to the Wellness Center before our Zone Devotional. We were supposed to have an event later that morning and I wanted to make sure I got my exercise done. As it turned out, the interpreters that were supposed to come that afternoon said they couldn't make it because of the weather so our event was cancelled. Instead, Aaron got a more local interpreter to come in that morning. The Linfords were already covering another event that morning so they covered that one for us. So I actually watched our devotional while I worked on the elliptical. It was kind of cool. After scripture study, I had a Zoom meeting with one of our Interpreters. She was on vacation and only had her iPad. It was a little difficult to help her as she couldn't figure out how to share her screen so I could only guess what she was seeing. We managed to get it all worked out and she was able to submit her invoice. 

In front of the Atrium at the
Bountiful Temple. You can't 
see all the snow.

I received the OK to start using an very cool Year at a Glance app that is available in TEAMS. It has been in the works for nearly 3 months. When I found out it was a third party app and was $900 per year, I figured we wouldn't be getting the app. But, Daniel wanted it and said we had the budget so I submitted the request back in December. It got approved after a few weeks, but for some reason IT couldn't figure out how to activate it. I would get an email every once in a while to "try it now" only to tell them it was still asking for Admin approval. Well, on Thursday, just before lunch, I was asked to "try it now" and it WORKED. So, I created a "test" calendar and added all the events we have planned out for the year. These are mostly reoccurring events we do every year. We then went to the Temple. I really needed that as I had a fairly stressful week. 

Friday, I started my day at the Wellness Center again. Only this time, I forgot to put my Fitbit in my sock so I get credit for all the work on the elliptical. I was not happy. To make up for it I went back to the Wellness Center just before lunch and worked another 25 minutes WITH my Fitbit in my sock. 🤣

Year at a Glance

I worked more on the Year at a Glance calendar and showed Aaron. He is excited. We want to share it with the Areas so they can put their local events in. Each area can be a different color. We can then see their capacity to know if they would be available for a specific interpreting event. Too often we don't find out until the last minute that they are too busy to do the event. We are hoping this may help. I reached out to one of the IT guys to see if it would be possible to get a link from Event Central to my Microsoft list so we wouldn't have to double enter the events we do here at Headquarters. Long story short, apparently I didn't get the RIGHT manager's approval to move forward. Daniel is my manager and he OK'd it and said he wanted it. He was supposed to get his manager's approval and that didn't happen so now they are probably going to cancel it, get our money back and reevaluate the need, if there is any need, sometime in the future. I'm sure I will be long gone before, or if ever, that happens. I'll know more on Monday. If they can't get their money back we will use it for a year....maybe. Needless to say, I was not particularly happy.

Elder Wilcox at the Temple
You can see a little more snow.

Just before we were ready to go home, I got a call from Daniel's boss wanting to give me another assignment. Our Vendor department is way behind on renewing contracts and with General conference just around the corner, that is NOT good. They would like me to help with that until after conference. I am to start on Monday. That means everything else I have been working on is put on hold. But, of course that is not possible for the several things I am doing FOR General Conference. So it looks like I will be working evenings and weekends for a while to make sure I stay on top of everything.

Saturday our Internet company was "upgrading" our Internet. I wasn't sure if I would have any Internet at all; but, I did (off and on), but it was enough for me to get my HawkSoft work done for an hour. After that, we went to Bountiful to get haircuts. Our wait time was extra long (even though I checked in online) so we went to lunch. It was a nice afternoon. We stopped at a park to eat and took a few pictures of the snow. After we got home I spent some time working on my Leadership Pattern lesson and the Emotional Resilience lesson for Sunday and Monday classes. Then we had a very nice evening of relaxing.

The park where we enjoyed our lunch.

We had a really good Sunday. My Emotional Resilience class went very well. I love how we are all getting to know each other better. I enjoy hearing each other's contributions to the lesson. We have some very spiritual times. We also have some fun too. Sister Faerber is our facilitator for the class. Her husband helps her with the class. He is the 2nd counselor in the Mission Presidency. She made a delicious gluten free Apple Crisp for us this morning. She took it out of the oven just before our class. It was so good. I told her she didn't have to bribe us to come. We all LOVE the class. She said it was a reward for our contributions. 

