Where has Dad Been??

Once upon a time I thought retirement was when you got up late, did what ever you wanted to do and had all this leisure. How could a part-time mission mess that up. Easy - every day! You all know I like to teach. Well I have decided teaching is so much easier than being the student.
Weekly (CYP - Check Your Performance) activities are a source of fear. Using several very technical programs simultaneously while your trainer watches every key stroke on his view of your desktop is meant to drive you crazy.

Here I am at my favorite activity - talking on Skype. Rob and Cody came over Sunday afternoon to visit (and get fed) but I was in the middle of a 3 hour practice session with my fellow trainers. We broke into two groups. One half "played" missionaries and the other half were patrons and we went through the whole process of creating a case, solving it and then did a critique of the process. Then we reversed roles and did it again. Then we spent another hour trying to find knowledge base documents to answers that were posed to the group. At one point we actually had 9 people in our conference call. Our trainer said we would never be able to continue the group with more than 3 but we showed her!!!

This is a weird experience. I have never met, fact to face a single person in this group. Thursday is our final day together and it is truly sad to see that day come. Many of us are really good friends now. It probably is like when full time missionaries leave the MTC. Not ever having had that experience I am only guessing.

This mission has quite a chain of command. I don't actually know the mission president - though I do remember seeing pictures of the presidency on the wall in the Joseph Smith building when I was back there this summer to meet the recruiter who processes me into the program. Our Department Supervisor is Sister Mary King. Our Team Leader is Sister Diane Carter - I don't know where either of these sisers are located. My Missionary Leader is Sister Jean Evans of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada and her Assistant Missionary Leader is Sister Darlene Jacobs of Murietta, California. I'll have to ask Roweton if he knows her. All I know is I better behave with all these Sisters over me. Where are the Brethren???

I never thought I would reach a place in life where I have three headsets that would rule my life. But I do love it - other than the stress. That reaches the apex on Wednesday when I start taking live phone calls (with my trainer spying in the whole time.) Pray that I survive. :-)

What's my grandson doing in a Missing Person Ad

Sunday Grandpa and Ruby (the sweet little dog - OK JJ?) came over for Sunday dinner. Grandpa had this ad from the paper to show us. It sure does look like a certain grandson of mine, who shall remain nameless. I just want to know how they got Squashbottoms picture? It does look like him.

(OK, I took a terrible picture. But you have to love it.)

Grandpa also had an announcement for his cousin, Flo's 80th birthday party. Hopefully Bonnie can get him to go back there. It would really do him good to be able to get back there. He goes in Wednesday to have the plastic surgeon finish up the job on his head and make sure they got all the cancer. I guess he had three more spots biopsied the other day. That makes 3 known cancers and 3 spots to be looked at.

Ruby is so funny. She never has liked me. I have been "dropping" pieces of meat for her at dinner. Now she comes in and sits right there expecting to get fed but that is it. Can't get her up on my lap for love or money. Crazy but cute doggie.

How is my mission training going?

It doesn't seem possible that I am 6 weeks into training for this mission. My how the time flies. Anyway, I have been keeping busy. We have from 2 to 4 group meeting a week using Adobe presentation software so the 25 of us who live all over the world can meet together, listen to a live lesson - see it on powerpoints delivered to our computer - and even participate orally in the presentation. Then there is the lesson material we have to study and practice activities we have to do.
Here are some computer programs I have to learn:
Skype
Clarify
Kanisa
and, Siebel.
I am sure many of you have heard of Skype. I use it daily to keep in touch with our trainers and with eachother, get questions answered and assist eachother.
Clarify is the churches system for answering email requests that come into Salt Lake relating to products (like new FamilySearch, Ancestral File, PAF, indexing, etc.), research (actually answering research questions, and operations (like family history center problems.) I have actually answered three email from the real data base with my trainer watching my every move. Soon I will be out there on my own.
Kanisa - This is the knowledge base that the church uses to place documents that answer questions to "all" the things people write or call in about. Unfortunately it doesn't answer all questions and the intuitive nature of the progeam leaves a lot to be desired.
Siebel - This is my newest tool to learn. It is the telephone answering program the church uses. I can log in to Siebel and tell it I am available for phone calls and it will automatically transfer calls that come in for newFamilySearch support to me! This is one I have only played around with so far - practicing answering calls from other trainees but by next week I will get to answer a couple live.
Trainers - Sister Tychonievich (better known as Sister T for obvious reasons) - is our lead trainer. She lives in eastern Ohio. In fact the other day we had to have a substitute because good old hurricane Ike wiped out the power in the area where she lived. She had to drive to a neighboring city were they had power just to get an email out telling everyone she wasn't available. She is in the Primary presidency in her ward. Brother Russ Perry is my personal assistant trainer. We meet weekly for performance checks, he can answer my questions, and he watches what I do in live activities using a desktop capture tool. He lives in Roy, Utah, and is the stake clerk in his stake.
All in all this is a great experience so far and will only get better when I can actually get to do something.

Another Sunday Night

I don't know what it is lately about Sunday night dinners but that is all I have been blogging.

What don't I want to blog about? Well NOT Fresno State's tanking against Wisconsin. Too depressing to even write any more about.

As most of you know Gandpa Birdie (AKA Bob Blessing) has been having a tough time of it. His physical health hasn't been good. He still misses Grandma terribly; and, now he is have skin cancer problems. I took this picture of him and Ruby last Sunday so you can see the scar on his forehead and possibly the one on his arm. He is going in this week for a whole body scan and in another week to the plastic surgeon who will reopen the head wound, make sure all the cancer is gone and put it back together better.

Ruby the crazy dog. As you know Ruby is Grandpa's little child. They go visiting together. Sunday night Ruby decided to climb up on the couch and just park there and then went and hid behind the cushion. Crazy dog!