Monday, February 17 was the beginning of a busy week. Planning of the National Public Affairs Conference is now in full swing. We have a director from each of the following countries coming to our conference the first week of March: Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique, Mauritius, Cameroon, DRCongo (Kinshasha), DR Congo (Lumbumbashi), Zimbabwe, Botswana, Madagascar, Reunion, Angola, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Burundi, Namibia, Zambia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Rwanda, Malawi and South Africa. That pretty much covers Southeast Africa (which is the narrow part from the center of Africa downward). Elder Kyle has spent a lot of time with the Church travel person and between the two of them they have dealt with visa problems, requests for stamped and signed letters from the leader of our Church, Formal invitations to the conference and proof of our hosting them while they are here. Each country seems to have to produce something different. Plus, we've had one director have to cancel because of work and he suggested his assistant come in his place. Another is having a baby and one has been released and a new public affairs director called, so tickets have had to be changed or cancelled, new ones issued, etc.
Elder Kyle has also booked all the rooms at the hotel and reserved our training rooms there, plus all meals. It's a big job with new problems cropping up each day. The public affairs couples from DR Congo, Zambia, Uganda, Durban and Kenya are also coming a couple of days early. They each have different requests for days they want to arrive and leave, so they are basically keeping Elder Kyle hopping!
We finally got all the Helping Hands materials translated in French and Portuguese and to the printer and hope to get that mailed out next week to all the units in Africa (about 1100 units...another big job), but the Church Warehouse has experience sending lesson manuals etc., so they will be mailing them out for us. I am working on getting a CD created with all printed materials on them, in case they need more they can print them.
I was sick for a couple of days, but Elder Kyle and Sister Shupe kept the office running like a well-oiled machine. The Area Office wanted us to update some country sheets and Elder Kyle told them his graphic arts person was sick at home, but between him and Sister Shupe, they took care of it. I feel like a proud mom. Ha.
We've had lots of meetings with the Area Presidency, Visa Committee, Humanitarian, Public Affairs in office and others. Sometimes it seems that's all we do, but most of it is necessary. They decided to replace the windows in our building, so the past two days have been noisy and dusty. One day we had to leave our office entirely, but today we were back, listening to pounding going on outside the window, but we're just glad to be back at our desks.
I've posted a couple of articles to Newsroom and Facebook this week and approved a few other for the other country newsroom websites. I've been checking out flowers and cakes for Ryan's upcoming wedding. Of course reimbursements, etc. for all the countries is a regular occurrence and I've done several of them, plus reconciled Bank of America charges for all the couples. It was a busy, but good week!
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