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