Saturday, January 31, 2015

My brother goes on a mission!

My brother Dave and his wife Valerie arrived at their mission at the beginning of January. They were called to Guatemala and on the same type of mission as us: Executive Secretary to the Area Presidency. I thought I'd make the January post about this. We've emailed back and forth and it's been interesting to compare some of the different things we do:
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Hi Dave!  How's everything going for you guys?  Pretty busy?  I kind of felt like it took me about a month to really get into the swing of things. It's been crazy here lately. Last week we had the Area Report (a conference call with the Q12), we did an Area Broadcast last night (not all places do this, but what we do is a presentation to a stake concerning the goals for the year, from the Area Plan, we record it and then we'll be distributing this in February) … and then tomorrow is our Area Council meeting (all day Saturday and half day on Sunday).  Not to mention the day long AP'cy meeting this week and it seems like it takes at least a day to get ready for this and then a day to complete the meeting (which I haven't done yet). Hope you guys are doing well!
Elder Bruce G. Brereton
Executive Secretary to the Pacific Area Presidency | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
P:+64-9-488-5554 | M:+64-21-049-5003 | breretonbg@ldschurch.org
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I'm in the same boat as you. Very busy. We just finished a week long visit with 2 GAs (Christensen one of the 7P and Andersen a 70). It was all about area plan and self-sufficiency. And we are having daily agenda meetings for our real GA visit in 2 weeks (Andersen-Q12 , Maynes – 7P and Davies – BP). So we will have a week’s worth of agendas for them. I'm pretty much on an all day Monday preparation for the AP meeting. We get about a dozen leadership requests and 2 or 3 boundary requests every week. All day Tuesday in the AP meeting, then all day Wednesday sending action items, processing the approved and not approved leadership requests, etc. Fortunately we have 2 Exec Secs here (the 3rd goes home in 2 weeks). So the other Exec Sec handles a lot of the other meetings. Valerie is doing all the missionary applications. About 20 a week.
Sure makes the time go by fast though!
Elder David Brereton
Secretario Ejecutivo
Centroamérica Área
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It sounds like you are doing great and you guys are super busy too. We have Elders Bednar and Robbins (7P) visiting in 3 weeks, so we are getting ready for that, along with our Mission Presidents Seminar which will be in the middle of their visit. We had a full day of Area Council yesterday (which was Saturday here - I was up before 6am getting things ready and didn't get home until after 7pm). Since I'm a computer type guy, I do a number of the powerpoints. Elder Nielsen called last night at 9:30 and he had a bunch of changes that we worked through on the phone so we'd be all ready for the morning. All our leadership and boundary requests go through me, but I don't do as much work on them as you do. We have an MLU person that does all the processing. Our IFR's wife was not too busy when she arrived, so she does all the missionary applications. Patsy does other things and also spearheads our Social Media training efforts for the Area. Not all Areas are pushing Social Media, but Elder Pearson wanted to this here in the Pacific area. We are doing 3 days of workshops this coming week (mostly on the weekend) at the national YSA convention. We've done this in multiple places in New Zealand and 3 cities in Australia. It looks like we might be doing some training sessions in Tonga and Samoa this coming year (during the time when the Brethren are at General Conference). That's interesting how you had 3 Executive Secretary's ... it's just me and Patsy here. But, I do get a lot of support from the employees. It's early Sunday morning now and we have another half day of Area Council ... we have mini-sacrament meeting with them, so I've got to get the sacrament table all setup and a few other things prepared. We live just a half-mile from the beach and the office, so that is something we really enjoy. We walk to work almost every day and we'll have a walk on the beach this afternoon, once we are all done with things. Patsy does the meals for our weekend meetings (and has some other senior missionaries help her out). It's funny to think that we've been out 7 months already. It does go by fast and we do really enjoy the work, but we miss the kids.
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(from Dave) Interesting that you have things divided up a little differently. For leadership requests, I do all the history research, tithing history, etc. and bring the whole packages to the AP. We don't have a translation dept which I think you do, so I do most of that myself. We do have a planning dept so they do some of the growth projections on boundary requests. Should be an interesting visit with Elder Bednar. 
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Yes, it is interesting how things are different between our areas. Wow, that's cool that you do your own translation! Yes, we have a big group that does that here. We have about 6 people that work full-time in translation and I believe they also have about 20 more that they outsource the work to and are part-time. Most things go into 8 languages and this group does the translation for Salt Lake as well. Also, they do the translation of our languages for General Conference. 

We had a good Area Council meeting this last weekend. Also, I'm working on a project where we are encouraging all our Stake Council members to get their 4 generation Family History done (and then we'll be doing Ward Councils and then Ward members). We are starting with our AP'cy, then Area Council and Stake Presidents.  Here's some pictures from the weekend:

I'm now working on the video conference calls (and agendas) with the various departments in Salt Lake. They now do these calls before they get to General Conference (there are about 12 of these meetings). How many secretaries do you have? We have two. They take care of all their travel, memos, and they setup their mission tours, stake conferences, temple reviews, and other things. So, I don't have to worry about these at all. We also have a person whose full-time job is to do boundary and leadership items. You do a lot more of those items, than I do. Let's continue to keep in touch on things!
Elder Bruce G. Brereton
Executive Secretary to the Pacific Area Presidency | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
P:+64-9-488-5554 | M:+64-21-049-5003 | breretonbg@ldschurch.org

Dave and Valerie at the MTC

After our Area Council meeting, I got a real nice note from Elder Nielsen (who is the 2nd counselor in the Area Presidency).  It's been a real honor to be able to work with Elders Pearson, Haleck and Nielsen.
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Bruce and Patsy,

We just wanted to let you know what an honor and privilege it is to serve with you in the Pacific Area. The two of you are remarkable and we are richly blessed to have you here.

Patsy, your wonderful smile and can-do attitude is so refreshing. You do things FIRST CLASS all the way and represent the Lord and us in a most respectful way. The food over the weekend was excellent with the lasagne being especially delicious!

Bruce, you are always so willing to not only help out but make things so much better. Your vision of the things we are doing is remarkable and you add so much to all of our teachings and presentations! Your attention to detail is amazing and I'm not sure what we would do without you so start working on an extension........PLEASE!!!  You have such a pleasant personality and are so sincere. As you were teaching out of the handbook in our last presidency meeting about the power of music, I wanted to start taking piano or singing lessons!

Please know you are love and respected in every-way. Now, on to the Area Review our dear friends!

Much love and respect,
Wendy and Giff

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