30 July 2017

In Mormon culture, there's a kind of mental Missionary Bingo of events that commonly occur on a proselyting mission. It has things like "had an investigator baptized", "mistaken for Jehovah's Witnesses", "invited in by someone looking to Bible Bash", "asked if first name is Elder/Sister", "a ward member forgot to feed us" etc. (Comment what you think the Free Space should be.)

One of the things I imagine is a square is "asked to bear testimony or give an impromptu talk because a speaker didn't show". As a YCSM, I don't have the same squares as a proselyting missionary and I'm not sure which squares or events will occur on my mission. But the one about the testimony happened today! The second speaker was absent and I was asked to bear my testimony. I think I did really well and I didn't think too hard about it, so that means that is was more Spirit-filled than Amy-filled. People kept shaking my hand throughout the rest of church saying they liked my testimony and that it was interesting. (I assume it's interesting because my mission is so unique, but I'm trying to give myself more credit and I try to think that I'm interesting.)

This past week my supervisor, Gary, was gone because his father's health has not been good and Gary was taking care of him. This was also the last week for the Intake Blitz, so we had to have everything into WorkFront (our repair communication system). We finished early and it was great. Now next month I will be coordinating all the repairs for all the issues that we took in. There's probably like 300-400 issues I'll be babysitting and so I hope that the publishers are ready for the flood of updated sources. 

I also need to work on training. Sister Dunford, half of a wonderful senior couple, had been helping with Intake and she didn't seem as afraid to ask questions about the systems we use and the reason we do things. I think she thought that she needed extra help because she isn't as tech-savvy, so she had already asked so many questions that she might as well ask more. Anyway, the point is that she made me think about ways to improve the training. 

I've started submitting example problems or cases so I can screenshot every step of the process. Then I'll draw arrows and write text on the screenshots or something. I'll ask Elder Broderick to help me with the graphic design of it. His passion for graphic design has opened artistic doors for QRS. He's been working on so many fun projects to help. 

I got a job selling Cutco knives through Vector Marketing. It's flexible and it will be helpful to build a savings fund for when I'm back at college. I start my training this week. I'm excited to make money because I keep thinking about money with my Self-Reliance class.

Love all y'all out there.

16 July 2017

Gospel Library has a bug this weekend and nothing would download. It was fixed before Sunday in the US, but I worry about the Eastern hemisphere. The GL Team will get to sort through the emails, so I'm not sure if I'll get any of that feedback since they know about the issue. Plus that kind of bug is general app features, and I only do Non-English content.

Like I talked about in the last post, we are on an intake blitz. Sister Aversa, Sister Rademacher, and I are finally clearing out all these unopened issues. It's exciting and relaxing since I'm pretty good at it, but it also means that I will have to manage all the repairs for all of these issues. I really do love this work so deeply. I feel like I am a tool finally being used in its proper, intended purpose.

Oh, in case anyone was worried, my colonoscopy review appointment went well. No new problems came up, just discussion on how to address my ulcerative colitis. I unfortunately cannot take an oral medicine for it, but we have some strategies to deal with it.

In the next five minutes, I'm about to go to my "Feasting with Friends" group. It's a monthly dinner party that my YSA does. They just put random groups together under people that volunteered to host a dinner party.
I have probably said it before, but I love my ward soooo much. I've met so many people that I feel like I was meant to meet, and I probably would not have gotten to know them the same way if I was called on a proselyting mission. I'm so grateful to my Heavenly Father for putting me right where I am.

6 July 2017: Intake Blitz!

So, my 5 trainees that I trained on Intake are now only 1 part-time trainee, which is Sister Beck. Sister Buchanan and Sister Horne have all been changed to different assignments and are no longer working with QRS. Elder Broderick is not doing Intake anyway either. Sister Andrews also probably will not have much time to work in Instake.
We have Sister Rademacher now, and she is very good at processes. She used to serve with the Gospel Library Feedback Team, and now she is just getting slightly closer to a repair process than her old process of forwarding issues along to the correct repair teams.

But since Intake wasn't a good fit for the 3 trainees, there are over 150 unread emails now, and Gary has decided for the next 3 weeks that we will clean it out.

Sister Aversa has even finished the German and French scripture links (but they are not published yet), and so she is working in Intake!
She barely had two weeks of Intake training, so she's basically relearning it. She just leaned over and told me she was reading a scripture in English looking for a Portuguese typo and she couldn't find it. #BilingualProblems

I'm excited to finally get caught up with all of the issues, but I'm also overwhelmed because there's just so many.

3 July 2017

Last week was June 25-July 1. 

Sunday the 25th:

I went to a brunch at Eve's (relief society leader) house and I met some other sisters in the ward.

There is a new convert in our ward and he was confirmed on Sunday the 25th!

I went to the ward choir kick-off dinner at Brother Wetsel's home. I'm so excited to be singing with such a talented ward. It reminds me of being back in Keller. 

So many of these young single adults play instruments or sing for fun, and this was apparent to me back in May when I went to Chanel and Skeet's open-mic night birthday party. 

