GC Pre-recordings, GA Wives Luncheon, Lots of GC Leadership Meetings and of Course General Conference!!!

I'm a day late, but that's OK. It has been an extremely busy week leading up to General Conference. We also have a very busy week AFTER General Conference before things will slow down a bit. On with the recap.

Last Monday we started with our Mission Devotional that features different Zones. We heard from the Church History Special Projects Zone. A couple in our Family Home Evening group are the Zone leaders. Their group gave an awesome presentation. They work on some pretty fascinating research projects. Some are ancient documents, others are artifacts, others are journal entries, and who knows what else. They research the histories associated with the document or artifact. It all sounded so cool. I found myself wishing that our mission could be divided up with 4 months in one zone, 4 months in another and so forth so we could experience it all.

Pre-GC Prep Meeting Luncheon

I continued work on contracts for much of the day. I also attended my last Leadership Pattern class. And I started on the GC Hours report using SQL. I found the SQL to be very frustrating because for some reason my work computer didn't have some features my home computer has. I had worked on the hours report at home over the weekend and was all set to just update the new data and run the report. It wouldn't let me import it and took me forever to get it done. Not cool. I was dreading running it after Conference.

PJ Family Home Evening Night

Family Home Evening was wonderful. We had nearly everyone on our floor there. Sister Burgoyne shared with us lots of fun Family History games that are available on Family Search. She made her famous cinnamon rolls for desert. Heavenly! And to honor our previous Zone leader, Elder Stevens who is home now and had been diagnosed with cancer, we had a PJ FHE. When he was here we used to do a PJ night about every other month or so. Several of us dressed up in our PJs and we took pictures of the whole group and sent them to him to tell him how much we love him and that we are all praying for him. The doctor report after his surgery was pretty good. They got all the tumor and it looks like it only touched one lymph node so he will have to undergo some additional treatment, but it is optimistic it will all go well. Please keep him in your prayers.

Elder Ure giving us a
Tour of Ensign College

Tuesday we had our Zone Devotional lead by Elder and Sister Williams. They are fairly new in the mission. They talked about hearing the word of the Lord. and shared many of the things we have learned from President Nelson since he became the President of the Church. They also shared some fun ways to prepare and listing to General Conference...especially if you have small children.

We had a PRE-Conference Luncheon for our normal GC preparation meeting. We went to Chuck-O-Rama. It was fun and the food was good. However, since we didn't have much of a meeting, Eunlan scheduled another pre-conference meeting for Thursday. lol Not long after we got back from lunch we had our regular Team Meeting. During the course of that meeting we discovered a problem with the electronic General Conference tickets. We were kind of a guineapig project. ALL of our tickets went to Daniel, our manager. He then had to send out all the tickets to the different winners. He sent them to the team first, which was good since we discovered some issues with creating the accounts to then claim the tickets. So we spent half the meeting working on helping other team members access their tickets. Bottom line, I had to create a HELP document to send out to all the winners so they could access and print their tickets. Thankfully the document helped a lot and I didn't get very many calls or emails for help. Poor Daniel, worked all day than then sent tickets all night. He finally finished sending them out Tuesday night. That afternoon he got notification that we had been given an additional 60 tickets, so I did another random drawing to send out more. Bottom line, we got them all sent out by Friday evening. Some of the winners didn't respond so we ended up calling people to see if they wanted tickets. I was able to give Djeryd and Eva two more tickets. They got to go to Saturday Evening and Sunday Afternoon! 

Sister Nicholls at the Tour

In between the meetings I worked on more contracts. Just when I thought I was done a bunch more would come in. I also gave a quick tour to a student from Ensign College and her mother who was visiting from Guatemala (I think). One of our Zone missionaries works at Ensign College and bumped into us after lunch. She and her husband are helping us for General Conference and had been on one of my tours, so she asked if I could give her student and mother a tour. It was a lot of fun.

Our Group that went on the Ensign Collage Tour

That evening we went to Ensign Collage for a tour for our TIPS group. That stands for Tuesday In-Person group. We don't go all the time, but we go when we can. The Nicholls and the Ures all work there and gave us a wonderful and very fun tour. At the end of the night, we were headed down the elevator to go home. We got on the elevator and there were several more that couldn't fit in so they said they would wait for another elevator to go down. Well, Steve and I didn't miss a beat. We immediately started singing "Down dooby do Down Down" and they started cracking up as the elevator doors closed. When we got to the bottom, we decided to wait for them to come down. As soon as the door opened, we started singing again. They loved it! Then we all walked home together. It was a wonderful evening.

Our Luncheon with our New Zealand Visitor

Wednesday was extremely busy. I went from one major task to another all day. Everything was related to General Conference in some way. We worked until 7 PM. Steve and I supported the GA Wives Luncheon from 11 AM to about 1:30. Elder Patrick Kearon and his wife were the speakers. It was very enjoyable. Afterwards I helped an interpreter with her invoices. I did about 30 more invoices. I gave my last Missionary tour around 4. 