Another angle from the park.

The talks in Sacrament were very good. We also heard a beautiful solo from an Elder in the Branch. He sang "Jesus Was No Ordinary Man". I'm not sure there was a dry eye in the Chapel. He spoke for a couple of minutes before he sang and talked about his special needs son who is 45 and on the mission with them. He said how his son has always wanted to serve a mission. It reminded me of Michael Bean who also always wanted to serve a mission and was so happy when he could serve with his parents. The pianist had to jump up and grab a Kleenex from the pulpit before she could play for him. It brought a little laughter. We are all so very touched by that.

Relief Society was wonderful too. We talked about President Nelson's last General Conference talk called, "Overcome the World and Find Rest". Everyone had so many wonderful comments about what touched them about the talk and how it has changed them or helped them or touched them in some way. I LOVE CHURCH. It rejuvenates me each week. It strengthens me to face the trials that may come during the week. I LOVE MY MISSION, but that doesn't mean I don't face trials. The last couple of weeks have been a little harder than most. Church and being surrounded by our fellow missionaries and hearing their testimonies all help me when I feel down. Sometimes life is hard but turning to the Lord for that "peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) sustains me, lifts me, and brings me joy beyond measure.

One last thing. A BIG SHOUT OUT to Paul Hawkins who created these beautiful business card holders for our team. Occasionally we do events that are more in the public eye. For example, this coming week Roots Tech 2023 starts. We have already done some Interpretation pre-recordings that will be broadcast sometime during the end of next week. We will also be supplying some interpreters at the Salt Palace for the in-person live portion of the event. When in public like that, people sometimes come up and want contact information. Plus, people are always confusing Translation verses Interpretation. Aaron asked if we could get something to hold some business cards and perhaps have Global Interpretation on it to help them distinguish the difference. Voila, we now have these beautiful Business Card Holders!!! Thank you PAUL!

May you have a blessed week and stay warm!

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

More Events and Other Things

Monday morning started off with our Mission Devotional with Elder and Sister Tad R. Callister. They gave a wonderful devotional on how to study the scriptures. It was very inspiring.

I spent most of my day trying to add texting to my phone app for our resources. I made some headway, but I still have a ways to go.

Tuesday started a bit unusual. Instead of attending our Zone Devotional on Zoom, I had a Zoom call with one of our Interpreters in Nigeria! She needed help with creating and submitting her invoice. To complicate it a bit further, she is currently inactive because her contract expired a few weeks ago. So, first thing in the morning, I had to request she be activated. I also had to get in touch with her area supervisor so he could deliver and approve her job so we could invoice it. This was from last October General Conference. Then we had to tackle the technology issues in Nigeria. She tried to get on our call but her screen froze. Then it looked like it was going to come back, but if froze again. She eventually quit trying. In the meantime I am trying to email her to see what she wanted to do but she was not responding. I then notified Xenia, our Section leader, to see if I could be given permission to create and submit the invoice for her since she didn't understand the instructions that were sent before and clearly there were technology issues. Xenia said if I could get her permission via an email than I could do it for her. 

The Plaza on Temple Square nearly done.

So, first I emailed my IT guy to please keep her active until I could get her invoice created. By then I got notification her job was approved and ready to invoice. Finally, towards the end of the day I received the email permission from her so I could create and submit her invoice. By 4:00 PM I was done and she was deactivated again. One of my main goals was to FIX the invoicing system before our mission comes to an end. Due to unreliable email issues with our servers, they won't switch over to the better invoice process because it won't work 100% of the time. I personally think we will get higher percentages then we currently are getting with the manual submissions, but it isn't my call. The "good news" is they have approved a new PLUNET replacement system that should start being implemented by the end of the year that will be a VAST improvement for invoicing. It has other issues, but those issues only involve those people who will be using the system, not the Interpreters so that is OK. The new system has some pros and cons, but I think the cons will have a viable work around to make it a much better system overall. It doesn't look like I will be around to actually do anything with it.

Just snow on the mountains today.

After I went to the Wellness Center we had our first General Conference preparation meeting. We will meet weekly until conference from now on. It was nice to go over our to do list and see that we have actually already started on several things on the list.

