Hard Work and Success

This week was full of long hours of work and having success all along the way.

As of the end of this week we have succeeded in initiating 7 out of 10 technology groups for our first rollout over Europe. For this first rollout we chose groups who spoke English, or at least had the capability to speak English. Other than the United Kingdom and Ireland, the groups consisted of the following countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, and Cyprus.  Obviously there are more than 10 countries. Some countries only have one or two technology specialists or none at all, so we combined some countries together.

Our meetings with these groups are in the evenings. So after a full day at the office, we go home for dinner an immediately head back to work for the evening of meetings. Some times we worked until 10:00 PM.  By the end of the week, we began to feel the effects of putting in so many hours.  (Note from Sister van Hoff: sometimes I took comp time and came home for a few hours in the afternoon.) 

It is really interesting to visually meet these church members from other parts of Europe. There are so many different personalities and background stories. Some have performed the responsibilities of a technology specialist long before the Church created the position. Some members in the groups have only been in the position for a month or less and are clueless of their responsibilities.

We had one interesting group that actively communicated during the video conference. They had questions and comments and even got involved with a discussion amongst themselves. We learned near the end of the meeting that they had been messaging each other the whole time. That feature is available on the video conference software. It shows up on the right side of the screen.

In another group we witnessed just the opposite. For whatever reason, they would only use their cameras for a short while. Only when they unmuted their microphone, they would also open up their camera. When they finished talking, they would mute their mic and turn off their camera. One of them went a step further. When he talked he would do the same as the others, but would put his hand in front of the camera so that we could not see his face. We tried to encourage them to use their cameras so that each of the members could get to know each other. That didn't change anything.

We’ll have one more video conference with each group before we begin the second and final rollout.

Earlier in the week we got an email from a U.S. military stake. (A stake consists of a geographic cluster of meetinghouses.) They were asking us for help. They had audio difficulties while testing out their webcasting equipment.

We sent them some step-by-step instructions, which we had written up, and told them if they followed them precisely, they should have success.

Equipment set up in chilly High Council room.

Tuesday evening, at about 9:00 PM, we had just finished up with a technology group video conference and were getting ready to head home. The military stake called us up on our cell phone. They were at the church testing out the equipment, but couldn’t get the audio to work. For the next hour, we had them test out each piece of equipment. We checked their streaming capabilities online. We even had them take a picture of their mixer to see of any of the controls looked odd. Nothing worked. So we agreed that we would make arrangements to go to their stake building (a couple of hours away) and work on the problem ourselves.

Sister van Hoff packing up.

Thursday morning we packed up the car with our own equipment and headed to Kaiserslautern, Germany. We used the High Council room to set up our equipment. They had a huge table which gave us plenty of room to set everything up. The only bad thing is that there was no heat on and it was chilly. We turned up the radiators, but still nothing. The heating system must have been on a timer.

The correct way to connect.

We set up our equipment first, because we knew our cables and devices worked. We were successful with the first attempt. Piece by piece, starting with the microphone, we switched out to use their equipment. Next was the XLR cable, then the mixer, then the "Y" adaptor.  Everything worked.  Finally we started to switch out the Teradek.  That is when we found the problem.  The Teradek is a device that encodes the video and audio input and sends it out to the internet.  Immediately we noticed that the audio input jack was connected to the earphone output jack connection on the side of the Teradek.  It should have been connected to the input jack connection in the back.

We ran one final test with all of the equipment and everything worked.  Wow!  Two hours of driving and three hours of testing equipment, all for a mini jack plugged into the wrong place.  Still, it was a great feeling to have solved a problem ON OUR OWN.  WhooooHooo!

By the weekend, we really felt we needed a rest.  We still worked, but in a more fun way.  I did take a cold bike ride Saturday morning.  There was frost on the ground.

In the afternoon, we helped the Sister missionaries teach a young man from Vietnam.  The lesson ended with him accepting and wanting to be baptized.  He has been talking to the missionaries for a couple months.

In the evening SIster van Hoff and I, along with tow other missionary couples;Elder and SIster Johnson, and Elder and Sister Lindsay, were judges in a road show competition.  There were five youth groups who put on skits.  There was comedy, singing, and dancing.  they were all good and very entertaining, which made it difficult to judge.  Yet we had an enjoyable evening.

We love you all and pray for you.  We want to thank you for your prayers for us.