Thursday was another Zone Devotional. This one was presented by Elder and Sister Sabey. They are also fairly new to our mission. Elder Sabey was also just put into our Branch leadership. They talked about the Doctrine of Christ and how The Daily ​Doctrine of Christ​ Depends on the Covenants​ of the​ Ordinances​. I loved how he compared the two sacramental prayers together and brought out that in one we are "willing" to always remember the Savior and in the other one we "do" always remember Him. I enjoyed that very much.

Laptops setup for General Conference
for the Interpreters to use

We were "officially" done with contracts, except an occasional straggler. I was "fired". Not really. I was told they probably won't need my help with contracts anymore. We finished several weeks earlier than they usually do for General Conference. I was glad I could be a part of it.

Portuguese Interpreters

We had 8 GCLM (General Conference Leadership Meetings) events on Thursday. The Linfords handled the one in the morning and we did the other 7 in the afternoon and evening. Ours were onesie and twosie events where four of them all happened at the same time in the afternoon and the other three happened at the same time for dinner. It was a little crazy but fun. The afternoon events didn't start until 2:30 call time. We had our 2nd GC Preparation meeting at 2:00, but I was giving another tour for another couple of Ensign students and a family from England. It went into the two o'clock hour before I ended the tour. I wasn't too worried as I didn't have any assignments that needed reporting on. When I went to sign into the meeting, we started getting people for our events and I was busy helping them so I never made it to the GC Prep meeting. I think we were done with our evening events around 7:30 or so and were home around 8. We obviously couldn't watch all the events going on. These there General Authority Leadership meetings mainly with the different quorums of the Seventy. We did watch one that was for Spanish and Portuguese. Elder Gong was speaking. We had a Spanish interpreter doing a side by side interpretation since the bulk of the audience only spoke Spanish. We had an Spanish to English interpreter in the booth to interpret for Elder Gong when people asked questions. At the end of the meeting Elder Gong wanted to bear his testimony in Spanish. He said it would be a simple testimony. Simple does not translate to short. Hahaha. He spoke a long time, and since we were not getting the English translation, I didn't understand much of anything except a few words here and there. Elder Gong has a trade mark. He loves to have the audience raise their hands if they like something. And then raise there other hand if they like something else. And finally raise both hands if they really love it. Well, he does that in Spanish too. It is very endearing. 

The B-Desk sign

On Friday the Linfords did 8 more GCLM events in the morning that ended about 1:30. I spent the day with a few contracts, lots of tickets, getting all the SLC GC interpreters into various reports for various people, tweaking the hours report, and updating my Microsoft list so all the dates and statuses were up to date from all the Contracts I had processed over the last couple of weeks. I had to do that before I could run final reports. Elder Wilcox and I went to a special lunch that some of our Section were putting on for our area language coordinator from New Zealand. His name is Steve Stebbings. I have talked to him over Teams and lots of emails back and forth, so it was wonderful to meet him in person. I actually met him a couple of days before when Ana brought him by and introduced him to us and invited us to lunch on Friday. I thought it was going to be a fairly big group. We were surprised when there was only 11 of us there. We had a very nice and intimate lunch with several big wigs in our Section and Division. 

A Gift one of the Missionaries
gave to me

Funny story. We were also invited to a luncheon held at the Conference Center in the parking garage for all those who were working on General Conference in any way. We didn't go because of our other invitation to lunch; but, the Linfords decided to go after their event ended. They got to the conference center and opened the door to the garage and didn't see anyone, so they looked around and saw some double doors with a sign that said something like "do no open, meeting in progress". They thought it must be the luncheon so they opened the doors. They saw tables and people eating around them and figured they were in the right place. As they started heading down the room to where the food was, Sister Linford started looking at the people a little closer. They were all in suits and ties and she thought they looked pretty dressed up for most of the employees that we work with. Then she noticed that she recognized a few people she was passing, like Elder Bednar, Elder Cook and many others. At that point she realized they were in the WRONG place. These were the same people that had been doing all the Events they just finished supporting. So they turned around and walked out. No one said a word to them or even gave them a second look. They went back to the garage and went in a little further and found all the hired hands being fed.  Hahahaha

Two missionaries that are "Runners".
They will take revisions out to all the
55 booths when something comes up.

Most of the team showed up around 3 or 4:00 to help set up for General Conference. We had to put up agendas and signs in all 55 booths, and hung lots of signs from the parking garage all the way up to the 28th floor. We also put flowers in every booth and lots of other things to get ready. We lugged boxes of badges and credentials and 5 laptops down to the main floor lobby to set up the Check-in and B-Desk Tables for the next morning. B-Desk is for our badges and credentials. Elder Linford, Elder Wilcox, and Eunlan went to the Hotel where the out of town interpreters are staying to hand out per-diem money. After they did that they stopped at Crown Burger and picked up dinner for the team. I had been spending most of my time working on the ticket nightmare so I didn't set up much. Anyway, we finally finished around 9:00 PM.