I worked some more on my phone app before out team meeting later that day. We actually ended our meeting on time for the first time in a very long time. That left me time to start working on a new spreadsheet to help Elder Linford set up and update the PLUNET order for General Conference. For that last couple of conferences, I have been using SQL to give him a report every day or so to enter people into PLUNET. I don't think SQL will be an option after I leave, so I am trying to devise something that will be simple enough for anyone to use it and it will be easier than trying to go through Event Center for over 97 languages everyday. It took me a couple of days to get it right, but I think it will be fairly helpful for him.

Continued construction near the Tabernacle

Wednesday was pretty low key. I spent some time tweaking the General Conference spreadsheet so that Elder Linford should be able to do it all by himself as often as he wants to check things. I had him work on a project for me, while I was working on the spreadsheet for him. Some of the areas moved languages around for their leaders. We have to put a language supervisor into PLUNET for each language. I have created a template that has all the ITA's (language supervisors) already in for every language that we do. We can then create new PLUNET orders based on the All Language Template and it will automatically populate the ITAs for each language. I had Elder Linford go through each of the languages and compare them with the new Area Leadership Spreadsheet we have so I can update the template for him. I will get the template updated this weekend. Wednesday evening the Linford's supported the last minute make-up session for the 2023 Temple and Family History Leadership Instruction (videos for RootsTech23) that we did last week. Apparently they had Spanish and French as well as a few Tieline languages that needed to do retakes.

Another view of the Plaza

Thursday started with our Zone Devotional followed by a trip to the Wellness Center again. I made it there everyday this week. It is paying off. I feel stronger and have more energy. I spent most of the day doing things for everyone else. The Linfords came in until lunch time, then they headed to Wyoming for the long weekend. Their youngest granddaughter was getting baptized on February 18th, and her brother was receiving the Aaronic Priesthood on Sunday. I'm so glad they were able to go. We all worried about the weather and the roads. We had another storm pop up on Tuesday, but it was not too bad. They arrived safe and sound. I did manage to get everything done on my list except to add emails to my phone app. Maybe next week I can do that.

Thursday evening we supported the Elder Gilbert Institute Initiative for the Seminaries and Institute department of the Church. It was pretty good. It was a panel discussion about several different topics in how to work with the students to help them get as much as they can out of Institute. They have so many different questions and concerns that these young adults had even 10 years ago. There is so much misinformation that can be found on the Internet. It is hard to know what is true. Institute teaches them how to find truth and where to turn to with their questions. We have so many very strong youth and young adults. They stand up for that is right and are wonderful examples of believers of Jesus Christ. The event went very well and we got out of there nearly 45 minutes earlier than expected.

More construction on the Visitor
Center side of Temple Square 

Friday was a short day for us. I had originally scheduled a Temple appointment for Thursday night as that is when we usually go. But our Elder Gilbert event was also a last minute addition to our schedule. You may remember I ended my blog last week with no events scheduled, hahaha. So, as soon as we got the Elder Gilbert event I rescheduled our appointment. Because of the new film, it was hard to get an appointment. About the only ones available were early afternoon on Friday so I grabbed a 3:00 appointment. Anyway, we left right after lunch. We don't usually eat until after 1:00. Our Temple session was beautiful again. I love the Temple.

Saturday we stayed home. We both just kind of did our own thing throughout the day. We watched Book of Mormon videos and another episode of The Chosen in the evening. We have a holiday on Monday so I'm looking forward to that. I think maybe we will go to the movies. I hear A Man Called Otto is supposed to be real good.

Elder Nichols teaching Sunday School

Sunday was a bit busier than usual. I had my Emotional Resilience class in the morning. It is a Self Reliance class put on by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is open to anyone who would like to take it. There are several other classes available. I highly recommend it. Our Sacrament meeting was very good. We had three sisters who are leaving in a month. They each gave an excellent talk about belonging. 

After Church, we headed over to the COB for an event called NASW Area Devotional - Stories of Faith. It was a tribute to the to the African Americans in the South West area. They started with a lively concert, including "This Little Light Of Mine". So fun. The rest of the fireside were testimonies and poems from the African Americans in the area. The concluding speaker was Elder Piper. It was broadcast to several states in the south.