Monday the 26th:

After FHE, I went to a Poetry Slam after being recommended to it by Lea from my ward. Since I was a first-timer to a Slam, I was considered unbiased, and I was picked to be a judge with other first-timers. The atmosphere was really fun, but there was some swearing and I felt weird about that.

Tuesday the 27th:

I went to my piano lesson Tuesday night. I'm finally playing intervals and harmonic intervals! Multiple notes are sounding at once! My fingers feel so awkward. I feel like I'm just now discovering how to work my fingers. Afterwards, I went to find this international market that Sister Aversa told me to go to. It is all Central and South American food. It's called La Pequenita, and the cashier was a Spanish-speaker (as expected), but I felt embarrassed with how bad my Spanish conversation speech and comprehension is. I have not had as many opportunities to speak Spanish daily, even though I can read and write emails in Spanish.

Anyway I got some guaraná as instructed by Sister Aversa.

Wednesday the 28th:

I went to my Self-Reliance class that the YSA stake (certain people are picked for the first wave of the course and I happened to be one!). I really like the people there. I hope I can be friends with some of them after the class is over. This week the chapter was about budgets, and it is kind of difficult for me since I don't have a paycheck and I only really pay for gas and food. I'm just glad to talk about budgets in a spiritual setting, because it makes it so much more meaningful.

As a kid, I was obsessed with saving money. I would count up everything and keep a piece of paper to track the balance. I loved reading about the Great Depression because of the ways that people survived with barely any money. I loved the American Girl, Kit, because she was in the Great Depression. I also read the American Girl book, A Smart Girl's Guide to Money, probably more times than I can remember. I wanted to start a business, but I felt that I lacked skills, but I ended up making crocheted jewelry or other weird jewelry. I think I still have kept this side of me because I save my receipts and I scan them and I read a lot of couponing blog posts. Several times, when I haven't been able to sleep, I am up just reading financial advice from random pinterest or google searches. I think some part of my soul always knew a secret about my upcoming future financial troubles that I have been warned of in prayer and in my patriarchal blessing. I have been preparing for it my whole life without realizing.

Thursday the 29th:

So, sadly, my trainees are not as good at Intake as I am. Our Intake pace for June was low and I spent most of my Thursday and Friday bringing our numbers back up. Gary and I are reorganizing our talents to work more effectively, and I admire Gary's management skills very much. 

Thursday evening, I participated in an international conference call with Gary, my supervisor, and a representative of the Korea office, and a representative of the Japan office. The Asia North Area Offices will be helping with QRS Repair! We have to work on training them for future involvement, which might entail their own Asia North version of QRS's work in Intake and Repair. I am very excited because I often have trouble understanding problems or typos when I do not read Japanese or Korean, and now I can more officially send in problems to these translators without worrying that I'm taking up their time. 

Friday the 30th:

Sister Buchanan and Elder Broderick organized a hang-out at the Gateway Mall and I got to try Virtual Reality games for the first time. It's very very weird, especially when the worker asks you if you need help and you can't see him, but you hear him and you know he's right next to you, but all you see in that direction is a zombie or a brick wall.

Saturday July 1st:

Sister Buchanan invited me to be her "plus one" to the Billings Wedding Reception. Andy and Andi were YCSM's at the COB, and I'm pretty sure this is the first marriage out of our group. 

We helped cut up fruit for the refreshment table and then we took some pictures with all the missionaries. I felt weird because I had never really met some of the people that were there, including the married couple. Sister Buchanan started two weeks after I did, but she was the Wrights' assistant and had to visit all of these missionaries, (while I sat in a cubicle and read emails), so she met people more easily. I honestly was jealous of Buchanan when she started because I felt very lonely and friendless and I wished I had assimilated into friendships as easily as she did. Now she and I are friends and it's all good.

Sunday July 2nd:
Brittany Tennant showed up in my ward! Apparently she will be attending the ward for the next few months before she is married!

We had dinner at John Paul's. My extended family discussed my sad life growing up without fry sauce served everywhere. Nana and Grandpa's car picked up tar from the street and the wheels were shaking or something funny like that. I probably would have noticed if I was driving, but as a passenger, I was lost in thought and didn't notice until they pulled off at an exit to check it out.

Monday July 3rd:

I spent most of my mission service adding in new information into issues and reorganizing them into their proper queues: "intake", "repair", and "improve". Improve is the queue for resolved or unresolved issues that we have closed. Gary takes the data in improve and compares it. 

Anyway, the new information that we have to add is "people impacted" using a calculator. It rounds by the thousand. For example, a minor translation problem in the Spanish Book of Mormon affects way more people than a minor translation problem in the Bulgarian Book of Mormon. Not every problem fits so nicely into one product and so I worry if my numbers are accurate enough, and then I try selecting more products and then my numbers are probably not precise enough. 

Oh yeah, so, I'm having a colonoscopy on Wednesday the 5th, so for July 4th, I will be eating jello and drinking juice and broth. I am apparently so great at planning appointments (sarcasm).