Eunlan and Aaron in the 
"Command Center"

We were up at 5:30 Saturday morning and at the office at 6:30. My missionary helpers were supposed to arrive at 7:30 and interpreters were supposed to arrive at 8:00. I ran upstairs to print something for Elder Wilcox. When I got back down stairs to setup up the 5 laptops and get ready for our prayer meeting, we already had two missionaries and three interpreters standing at the check in. I tried to get the computers up and running and, of course, for whatever reason they wouldn't work correctly. I had set all of the up two weeks before so they would be ready. They weren't connecting to the internet so that slowed things down. In the meantime I had one of the MLCs open his computer and start checking people in. Eunlan showed up and we had a quick prayer meeting. I went back to getting the two missionaries signed into the computers so they could start checking in Interpreters. I had all 5 laptops ready to go at 7:30 which is when they were supposed to show up in the first place. I laughed about that and told them if they had showed up at 7:30 they wouldn't have had to see me mess around with all the computers and look like an idiot. We checked in over 150 interpreters. It should have been more. We had people skip check in and head straight up to the 26th floor. Plus our program that was checking people in did not register everyone that was checked in.

More Interpreters Prepping
for General Conference

Saturday went well and we had wonderful missionaries to help us all day. As far as I now everything ran smoothly. All our missionaries loved working with us and said they had lots of fun. I didn't get to see or hear much of conference but I had lots of interaction with our interpreters. We also had four visiting Interpreters from Samoa. As far as I know it was the first time for all of them to interpret at Headquarters. It was fun to meet them. They seemed to enjoy themselves. We actually finished a little earlier than normal for a Saturday night. Elder Holland was sick and unable to do his talk on Saturday night so the session ended about 15 minutes early. We hurried home and actually got there about 8:30. Djeryd and Eva were there and we had a wonderful visit with them. Sorry, no pictures. I realized that after they left for home. We stayed up way too late talking and enjoying each other. It was after midnight before I had lights out and even later than that before I finally fell asleep.

Sara in the Italian Booth 
reviewing her talk

We were up at 5:00 on Sunday and at the COB by 6:00. Sunday we do Music and the Spoken word so we start everything 1/2 hour early. We had our prayer meeting at 7:00. I gave the spiritual thought. We did not have any missionaries or interpreters show up too early. We expected a big crowd Sunday morning but only had a fraction of the interpreters we expected to check-in. Unbeknownst to me, one of the MLCs told the Interpreters if they checked in on Saturday the did NOT need to check in on Sunday. WRONG! So instead of having over 150 we only checked in 109. In the afternoon we should have checked in another 41, we only got 14. Consequently, I had all the MLCs check to see if all their interpreters showed up for all the sessions they were assigned to do. Most always do, but there are always a few that can't make it the last minute and this conference was no different. I got to hear a few more talks on Sunday, so that was nice. As soon as conference was over, we packed up the main floor and took everything upstairs. Elder Wilcox was working the B-Desk so we were able to see each other and talk to each other both days. That hasn't happened before. Lol. We managed to get home by 4:30, another first for General Conference. Djeryd and Eva were packed and ready to go. We were able to spend a few minutes with them before they headed out the door to go home. They wanted to beat the weather. After they left, we showered and put on pajamas. We lounged on the couch, fell asleep (at least I think we did) while we watched TV and went to bed at 9.

Me at the Check in desk with my Angel

I hope you enjoyed General Conference. Have a WONDERFUL week.

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Cancelled Events, Contracts, Meetings, Costco Run for GC, Tours, Temple, and an Acapella Concert of Foreign Young Adults

President and Sister Oaks

Monday morning started with our Mission Conference. Sister Erin Holmes, wife our our Mission President, spoke to us about the Word. She focused on three aspects of the Word. The written Word, the spoken Word, and the living Word. It was very well done.

The day was spent working on contracts, General Conference ticket tracking, helping Eunlan prepare a list of SLC interpreters for General Conference so she could send them information they needed to know, and giving a tour to more missionaries who are going to be helping us for General Conference. We had a great Family Home Evening, too. The Durrants were in charge and did a great job.  We had a lot of fun.  We played a getting to know you game where we passed a ball around that had questions on it that we needed to answer. Lots of laughs with that game. We also played scripture chase. 

Young Adults from around the World
who will be singing with the 
Tabernacle Choir at General Conference

Tuesday was filled with meetings. I went to the Wellness Center and was able to watch our Zone Conference on my phone while I worked on the elliptical. I like getting two things done at the same time. 😇President Jackson gave our Devotional.