One of the speakers in tonight's Event.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love Always,

Mom and Dad,

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Our beautiful Sunset

Global Area Meetings, 2023 RootsTech Videos, and the Temple

I continued this week by going to the Wellness Center every day. I am pleased with the progress I am making. I hope to continue with this for the duration of our mission. 

Last Friday, I left with several unsolved issues with a few projects I was working on. So on Monday I started off trying to solve my problems. I tackled the first project until I ran into a roadblock. I then posted a request for help in our Teams chat and then went on to the second project. I worked on that project for a while until I ran into another roadblock. I again posted a request for help in a different chat in Teams and went on to the third project. I worked on that project until I once again ran into another roadblock and posted a request for help. At that point I was out of projects to work on. I realized I hadn't taken time to do my Gospel study that morning and decided it was a good time to do that. As I got ready to study, I realized I was frustrated with no response to my requests and that I couldn't proceed with them until I received some help. I decided to pray before I studied. After pouring my heart out I closed my prayer, ready to start my Gospel study. I no sooner said "amen" when I got a response to one of my requests. Danny offered to do a video call with me to help solve my problem. It took almost two hours and an additional tech to join our call before we solved my problem. In the process, they opened several other ideas for me to move forward in my major project. I got much more than I expected. It was a wonderful and immediate answer to my prayer! By the next day all three problems were resolved.

Since this was the first Monday of the month, our monthly Mission Devotional was Monday Evening. We were pleased to hear from Ryan Eggett. He was the director of the MTC Choir for October 2022 General Conference. We had many of our Senior Missionaries in that choir. We had heard so many wonderful stories about him from those who were in the choir. He did not disappoint. He has a wealth of information about the history of many of the hymns. And, he has a marvelous sense of humor. The combination made for a wonderful devotional that was informative, spiritual, and humorous. We were all talking about it the day after the devotional. 

Tuesday morning started with our Zone Devotional. Elder and Sister Larson presented a very nice devotional. I spent the rest of the day continuing to work on my projects. I was putting together the spreadsheet I send out to the areas with all their interpreters and the status they have in PLUNET. It still needed some tweaking as I fixed errors in the files to make sure the data was as accurate as possible. Tuesday afternoon was our Team meeting.

We left a little after 4 because we had the first of two Global Area Meetings that evening. This conference we decided not to hold our own for just interpretation and instead piggybacked on the meeting that Translation set up. We had about 15 or 20 minutes of the meeting. I was able to share the spreadsheet I had been working on to send all the Areas to help them prepare for General Conference. It was one of the projects I was struggling with the day before. I was happy I could share the spreadsheet in the meeting with confidence.

Wednesday was more of the same. I made progress on the data cleanup I was working on. I was preparing to send out the spreadsheets by the end of the week after the second Global Area Meeting. I had the opportunity to attend the PLUNET Governance meeting that I haven't attended for months because our Team meeting always went over. We changed our meeting from Wednesday to Tuesday so that now makes it possible for me to attend the PLUNET meetings again. Normally those meetings are all about Translation, but that Wednesday they focused on Invoicing. I was excited at first, that they were finally addressing invoicing, until I listened to all that was going on. They have new software that will automate the process somewhat. At least it will automate the input of data into the Church finance system. Currently, there are young service missionaries that manually input the data. The new software will eventually eliminate the young service missionaries by automating that process. Until it is fully automated the missionaries will convert the RTF files that the interpreters send to them into PDF files that the new software can read. Once they can automate the RTF to PDF process they won't need service missionaries anymore. I had hoped what they were going to talk about was how to make it easier for our interpreters to create and submit their invoices; but, alas that will NOT change for at least a year. They say they will replace PLUNET by the first of next year and invoicing will change for the better. In the meantime it is the same complicated mess.

Wednesday evening we supported the 2023 Temple and Family History Leadership Instruction (videos for RootsTech23) and the RootsTech 2023 Mainstage Video Recordings events. Several of the same people were involved in both events which is why Aaron decided to combine them. We had about 39 people in attendance. We served a delicious dinner from Panda Express that everyone loved. The evening was very complicated as there were about 13 different video segments that were recorded. Some languages did some videos and other languages did other videos. All the languages left at different times. I had to track all of that to make sure the hours were accounted for correctly. Some left as early as 8:30 while others didn't leave until after 11:00. To help make things more fun for those that had to stay for so long, we served Ice Cream as a snack throughout the evening. Everyone LOVED that. When the night was over Aaron headed home with us to spend the night as he had to be back the next morning to do the Tieline session of one of the events we just finished.

