Week 39

This week has been amazingly calm for the month leading up to General Conference.

These are some of the things I did this week:

• Attended Zone Conference where Elder LeGrand Curtis Jr. and his wife spoke to us.
• Wrote a department message explaining why we can't hire temporary employees for longer than 2 years (this is the "looks like, acts like, smells like Full-Time = paid and benefited like Full-Time issue) and therefore we would really like managers to keep the rules....I may have intentionally added a small guilt trip at the end about how their support helps the Church keep the laws and maintain a good standing with the government. Manipulation at its finest.
• I transferred and terminated a lot of employees.
• Replaced a lot of the forms and documents lost in the OneDrive fiasco.
• Began creating instructions for my job and a "PeopleSoft for Dummies" document so I can train the next person when I leave at the end of the year. This was also inspired by the OneDrive fiasco, since now any remnants of previous instructions and policies are so much static in the Cloud.
• Requested back pay for an employee
• Did my best to explain to a manager what was my job and what was her job (and how to do it) without actually saying, "This isn't my job." I ought to have an e-mail signature that lists things that are "not my job." But that would be a very long list. And they would send it anyway.
• Requested a German Shepherd load of Bishop Clearances...which would be easier if people stopped getting married and changing their names.
• Update meeting agendas
• Deliver mail...
• Fixed lots of spreadsheets. I actually had a great moment where I was able to look at my hiring spreadsheet and catch a manager's mistakes before anyone else even saw it. That was a great feeling. It almost makes me feel like I know what I'm doing. Almost.
• Discover that we have an employee that has a contract with one temp provider, is logging hours for projects with another temp provider, and according to our system hasn't worked for us in three years... We haven't figured out what's going on with that one yet.

It was my week to e-mail the sisters (something I actually really enjoy). I thought I would share my little spiritual thought with you too:

Today I read a quote from Sister Margaret D. Nadauld, who was a previous Young Women General President.  She said:

“Women of God can never be like women of the world. … We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue.”

This really rang true to me. The world seems to be getting madder and madder as people search for other forms of happiness. However, I know that true happiness comes from God. The women of the world may get lost in fame and money and vanity, but they lack true power. Our strength as women of God comes through our faith, goodness, and virtue. He will help us and we will find ourselves happier and more ready to face the world than we can now imagine.

 That's it for this week, folks. Tune in next time for "Week 40-The Halfway Mark"

Love,

Sister Ward

Week 38

First of all, we bid farewell to goldfish Louis and Charlie, who were flushed to rest late Wednesday evening, the 16th of March... On a completely unrelated note, our resident 12-year-old is no longer on speaking terms with the cat.*

For the most part, this week has been good. I've been able to get all my work done and be able to serve some of the other sisters in my mission. I've always struggled with social anxiety, but it has been comforting to learn that when someone else needs me, the Lord will provide me with the skills and promptings to be able to help them. I also discovered after helping a sister through an emotional/spiritual crisis that when I would normally be too emotionally exhausted to make eye contact with someone, I felt fine. I believe this was Grace, because nothing but the enabling power of the Lord could have allowed me to do that and still feel fine.

Thursday morning was the not so great part of this week. I'm now praying to love the unhelpful people on the help line...really hard. All our shared HR files disappeared, and they contain lots of important legal records and business data. I need them for nearly every aspect of my job. The first person I called made it sound like it was all my fault and told me there was nothing that could be done, it was gone forever. I was so upset and angry. Thankfully, my supervisor, Actually-knows-everything, called someone else and told me not to take no for an answer. I re-told my story to four different people that morning and they kept passing my call along to someone else, and each would make me wait. Hopefully I'll finally find someone who can do something about it. I've resigned myself to anything now, but it made for a very upsetting morning. I was praying so hard not to lose my temper and say something cutting to the people on the phone, most of whom really were trying to help. I was also praying not to cry, which is what usually happens when I'm trying not to lose my temper. Miraculously, those prayers were answered, though the files have not yet been recovered. I came home exhausted and discouraged...but nobody got mean things yelled at them through the telephone. Grace is definitely real.

Other things I did this week:

• Write a business proposal for a meeting with the Presiding Bishopric (cool, right?)
• Counsel Sister missionaries
• Find a sunny hiding spot in the gardens to eat my lunch on crazy days
• Assign building access
• Process educational reimbursements...of course they would all come in the week I lose my electronic files...
• Spend a lot of time on the phone wild-goose-chasing (I ought to be able to put that on my resume).
• Updated CDOL
• Called tons of bishops for cast clearances. They've got a lot of names now that they're working on the Mormon Channel Studio series. I'm sure to have tons more when they begin casting members for the Book of Mormon videos this summer. 
• Tried to scrounge up any old records that I have stored on my computer and not the cloud...I'll no longer believe people when they say you can't lose something once its in the cloud.
• Terminate and transfer employees.
• Deliver mail (see figure 1.1)
• Pray for patience. Lots of it.

Figure 1.1

*Update: Bethany has forgiven Merlin. Apparently cats are better than goldfish. I would have to agree.