We held our General Conference Preparation meeting in the morning, had a short lunch break and then went into our normal Team meeting. I managed to work on a few contracts and more GC tickets. I was tracking who won tickets and if they claimed their tickets. There were only a few left to claim. At 3:00, I spent about 45 minutes on a ZOOM call with one of our Interpreters who struggles with our invoice system. I am hopeful that it will become easier in the near future. Finance has done some things to automate the process better. We are in a test phase right now. I worked with this particular interpreter every other month or so. It is just too complicated for some of our resources to get.

The Picture Out our Office
Window on Friday Morning

During one of our meetings it was decided that we (the missionaries) need to add one more job to our list of helpers for General Conference. So far I was able to tag on that new responsibility to several existing helpers. I'm not sure if I still need to cover other times that may require getting someone else. In the past we had staff cover this position, but because several of our team have been moved to other departments, we find ourselves short handed.

Wednesday was the semi-annual Costco run for snacks. Sister Linford organized everything and it went very smoothly. I did not go on the run because of the Contracts responsibility and more tours for our missionaries. They got back just as I was finishing up my first tour of the day. We had a Section meeting right after lunch. After that I created a flyer for a devotional Curtis is going to give our Headquarters Missionaries on the Prophet Joseph Smith. And then I gave my last tour of the day. 

President and Sister Oaks
talking with the Young Adults

Thursday was a full day. Once again I did the Wellness Center and our Zone Devotional at the same time. I finished up the tickets in the morning and sent it off to Daniel to send the tickets out electronically. I THOUGHT I would be done with that, but continue to get people emailing or calling me wanting tickets. I don't want to do tickets next conference. Curtis normally does them, but he got sick before we did our training meetings, and so I ended up covering for him. He can have it back next conference. lol

I thought I was basically done with contracts other than the few that come in everyday, when I was asked to take care of the contracts in Susan's folder as she didn't have time. I pulled out over 30 contracts so I was busy for the next two days. Thursday was a short day because we usually go to the Temple on Thursdays. We missed last week because Elder Wilcox wasn't feeling very well and I was a bit overwhelmed with contracts. We really wanted to go on Thursday. They told me I could finish the contracts on Friday and not to worry, so that helped. I also had a morning tour for the missionaries. 

Meeting the relative of our
friend. He will be singing
with the Tabernacle Choir

About 1/2 hour before that tour, I received a call from someone asking about a tour. I recognized the name as one of our Interpreters and thought perhaps he wanted me to show his family or friends around where he did interpretations. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it at 11:00 when my other tour was scheduled. So, I told him I could meet him at noon. After the first tour, I went down to the Lobby to meet the guy. When I saw him, I did not recognize him as being one of our Interpreters. I talked to him a bit and asked how he got my name to call me for a tour. As it turns out, since I have been giving several tours for the missionaries, AND since on a couple of tours we were missing people, AND I had asked the front desk if they could call me if those people showed up for the tour, THEY had my name down as someone who give tours. The guy called the Church Office Building asking about a tour and the front desk gave them my name and number. So, I gave a private tour to the guy but I only covered our floors as I don't know anything about any other floors. 😁He was very fascinated with all the things I told him about interpretation. I need to tell the front desk I DON'T give tours and I am not the official Docent. hahaha.

The Nicholls on one of the tours

Not long after that we went to the Temple. We did Initiatory and an Endowment. We had a very nice time ... I needed to be in the House of the Lord. 

Friday I finished up the contracts (again). I'm sure there will be more; however, the ones coming in now don't even expire until after General Conference so there is no rush. They announced at  our Section meeting that we finished the "Conference Rush" three weeks early!!! Normally, they have been processing contracts even during General Conference.

We had a real treat on Friday. One of our Interpreters who now works for the Church and is in our Section asked me on Thursday if I had any GC tickets available. I had to tell her they were all gone. She then told me that a relative of hers was selected with a group of 12 young adults from around the world to sing with the Tabernacle Choir at two sessions of General Conference. She said many of her family from Brazil are coming so they can attend Conference. I wished so bad I had tickets for her, but we don't have any left. I told her to send me a picture so I could look for her relative.

Me with our Brazilian Young
Adult who will be singing
with the Tabernacle Choir

Well, Friday morning we were told there was going to be an impromptu Acapella choir singing in the East Wing lobby at 11:30. It sounded fun so we decided to go. When we got there, we found a very small group of people in the lobby and a very small, 12 person choir singing beautifully. We went up closer to see and hear. There was an empty chair off to the side a little ways so I sat in it. The choir finished their number and the director motioned for the young adults to come closer and surround the two chairs that were to the left of me. It was then that I noticed that President and Sister Oaks were sitting in those chairs. I stood up to take some pictures, along with several other people. President and Sister Oaks stood up and President Oaks talked to the young people about want a special opportunity they have to participate with the Tabernacle Choir for General Conference. He talked for a while about the pilot program they were a part of to show the world that the Choir is not just a Utah choir. New things are happening to show we are a World Wide Church. It was such a treat in the middle of our day.