Thursday morning I missed the Zone Devotional to attend the second Global Area Meeting. I did my short presentation again. I finished the last piece of my project that morning and as soon as the meeting was over I sent out the spreadsheets to ALL the areas throughout the world. I watched the Global Area Meeting from our apartment. On my way into the office, I received a Teams call from Daniel, our manager. He had a special project he wanted me to work on before Monday. It was kind of fun walking to work and having a video conference call on the way. What times we live it! 😊After going to the Wellness Center I got started on the new project. In the meantime, I started receiving lots of emails from around the world in response to the spreadsheets I sent out. There have been far fewer requests this time around. We are in much better shape then we were even last conference. 

We left around 1:30 to head back to the apartment. I had a 2:00 meeting with HawkSoft that I thought would be better to do at home. Besides we were headed to the Temple right after the meeting. Since we stayed so late on Wednesday night we were able to only work a couple of hours on Thursday. The HawkSoft meeting was to show off their new updated Carrier interface. It is still in development, but it looks AWESOME. I'll probably have another meeting next week to see the rest of it, if they get it finished. After the meeting we headed to the Bountiful Temple. We were surprised to see some awesome changes in the session. If you haven't been, GO!!! I can't wait to go back this coming Thursday.

I spent Friday finishing up the project for Daniel. I sent him a preliminary on Thursday to make sure I was on the right track. Once he approved it, I filled in what was missing and sent it off to him by noon or so. I then started in on the emails I received from the areas. Most were just thank yous. Several gave me lists of people to deactivate. A few gave me fixes to make. All in all it went pretty good. At 2:00 I had a meeting with Matt to go over my progress with my list. I reported on what Danny and the other Tech shared with me as a way to move forward. Matt told me he had already talked to people about that so it is already in the works. That would have been nice to know. At least now I know there are a couple of things I don't have to spend time on as they may be taken care of automatically in the near future. I stayed until 5:30 to finish everything so I wouldn't have to worry over  the weekend. I can start fresh on Monday with the next phase.

Saturday was a very nice day. We had a leisurely morning. I did my scripture study and then worked on my next module for the Leadership Pattern class I'm taking. About 1:30 we headed over to Vicki's house to visit with her. We haven't seen her since about a month after Roy passed away. Between the Christmas Devotional, our trip to Oregon for Christmas, and COVID it had been awhile. Her health is improving a lot. She is able to get out and visit her sister and friends. We had a GREAT visit with her and ended up staying a couple of hours. It was so good. When we got home I remembered I still needed to do a bit of work for HawkSoft and then finish up my class preparation. We finally settled down for some TV before bed.

Sunday is always GREAT. My Emotional Resilience class was really good. I love my Action Partner. We were supposed to work on different ways to help reduce stress during the past week. We reported in with each other several times during the week. Both of us said almost the same thing every time. Something like, "I didn't do anything on the commitment list for how to deal with stress, but I did say prayers, and listened to conference talks, and got up and moved around a bit to clear my thinking. Amazingly enough I felt calm all week in spite of a more stressful than average week." My Action Partner also told me, "Mopping the floors was a great stress reliever but that wasn't on the suggested list!" I wrote back and told her that it was OK to not check off things on the list. As long as we found something that worked for us, that was the point, even if it wasn't on the list. Sacrament meeting and Relief Society meeting were good. Sister Nichols led our discussion. She is so fun and did a great job. We talked about the talk in General Conference by Elder Ryan Olsen called "The Answer is Jesus". It was a great discussion.

At this point it looks like we have a slow week ahead. We shall see!

Have a GREAT week. We love you!

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Devotionals, Classes, Team Off-site, Meetings, and Temple

We had a busy week, but not very many events. From my Emotional Resilience class last Sunday, we talked about how our bodies are a gift from God. We talked about things like exercise, rest, proper eating, etc. We each made individual commitments that we would strive to keep in the coming week. I made two commitments. The first was to go to the Wellness Center everyday during the work week. The second was to really watch what I was eating and stick to what I know I should eat.

