Good Week

Hey Friends and Family!

December is here, and with that all the festivities of Temple Square are as well. The lights are up, the choirs are singing in the JSMB, and the giving machines are attracting long lines throughout the lobby. The environment is a little different this year though. As you're all likely aware the Salt Lake Temple closes in 23 days. So, that also adds the ambiance of very crowded traffic on the surrounding streets, streams of people constantly coming in temple square from every direction with their temple bags, and wait times and session counts of vast quantities. So, I guess you could say it's an interesting time to be stationed up at headquarters.

Temple square is crawling with guests for both the temple and the lights. International has been a bit slower. But, we're expecting things to pick up closer to Christmas break.  We had a pretty interesting experience on Thursday. We were underground on church campus coming back from lunch. When we saw a group of people walking towards us. So, we stepped back to give them some room. We had President Nelson walk by about 10 feet away from us. He was talking to Elder Andersen. Behind them was Elders Cook and Bednar. All obviously accompanied by a whole lot of security. We then continued walking when we see Elder Gong walking towards us. We stepped to the side as a few employees did as well. But, he stopped and talked with each one of us. After that, we kept walking and passed by Elder Soares. He said Hi as we passed as well. So, that was a pretty cool experience. 

Beyond that, zone work has been moving along. I've been changing my approach to getting certified to help with deeper research. I already have quite a bit of background with Norwegian research. So, I've been putting learning German research on hold for a little bit, which until this point is quite new to me, and working on making sure I have a solid backing in Nordic research. So, that has been quite interesting. I really enjoy Nordic research which has made it quite fun.

On Tuesday we had the Family History and Temple Departments Christmas Devotional. I missed the beginning portion because of zone work. However, I was able to get the second half which was quite good. We were able to hear from each of the members of the Family History and Temple committee. Including, but not all inclusive to, Gary E Stevenson, David A Bednar, and Reyna I. Aburto. 

That's pretty much been it for this week.

From,

Elder Hall