President Oaks listening to
the Acapella Choir

After they sang another song, we were invited to go up and meet each of the singers. I went down the line looking for someone from Brazil. At the end of the line were three from Brazil. One of them was the relative of my friend. We visited for a few minutes and took some pictures. I sent my friend the pictures and told her what happened. It was truly a Tender Mercy.

Since we were finally caught up on nearly everything, I was able to work on some personal things on Saturday. I worked for about 2 hours on HawkSoft stuff. I also finished up the last two modules for my Leadership Pattern Class. Our last class will be Monday at noon and we are covering the last two modules. 

I helped Elder Wilcox with a few things he needed to set up. We got about nine new events come in late Friday afternoon. All of them will be happening this coming week and all of them will be events we support. I have been expecting them as we get them every Conference. Curtis is the Supervisor for them and he has been down with COVID all week. He is feeling better so he finally got them set up. Anyway, Elder Wilcox needed to get his stuff all set up. We had several events that we were supposed to support but they all got cancelled. It was kind of frustrating, as that is one of our favorite things to do on our mission. The good thing about the nine events that just got put in, is they will all take place on just two days. Most of the events occur at the same time so we just cover them as if they were one event. We will do one day and the Linfords will do the other day.

What we woke up to on 
Sunday Morning

I also worked on the "hours" report for General Conference. I still have a few things to tweak but I'm almost done. When I said my prayers on Sunday morning I asked for help to figure out how to fix my "missing" people on my report. I immediately got an idea how to fix it and I'm anxious to try it out. I think that is the last piece of the puzzle.

Sunday was good. Since we finished the Emotional Resilience class last week I got to go to Church with Elder Wilcox instead of several hours earlier. It was a good thing to, because we had another snow storm and I would have had to walk in that. Nothing was plowed so it would have been a mess. As it turned out we drove to Church. 😊I liked that. Our meetings and class were good. I always enjoy our discussions in Relief Society. Since General Conference is next week!!!! we had our Fast and Testimony meeting. After Church we had our Break the Fast meal with our apartment floor. I always love that.

I hope you have a Wonderful Week. Prepare for General Conference next week. It's going to be AWESOME!

All our Love,

Mom and Dad,

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Tours, Tours, and More Tours, Events, and General Conference Preparation Meeting

Monday morning started with the Mission Devotional with speakers from our Mission. We had 4 sisters talk about the benefits of the Leadership Pattern Journey. The mission is getting ready to begin a new series and they wanted the missionaries to be aware of just what it is. In the past, the course was only available to Church Employees. Just before we got here they opened it up to missionaries, but it was not widely publicized. Over the last year, they have encouraged all missionaries to take the course, even though most are not in leadership positions. Everyone is a leader in some way, even if it is only in our families. This course it wonderful for ANYONE. I am hoping in the near future it will be made available to the whole Church.

I didn't think my week could get much busier, but I was wrong. I spent most of the week working on Contracts. That was to be expected. I also worked on the report I will need after General Conference that will report all the hours the interpreters will work for Conference. We pay for 3 hours per session and there are a total of 5 sessions. That means some interpreters who work all 5 sessions will be paid up to 15 hours, while others will only be paid 3 hours. My report tracks all the sessions they are assigned and totals up the hours they should work. Then after conference, we have to compare that with our check-in report to make sure they were actually here and worked all their sessions. The other tricky thing I have to do with my report is look up the name we get from Event Central that comes from the Interpreter report we run over the General Conference event. It lists all the interpreters and all the talks they give and the sessions those talks are in. I consolidate that by interpreter and session so we only record them once in PLUNET to get paid. We total up the sessions to determine payment. However, the name is PLUNET is usually not exactly the same name as in Event Central. So, my report compares the Event Central name with my Microsoft List and grabs the PLUNET name from that list and creates a report with that name and the total hours for Elder Linford to use to update the PLUNET order. So much easier than trying to go through that one session at a time. 

Anyway, late Friday afternoon I was trying to finish up the report and found a problem that has been driving me crazy. I have spent countless hours over the last year trying to get all 2000 plus records in sync so there is a match between Event Central and PLUNET. I have both names in my list and I run a comparison every week or so to make sure those names stay in sync. Well, I ran my "final" test report Friday afternoon and for the most part everything looked good. I expected to see a few people who were on the report but did not have a match in PLUNET. As I started researching why so many were missing I discovered a HUGE problem. I get a report out of Event Central that I use to put the Event Central names in my Microsoft List. I also get a report out of PLUNET that I put in my list. Apparently, the Interpreter Report that we get out of Event Central that is just for a specific event does NOT always use the Event Central name that I get when I get the Event Central report of all interpreters. For example, there were several names that looked like they were a match until I noticed there was an extra space in the name from the Interpreter Report for the event. At first I thought I had the name wrong in my Microsoft list so I changed it. Then I came across a name that I knew I had right. This was one of our Mandarin interpreters. In the master Event Central list it shows his name followed by several Chinese characters. In the Interpreter Report for General Conference the Chinese characters were missing. I went to Event Central and pulled up the interpreter to see if his name had changed, but the Chinese characters were still there. That is when I realized that the Interpreter Report for General Conference was using names that were NOT necessarily the same as what is in the master Event Central database. AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!! I will deal with that on Monday.

Anyway, back to last Monday. I started my Tours for the Missionaries that will be helping us with General Conference. I am doing 2 tours (morning and afternoon) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, plus 1 tour on Thursday morning. Tuesdays we have too many meetings to do tours. It is a lot of fun. It gives the missionaries a chance to see where they will be working. I tell them about the jobs they will be doing and where they will go. It also gives me a chance to get to know them a little before General Conference.

Monday evening we had Family Home Evening. It was our turn to lead the discussion. Since most of these missionaries in our group were not here early in our mission, I decided to resurrect my "Lost in the Forest" presentation. This was two fold. One, no one had seen it before and two, I didn't have time to throw anything else together. Anyway, it all worked out and we had a great time. The Burgoynes couldn't make it and I knew Sister Burgoyne wanted to see it, so we made a special trip to their apartment on Wednesday to have another personal FHE with them. We had a great time. We love them so much.

Guatemala City

Tuesday was our Zone Devotional, Contracts, General Conference Preparation meeting, more Contracts, Team meeting, and more contracts. The Linfords had the MTC Devotional with Elder Cook. We went home and I think I worked for a while after I got home. We did get to watch a little TV.

Wednesday I missed the Wellness Center because we had an Event in the morning. This was a last minute event. We have a PSD All Hands meeting once a quarter and it has been on our calendar for a while now. On Tuesday we got a request for Spanish interpreters for the PDS All Hands meeting. It was originating from Guatemala so nearly everyone was speaking Spanish. We brought in three speakers to interpret from Spanish to English, so that was a treat to actually get to hear our Interpreters. Elder Wilcox and I covered the PSD All Hands - Guatemala event. I was setting up Laptops that we will use for General Conference during the meeting. I still have several more to set up. We use them for Check-in. Right after the meeting I had a tour and of course more contracts. Another tour in the afternoon. 

Thursday I tried to get on the Zone Devotional but our link had changed. It was a misunderstanding. The "new" link they sent out was for the Mission Devotionals, but I accidently put it on the Zone Devotionals. Oooopppppsssss. I missed the devotional, but got it all straightened out later that morning. I had lots of Contracts, plus other issues that I was dealing with that day. I gave one tour in the morning. A little before noon, I got a text from our MTC Trainers. Since we did online MTC training we never actually met our trainers in person. Well, we had arranged to have lunch together. When Elder Bills sent the invitation he said Thursday, but gave me Friday's date. I didn't pay attention to the day but just scheduled it based on the DATE. I was surprised when I got the text saying they were running a little late and would be there in about 20 minutes. Other than being swamped with contracts, we didn't have anything else scheduled. So I acknowledged the text and we met them for lunch. We had a WONDERFUL visit with them and it was so fun to finally meet in person. After lunch we gave them a tour of where we work. They got to meet the Linfords, Venky, and Eunlan, who were all in the office. After about two plus hours, I had to excuse myself so I could get SOME contacts done. We were supposed to go to the Temple, but Steve wasn't feeling well so he went home and I stayed to finish up what I was working on. We will go next week. 

I actually thought we would go home little early on Friday. The Linfords did the Mission Leader Webinar - Missionary Medical event. Elder Wilcox was feeling much better. He headed to the dentist at 8 and dropped me off so I could go to the Wellness Center before starting work. I had two tours that day. I finished all the contracts I had by the time of my last tour. Of course that didn't stop people from asking me to please make so-and-so active so they could participate in the General Conference Preparation meeting on Saturday. I told them I can't do anything unless they return their signed contract. They would tell me that the interpreter told them they returned it so I should be able to process it. I would tell them it wasn't in the inbox or the electronic system so I couldn't process it. This went back and forth A LOT. Anyway, after the tour I was ready to go home, but Elder Wilcox was finishing up on a few things so I thought I would take a look at my hours report. That is when I discovered the problem mentioned previously. We ended up staying until 6:30. 

Saturday was an extremely long day. We started very early so we could setup for our General Conference Preparation meeting. We held our first meeting on March 4th. I spent nearly the entire day on the check-in desk. The training went well. Daniel led the training. He had some creative exercises that were both fun and extremely challenging. For example, they had to sing a song in their own language while at the same time write the alphabet backwards. Once the session started, I had to "check-in" all the Zoom recipients so that can get paid for "attending". That was a challenge for a few that use screwy user names when they sign in. One used Japanese characters. I kept asking the person what their name was in the chat but they weren't answering. Finally one of the MLCs figured out how to put the name in a translator and determined what the name was so I could check them in. Once everyone was checked in, I created a "random" drawing and selected the top 25 people who will be the winners of 2 tickets to General Conference.