Monday started with our weekly Mission Devotional. Since it was the last Monday of the month we heard from two of our Zones. The DQ and the SRP. We all like the DQ Zone because it reminds us of Dairy Queen. lol  DQ stands for Data Quality Assurance.  SRP is the Church History Special Projects Zone. Both of these Zones work hand in hand in providing the best possible records to be used in Family Search. They have state of the art software that can now cut the time it takes to verify and validate the work from weeks and months to only minutes. For example, they have missionaries throughout the world that take pictures of church and government records to digitize them and protect them from destruction. Many countries still have all of their vital records on paper. We have over 10 couples in war torn Ukraine with a request of up to 40 more couples to help with the work. Those pictures would be sent back to the DQ team to make sure the images were not blurry, or distorted in any way. If they were they would have to send a message to have the pictures retaken. The whole process took at least 3 days turn around. They have new cameras that now do the quality assurance right on the spot. It will immediately tell them if the picture is unreadable, blurry, or distorted so they can retake it immediately. Consequently, the DQ team is actually now behind time because they are receiving so many documents that they don't have time to process all of them. They no longer have to check the quality, but they have to get them processed and loaded into Family Search. Such fantastic work being done. It doesn't just help us with Family Search, but it is a tremendous blessings to countries all over the world because we offer to digitize all their records for free. It preserves the records for them.

After the Devotional, I went to the Wellness Center for my first day of exercise. It felt good! I also stuck to my good eating for the day. I even skipped the refreshments for Family Home Evening. Monday evening, Steve was in charge of our Family Home Evening. He did a great job talking about the various proclamations the Church has issued over the years. They have only been 6. He focused on the last one given in April of 2020 about the Restoration of the Church. We listened to that General Conference talk by President Nelson and then had a brief discussion. After that we played LDS Taboo. It was loads of fun and of course we laughed A LOT. It was the Beeches last night so of course we had to get pictures. They left the next day. We will miss them. Our little hallway is looking empty with so many signs taken down. We just found out we have three new missionary couples moving in soon so Elder Wilcox will be busy with new signs.

Tuesday morning started with our Zone Devotional. Our new Zone leaders were in charge. They gave a beautiful devotional on Temples. It was a great way to start the day. From there I went to the Wellness Center to get my second day of exercise in. Then we got ready for our Team Off-site meeting. Originally it was supposed to be a potluck luncheon, but with the weather so cold and icy conditions on sidewalks, they decided to have food brought in. Most everyone was walking from the COB to the new big blue building that houses 4 wards and many business offices a few blocks away. Venky, one of our MLCs, goes to one of the wards there so he secured the building for us. Elder Wilcox didn't think his heel would handle that long of a walk, plus even though we were no longer taking potluck, we still needed to take supplies such as plates, water, drinks, snacks, laptops, etc. so we decided to take the car and transport everything to the meeting. It was a good decision. 

Since the food was changed to "restaurant" and Elder Wilcox was responsible to order it and we had our car, he decided that he would just pick it up and save the delivery fee. They opted for Pizza. Well, that didn't go with my "diet" so I made a nice chicken salad and took that. I stuck to my good eating for the day and didn't have any of the snacks or candy or pizza. It was hard, but I did it. Our meeting went from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. We accomplished quite a bit. We went home after taking the supplies back to the COB, so, that was nice to get off a little early.

Nothing special happened on Wednesday. I went to the Wellness Center first thing. The Linfords covered our one and only event for the week, which was the GA Wives Luncheon. I worked on my list to get ready to send out the emails of the status of our Interpreters to all of the Areas. I still have a few things to work out. I think we left around 5. I stuck to my good eating all day.

On Thursday morning, Sister Linford gave the devotional. She did a beautiful job. She said she was originally going to talk about what we do, but I had briefly touched on that the week before when I did the devotional. They she was going to talk about Temples, but the Johnsons talked about that two days before. So, she talked about Testimonies since Fast and Testimony Sunday was coming up. Her story was so sweet and personal and touching. She really blessed my life.

