Mission Report #1

We love where we live overlooking downtown. We can see the from the mountains in the east, across downtown and to the Church Office Building and part of Temple Square from our balcony. We live just a block west of the Church Office Building so it takes us about 10 minutes to walk to our assignment.
We have been on our mission for 10 days now. It is such a blessing to be serving in this mission as you are around your mission presidency virtually every day. I don't think we have had a day go by that we haven't seen at least one of them. They are all great men. We have had several training meetings where they have been instructing us. In fact Mike Thomas asked for something from me that I took from some of their training.
Our mission is different from many others. We don't go to the MTC but have our own MTC in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (JSMB). They normally train you for two weeks on PAF and new FamilySearch and then send you out to your mission zone. Our group was almost 40 strong so they broke us into two groups. One group got the training and the rest of us got zone assignments last Monday and were put to work. When they announced our assignment Monday we just looked at each other and said, "You've got to be kidding." We were assigned the most challenging zone in the mission. It is called Data Quality. I know that means nothing to any of you. Let me explain by starting with the fact that we work behind locked security doors that require a security badge to get past. We are working in new FamilySearch helping members fix many of the problems that are in the data of that program - which includes the actual temple files of the Church. There are 12 employees and there are about 54 missionaries in this zone. I am being trained to work on missing and incorrect ordinance data.
We are in the Largest and Smallest mission of the Church. Also it's name was just changed to the Church and Family History and Church Headquarters Mission. Our mission takes in approximately 2 blocks of land (smallest in size) but has the most missionaries of any mission. (435 seniors - couples and sisters, 800 Church Service Missionaries - part time missionaries, 80 young elders with health/emotional issues and 3 young sisters.) So that makes us the largest in size of any mission missionary-wise. Our zones cover all the Church and Family History things but also all the missionaries in the Church Office Building - so our missionaries work in security, the mission department, nursing/doctors on the mission campus, real estate, furniture, etc. You name it and we probably have a missionary or two doing it.