Thanksgiving

 

This photo was taken just outside our apartment about two weeks ago.

Today Liz and I went for a nice, long walk (6,300 steps) after Zoom church.  The fall leaves are still hanging on, but won't be here much longer.

We had been hoping to give the young missionaries in Slovenia a nice Thanksgiving meal and gathering.  The Mission President authorized 7.5 hours for the celebration (including travel time) and we had a plan to get us all together.  However, with increased COVID isolation that was impossible.  We used Zoom to contact them all, but no face-to-face contact at all.  I set up my computer with Zoom tuned in and sent a message to the missionaries that we were very happy to share part of the day with them up until 6:30 pm.  We visited with several of them, and had two companionships online with us as we all ate our separate meals.  That was nice.

That evening we had our kids call in and we actually had all 6 of them online for quite a long time.  Pure heaven!  We were on Zoom from 12:30 until past 10:00 pm, and loved it.

President Russell M. Nelson gave a Thanksgiving fireside chat where he invited everybody to post something every day for a week on social networks telling things for which we are thankful, and use the hashtag #givethanks.   It was fun posting every day, and easy to find good things for which I am thankful.  The Worldwide response has been terrific, and I got lots of likes and responses to my posts.

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One of our duties as Assistant Area Auditors is to train all the leaders in the mission.  I have prepared a training course over the past couple months.   As I completed it, it occurred to me that we have not done anything for the local leadership - only the young missionaries who serve in leadership roles.  (We are down to one young elder who serves as a branch president, but we continue to have quite a few who are branch clerks or assistant clerks.)  I did a quick review and my training course is appropriate for all of them, so I sent invitations to District Presidents and clerks, as well as all the branch ones.  I also included the Mission President and the Area Auditors to whom we report.

  I have set 7 times when anyone who wants training can tune into my Zoom account and get the one-hour presentation.  Included are how to find further resources they can use for self-training.  I addressed things that frequently come out during audits, and how to fix them.  And I explained how to use each screen in the finance systems of the church.

  Yesterday, I had one district clerk who tuned in, and 3 young elders.  Other sessions will be at varying times over the next five days.  It will be interesting to see if any of the District leaders join us.

I am also going to put the presentation on a shared drive where missionaries can reference it at any time.  In preparation for that, I am going to modify it again, and convert it into a PDF format.

The next round of audits starts next month, so here we go again.