After the Devotional I went to the Wellness Center. The rest of my day was pretty much the same as Wednesday. We left early so we could to to the Temple. It seemed like such a long time since we had gone to the Temple. We saw our old Mission President and his wife at the Temple. They work there every Thursday afternoon. We had a very nice time. After we got home our dinner was well within my eating guidelines.

On Friday I started the day at the Wellness Center. YAY!!! I made it 5 days in a row. I rushed upstairs before my 9:00 AM meeting. I reviewed with Matt what I've been working on with my list. We talked about the direction we want to pursue. I think I have a better direction about what they want. While working on my list for the day I ran into three different major roadblocks. When I hit the first one I posted the problem on the Team chat we have for such problems and I went onto a different path. I worked on that one for a while and ran into another problem. This one required help from Sean, so I texted him. While waiting for him to get back to me I started on a third direction I am taking with my list. Once again, I hit another roadblock. After researching again, I realized I needed outside help so I posted another chat to Jeff, my techy support guy. By that time, Sean and I were able to connect so one problem was solved. I worked on that solution for awhile. By then, I realized I was not going to get any answers that day so we went home. We stuck with my good eating for the day.

Saturday, I stayed home all day. Elder Wilcox went shopping. I did not do any exercise. I did, however, stick to my diet for the day. I spent time working on HawkSoft, Scripture Study, and preparing for both of my upcoming classes. It was nice to be home and work on things I wanted to do, rather than things I have to do. lol. 

Sunday was SO great. I went to my Emotional Resilience class. I am really loving this class each week. I have a wonderful Action partner and we talk with each other almost every day. It really helps to keep commitments when I am reporting to Sister Winder each day. She feels the same. 

After class we went into our Sunday meetings. I got to give the opening prayer today. Since it was the first Sunday of the month it was Fast and Testimony Meeting. We had beautiful meetings. The first two people that got up to bear Testimony were a husband and wife from Korea. They are the sweetest people. Each one wrote their Testimony out ahead of time so they could read what they wanted to say in English. Sister Bae went first. She shared how happy they were to live here where there are so many Temples nearby. She talked about how they used to drive seven hours each month to attend the Temple back home in Korea. She then said how very happy and excited they were when they heard the announcement of a new Temple in their home town of Busan, Korea. I don't think there was a dry eye in the entire Chapel. Then her husband bore his Testimony. He talked about how we are all family. They both invited the Spirit into the meeting. We all felt it so strong. 

The next Elder that got up, looked first at the Baes and bore his Testimony to them in Korean. Sister Bae cried. I think most everyone else did too. It was so touching. Later another Sister got up and also spoke directly to the Baes in Korean. Her words were very few and she commented that it was about all she could remember. Elder Bae laughed. She then shared that she had a Korean bookmarker that for some reason she decided to take to Church that day. She held up the bookmarker and said that now she knew why she brought it to Church. When she finished, she want and gave the Baes the bookmarker. 

The last Sister that shared her Testimony talked about what was shared at our last Mission Devotional. In particular she mentioned the Missionaries that were taking photos of all the records in the Ukraine. She said she shared that information with a friend of hers that she had sent a Christmas Card to. Apparently the return address she put on the card had an extra 1 in the address so her friend couldn't send a card in return. The friend contacted the Mission Office to connect with her friend. This occurred right before our Mission Devotional. After reconnecting with her friend, she decided to share the information about the Ukrainian records. The friend texted back how grateful she was for the information. It turns out much of her family still lives in or near Ukraine. Her ancestors are from there. She had been doing all she could to gather her family history information for those ancestors before she was sure the records would be destroyed and she would never get the information again. The information her friend sent was an answer to prayer and a true miracle in her life. Our meeting was so uplifting.

After a great Sunday School class we went home to get ready for our Break the Fast dinner at our Apartment. We thought we were going to be few in number since so many have left our ranks. We were surprised to find out that we had three new couples move in this weekend. We met two of them at our Break the Fast. The third couple is finishing up with a bout of COVID so they didn't join us. We had a wonderful time with great food and wonderful company getting to know our fellow missionaries. We love it!!!

I hope you have a WONDERFUL week!

Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox