Meeting the New Pres.

8 July 2017

It’s a bright, sunshiny day here in Salt Lake City and we’re taking advantage of a lazy morning where we can take our time getting ready for the day.

This week we unpacked and settled into our cubicles on the fifth floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. But, it may take us a while to fully acclimate to our new location. Funny how just moving next door completely changes your orientation to things. . .

We enjoyed a relaxing 4^th of July and heard a lot more fireworks than we saw. J

On Thursday, our new mission president, President Jerry Fenn, his wife, Sara, plus his counselors, the training zone leader and all their wives came to our zone to get a feel for what we do. They talked with some of our zone who are located in the JSMB – then on Friday, they all visited the part of our zone that’s in the Church Office Building (COB).

They were all interested to learn about the different aspects of what we do – but were especially impressed to learn missionaries in our zone processes more than 2 million images of data a week as part of the camera-capture program. When the operators around the world send their images to Salt Lake, our zone is where they come. Then, they are processed for quality and either sent on to be processed so the records can be made available on line, or, if they haven’t met specific standards, they’re sent back to be redone.

Anyway, it was nice to have a little one-on-one time with them and to feel like they “get” what we’re doing.

Monday morning, Bob and I will be speaking to the whole mission as part of our weekly mission devotional. We tell a bit about ourselves, but then we also talk about the kind of experiences missionaries in our zone have, and, the various assignments we have.

This evening we’ll be driving to Midway, Utah (I think it’s about a 45-minute drive.) and will attend Jordan Rawlings wedding reception. It will be fun to see his parents, Danny and Christina, as well as a few other Cary, NC folks who will be there.

We’ve had temperatures in the 100s this week, and the forecast is for more of the same next week. Although it is hot, it doesn’t feel as oppressive as those kinds of temperatures do in NC. We both laughed the other day because the humidity was 5%! I don’t think we’ve ever lived anywhere with only 5% humidity, until now.