After the first session, we went to the 27th floor to have a "birthday" lunch for Curtis. Sister Linford's birthday was March 4th, so we celebrated her birthday at that meeting. Curtis's birthday is March 8th, so we decided to celebrate on the 18th at our meeting when we would all be together. As it turned out, Curtis was sick on March 4th so he missed Sister Linford's celebration. We all signed the card I had made and he showed up on March 8th for a Team meeting so we gave him his card then. We were all set to celebrate during lunch on the 18th. Elder Wilcox ordered a birthday cake too. Well, Curtis was no where to be found. Turned out, he was sick again. So we called him and sang to him. We took too pictures. One of Jarod eating Curtis's lunch and the other of his Birthday Cake. Curtis is our Joseph Smith guy and a couple of months ago he acquired a locket very similar to the one the Joseph Smith daguerreotype is in. That is why Elder Wilcox put "Locket Man" on his cake. We missed him and hopes he feels better very soon. 

The second session went well. Elder Linford started cleaning up our signs and stuff during the session so we wouldn't have as much to clean up after the meeting. We ended up being the last ones to leave as I had to stay until all the interpreters left so I could record the tickets they wanted if they were winners. We got home about 5:30. I did some HawkSoft work for about an hour. I also started getting responses from interpreters that were on Zoom and responded to my email. Lastly, I also finished up my preparation for the Emotional Resilience class. President and Sister Faerber were out of town headed back to Salt Lake Sunday morning. Sister Faerber asked if I could be prepared to lead the class if they were late. So, I wanted to make sure I knew what the lesson was about. Finally, about 8:00 we settled down to watch a few shows before bed. About that time we got a message from Eunlan telling us that the event we were planning on supporting Sunday evening was going to be done onsite instead of at the Church Office Building. We were a little disappointed because our Mission President and his wife are speakers at that meeting. They have a 10 minute slot. We were also a little relieved since we hadn't had a day off in a while.

Sunday morning I got up to do my scripture study as well as start on the blog. At 10:30 I headed to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for my Emotional Resilience class. As we got closer to the beginning of class, the Faerbers hadn't shown up. I texted Sister Faerber to see if they were going to make in time. She asked me to go ahead and start the class. They arrived about 20 minutes after we started and I was happy to turn it over to them, but they told me to continue. I'm so glad I reviewed the module the night before. The class went well. We have great people in our class and the discussions are always so good. This was our last class of the course. It has been so good for me as well as the others in the class. 

Our Sacrament and Sunday School went good as well. One of the speakers is leaving their mission soon. Her husband is in our Branch Leadership. So today they reorganized our Branch Leadership by releasing everyone and calling 4 new brethren. Such is the nature of a Mission. Leadership changes every several months. They don't call them a presidency, as it isn't officially a branch. It is a mission assignment and most assignments only last a few months. Part of that reason is they have all their normal mission responsibilities to do so this added responsibility won't be so overwhelming if it is only for a few months.

After Church, the Relief Society wanted to celebrate the Relief Society birthday. They organized a wonderful social in the lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building with treats and little presents. Since we didn't want the Brethren hanging around or coming in bothering the Sisters, the Relief Society Leadership decided to organize a social for the Elders in another room. They got treats too. Such fun.

We have another very busy week ahead. We have two weeks until General Conference. I have another 7 tours scheduled for next week. We have more events coming and of course more Contracts. 

I hope you have a WONDERFUL week!

All our Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

Contracts, Missionary Schedules for General Conference, The Lamb of God Concert, and More Contracts and Schedules

This may be a short Blog post, because there is only so much you can say about processing Contracts and that is pretty much all I did this week. lol

Monday morning I got the needed permissions for all the programs I need to process contracts. Susan sent me instructions by 11 and I got started. The first one took a while as I had questions as I figured out what to do, not to mention that the first one had lots of odd things about it so it wasn't a typical contract. Add to that my Leadership Pattern class shortly after I started on the contract and I didn't actually finish it until a little after 1:00. Once the first one was done, I quickly picked up the process and completed about 16 that day. 

In the meantime I was getting the final volunteers from our mission to help out with General Conference. We can use 16 helpers per session. That gives me about 80 helpers. So as missionaries trickled in I was adding them to my master schedule. That finally went out on Friday morning.

Monday evening we had a Mission Devotional with Elder Jonathan S. and Sister Alexis Schmitt of the General Authority Seventy. They gave an awesome devotional. They shared how they were called as Mission Leaders when they still had four children at home, with the eldest only 15. It had it's trials as well as many blessings. They shared many other things as well.