Love,

Sister Ward

Week 37- Feeling Cranky and Maya Angelou

I had another article published this week on Maya Angelou. It's actually getting a lot of hits, but I'm not very satisfied with it myself. It was an assignment I picked up for an employee that left, and it ended up feeling neither well-written nor inspired. It's not awful, it's just not something I feel a lot of pride in. Which is a pity, since Maya Angelou was such a fantastically gifted writer. Ah well, some styles of writing come more naturally than others, I guess.

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I've been out sick most of the week, which is a bummer. It's good I stayed home and took care of myself though. I thought maybe I could go in and tough it out, but after reading my e-mails I was glad I was home. I keep getting e-mails from whiny managers and being sick makes me WAY too cranky to deal with whiny adults. I feel like adding an addendum to all my e-mails that says "No whining." That's probably not a very professional or loving-missionary kind of thing to say, but it's still how I feel this week.

When a kid is whiny it's annoying, but when an adult is whiny you want to smack them over the head with a "how to be a grown-up" manual. Just because they have a problem doesn't mean a) I know how to fix it, or b) it is my job to fix it. I would write a "How to be a manager" manual that explains exactly where to go for these things, but it would probably turn out really rude.

I'm mostly just cranky because I told someone to call the help line a few days ago (after a week of fussing about a request that they submitted way too late), and they kept pestering me. It turns out they didn't know what the help line was, so they simply chose to ignore that part of my response until today, when I suggested it again and they asked what it was. It was very good we were an internet apart, because my face would have definitely given away my annoyance. Again--not very missionary-like. So I am praying for help loving managers again. Who knew that would be such a big part of my mission?

So what did I accomplish in this odd week?

• Adapting a presentation for the Managing Director's Speech
• Bishop Clearances
• A new spreadsheet
• Scheduling meetings
• Updating employee info
• Hiring a volunteer and getting them an e-mail
• Sending more interpreter names for processing
• Responding to a blue-whale load of e-mails with an almost blue-whale amount of patience

That's pretty much all I have to say about this week. Hopefully next week's post will be more spiritually uplifting...

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I do have a Mormon Message I wanted to share with you this week. I have always loved Queen Esther. In part, yes, because she is one of the few girls who get their own story in the scriptures, but I have grown to love her for so much more than that. Esther was brave. She did difficult things and had faith that the Lord would guide her. She trusted that His way was better than her way.

I worry about everything. I want to be in control and know what the future will hold. I want everything to be perfect and comfortable. I want to do things my way, on my own strength. But life is not comfortable or certain. So I am working on building the kind of courage Esther had, to go forward with faith in the Lord, not knowing what the future holds for me. Even more, I want to be able to follow the Lord joyfully, not resentfully.  I struggle to have the courage to let go of control and give him the reins, but I really do believe that we are happier when we follow the Lord's plan for us.

Week 36

First of all, can you believe I've been on my mission for over 8 months? It's crazy. I don't actually know how I feel about that. These 8 months have gone by very quickly. I'm an accepted part of Church Publishing Services, and yet I still feel like I'm just beginning to learn my job. Can I really have been on my mission for this long?

This week I learned something pretty amazing, but also a little anxiety inducing. I have a friend, another Sister Missionary, who is going into surgery next week. This friend was born without her lower jaw, but surgeons now believe that they can create one for her. If it works, it will be a great improvement in her quality of life. This is super exciting. However, it will take several complicated surgeries, which must be scary, especially without the guarantee that they will work. Since it is Fast Sunday this weekend, I will be fasting for her and the surgeons. I would love it it you could join me in keeping this Sister in your prayers as well. I know those prayers make a difference.

I also had a testimony building experience this week. This Monday I was pretty anxious to get into work, since I was out most of the previous week. However, when I woke up I also felt uneasy about the weather even though the weather and road reports were positive. I prayed and felt like maybe I should stay home, but my anxiety always tells me I should stay home, so I wasn't positive. I got all ready to go, but my anxiety kept building stronger and stronger. It was unusual even for me. I decided to be brave and get in the car, but instead of the decision making me more comfortable it got worse. As I approached Main Street I had a very strong feeling that I needed to turn around and go home. It was so strong I didn't even feel silly turning back around. Less than an hour later (when I would have been in Parley's Canyon) the storm hit hard, leaving about a foot of heavy snow in only a short time. I felt so blessed that the Lord had protected me, and grateful that I was able to hear the Spirit warn me.

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I also wanted to share this quote with you. I found it while studying a talk by President Uchtdorf, and it really rang true to me. Remember, there is always hope. Sometimes it takes winter-like trials to reveal the depths of our strength. Sometimes it feels like we're stuck, with no way out, but we forget that we are children of a God, and with him, nothing is impossible.













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In other news, Ringo has rediscovered the compost pile. No wonder the furry creature stinks. He managed to dig a frozen cabbage core out and sneak it inside. Gross. He obviously felt betrayed when someone took the initiative to throw away his treasure. How could we be so callous? Now when he has his last potty break of the day, he climbs his throne of frozen compost and refuses to respond when we call him back in. It's a good thing he's so cute.

That's it for this week's report. I hope you are all well and happy and that the sun shines on you.

Love,

Sister Ward