Building Capability

The cactus garden over the entrance to the conference center parking garage is blooming. Below is the one looking the opposite direction. Between the two is the crossing we take every day to and from the office to cut across the corner of the conference center block to save a minute or two. You've probably figured out that one of the things we enjoy on this mission is the landscaping around the "campus."

There is construction above us in the apartments, on the floor above us at work, and now they ripped out the two offices behind my desk to make a larger one, so we got a temporary spot in an office no one has been in for over two years since the clearance analysts went to working from home during covid. They work with information for the general authorities who approve returns for those who went home for moral issues, so they had a lots of great quotes on the wall including one from this talk to led me to this talk from a BYU devotional, really worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSEsLtwKzvw   Stand Forever | Lawrence E. Corbridge  Jan 24, 2019

It was actually pretty interesting to see how the place is constructed with modules that can be pretty easily moved and changed. There was even carpet under the wall between the two offices. It reminded me of a book I bought in Okinawa on Japanese houses built on a modular plan based on the tatami mats. 

The usual random inspirational notes:

Family History missionaries for the US/Canada zone spoke about all the miraculous experiences people have. One came in with nothing but a first name for an ancestor, but when searching through all their papers to show the worker, suddenly something they never saw before popped up. It was an immigration card with full name, port of arrival and ship. One family was visiting the area and said they had no idea what the FamilySearch building was but felt very strongly impressed to go in. They were happy to each have a helper to build their family tree and they ended up linking to enough information already in the system to print out 9-generation fan chart which they were totally thrilled about. A young man came in and said "What is this place?" "What am I feeling here?" several times over. The promise of Elijah of the hearts of the children turning to the fathers is kept. Many times the particular helper assigned a visitor "happens" to be the one with just the right specific knowledge to help their situation, causing the workers there to often say "there are no coincidences." One speaker said he was the "token new guy" of the group, but the other day, being frustrated at all the training, he was told he could jump around and not do everything in the training sequentially so he found himself wanting to learn the modified Dewey Decimal System they use. The next day someone was very frustrated not being able to find the book she needed and it was exactly that new knowledge of the system that caused him to be able to walk right to it. Then an 89-year old grandfather who had spent 20 minutes searching and had only managed to get 1 name for his grandkids to take to do baptisms came to his attention. This "new guy" had been handed a list of procedures to help people and sat down with him to go through it and quickly found 18 female and 18 male names for them.

Zone Devotional: the Law of Sacrifice includes Repentance. Ask to consecrate each part of your day in morning prayer and ask for guidance in other ways to be like the Savior; listen, follow, thank; analyze your choices and performance at the end of the day.

From Farmland Reserves newsletter: Delight in the things of the Lord.

The Travel Department had a "Meet and Greet" for the Infield Department since we talk to them a lot. It was really fun to see people we had only talked to and emailed. Suddenly they were all wanting to take photos with the Merrells! Everyone said they would send us one but so far this is the only one who actually did. We call them to arrange travel for missionaries who are returning to their mission after going home for surgery or other reasons, or to get information on visas so we know if they have to return to a temporary assignment. Sometimes they need to go within a few days, other times we have them in the file quite a while working on visas and getting everyone agreed to a timeline.

We also got to attend an "Operations Division BBQ". We see all sorts of lunches and gatherings for medical people, for IFRs, lunch meetings, etc. and feel a little outside of any work group, so it was nice to actually be part of this. The head of operations for the missionary department is really into BBQ, he has a big trailer barbecue grill/smoker and did meat for 19 hours till it pretty much melted. There was a huge amount of food and then the games started with an egg toss. We decided to spectate, but our friends and neighbors, Elder (Dr.) and Sister Last won -- but mostly it was because they had a really tough egg! They could throw it on the ground multiples times without breaking it, it took throwing onto concrete to prove it was a raw egg. Theirs wasn't the only one that lasted through more than expected, and several pairs found that letting it bounce along the ground was safer than catching it. We got to bring home some leftover fruit - melon and grapes, yum!

I finally figured out a way to save my powerpoint slides, I just don't want to lose the things we have learned here :) So hopefully as I forget things I can look back at these posts and re-learn.

There are several examples of different sorts of questions within this presentation that can help learn to ask good questions of yourself as well as those you are helping.

Elder Bednar had a great story about his son wanting ideas for an activity and Elder Bednar had him read a scripture a couple of times and the son wasn't thrilled and Elder B asked "what would be a good result?" and after pondering, the son came up with a good answer which led to (his own) great ideas.