Tuesday started with our Zone Devotional and the Wellness Center. We had our General Conference Preparation meeting and our Team meeting that day. Then I started learning how to do domestic Contracts. The day before I only did contracts from around the world. Domestic contracts are much quicker to do and I processed about 70 that day. Of course, I still worked on the Missionary schedule in my "spare" time.

Wednesday was more of the same. I had almost all the missionaries I needed so I started working on the Individual schedules so I could send them out. They look something like the attached picture. I sent those all out on Friday morning. In the past I never even started until about two weeks before conference; but, I was getting so many calls and emails from people wanting to help, I started a whole month early. They were anxious to get their schedules so they would know what General Conference session they could request tickets to attend. I'm glad that is done, other than the juggling of changes that are coming in as people have found out they have to work at the Family Search Library all day on Saturday so they need to change to a Sunday. Fun times. 🤣Oh, I also verified attendees for our next training meeting on the 18th.

Thursday was another Zone Devotional and Wellness Center at the same time. That is working out so well. More contracts, more schedule tweaking, and I think I helped someone with an invoice problem that day. I can't remember as it all sort of rolls into one. We also went to the Temple. It was such a lovely time. We were able to do both a session and then Initiatory work. On our way out to the car, we saw our old mission president and his wife. They work at the Bountiful Temple on Thursdays. We see them often and it is so nice.

Friday was a little crazy. For some reason I woke up at 5 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. So, I got up and started working. I sent out all the emails with the schedules and some instructions to all the missionaries who are helping with General Conference. I got ready and went to the Church Office Building so I could exercise and then work. The Linfords were heading out of town to attend a funeral so I was all alone in the COB. Since I have been doing well with the contracts, Susan gave me a bunch (over 50) contracts that had been sitting in our Inbox that she hasn't had time to get to. Steve picked me up at 11:00 so we could go to the dentist. He dropped me off back at the COB and he ran errands. He had to take the car in for an annual checkup or something like that. I continued to work like crazy on contracts. At 2:30 I had a video conference call with HawkSoft. It was very brief and I was back at it. A little before 5:00, Aaron sent an email looking for a PLUNET order that Sister Linford hadn't set up yet. She had been trying to get a valid customer so she could set up the order. She wasn't getting any response. Aaron said he needed it and could I help. I contacted Caleb, our PLUNET IT guy and told him we were still waiting on that customer Sister Linford had talked to him about. He apologized and we got on a video call. I had remembered that particular customer was "retired" sometime ago. Caleb vaguely remembered something about that. Between the two of us we found the information and the "replacement" customer so I could create the PLUNET order for Aaron. 

About the time I finished with the PLUNET order, it was time to go to the Lamb of God concert. We walked over to the City Creek Mall for some dinner and then headed to the Tabernacle for the Concert. We were an hour early and most of the seats were already taken. Oh, and it had started raining so we got all wet. When I left that morning to go to the COB it was a beautiful sun shinny day. I only took a sweater and of course, no umbrella. So that was a fun adventure. 😏

The Lamb of God was a beautiful concert about the final weeks in the life of the Savior as seen through the eyes of those around him. It was very moving and beautifully done. It was put on by the faith community throughout Davis County and consisted of a 300 voice choir and orchestra. There was one song near the end right after Peter had denied the Christ three times. It was so powerful as he realizes exactly what he has done. He questions how he could do such a thing. He ends the song bearing the strong testimony that he carried with him throughout the remainder of his life. Instead of "I don't know the man", he declares boldly, "I KNOW HIM!" Even now, as I write this, I am moved to tears as I remember how powerful that song was. This concert has been performed all over the world since 2010 and usually consists of performers from all faiths. If you ever have a chance to see it, I would encourage you to go. It is also available on YouTube. It is a wonderful way to lead into the Easter Season. It ends with the resurrection of Christ. He is our living God and He not only died for us, but more importantly He LIVES so that we may live again too.

Saturday I worked for a little over an hour for HawkSoft and then spent the rest of the day and into the evening processing more contracts. I am hoping we are nearly finished with the backlog and only need to keep up with what is coming in each day. Most of the ones I processed on Saturday came in the last few days. They are still sending out new contracts so we will continue to be busy. 

Sunday I started working on my blog before heading off to my Emotional Resilience class. I think I only have this week and next week to finish up the class. It has been so good and I have made such good friends. I have learned a lot about myself and how to take care of myself better. I'm glad I have the manual and will be able to review the information over and over again. I think I only have 2 or maybe three Leadership Pattern classes left. I know they both end before General Conference. That is good! 😇

Our Sacrament meeting was wonderful too.

Have a wonderful week. Prepare for General Conference and Easter. And ENJOY Spring. It is supposed to come before too long. lol  We had snow again this week as well as some gorgeously sun shiny days. The temperatures are rising a bit and flowers are beginning to bloom. We are even getting some new leaves on the trees. It won't be long now. 

Our Love Always,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox

 

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