Painting Day 1

Sleep last night was an interesting one.  With the time zone 7 hours ahead of Utah, we all worked to stay up as late as possible (for me 8:55pm) until we were falling asleep standing up.  I fell asleep immediately but was awake by 1am.  I guess my body thought the “nap” was over.  I started thinking about the day ahead and how I would train 9 people and keep track of them as well as my own crew of 9.  I still felt a little panicky at the enormous project in front of us, but was eventually calmed by the spirit that told me everything would be OK.

We met the Nigerian Crew in the lobby at 7:30am dressed in white for our painting day in the temple.  Last night when they came in, we met all 9 of them.  I thought there would be 5…already up 4 extra bodies to train…Yikes!   The next thing I knew, I had 8 more men showing up in the lobby telling me they were the painters from Ghana!  Now panic really set in!

The plan had been from the beginning to have a 1:1 ratio of my people to new people so we could really train well and watch and keep track of how each individual was doing.  How was I supposed to train 17 people with only 9 of us!  Hard to imagine, but I knew that if I just did the best I could, the Lord would take care of the rest.  He always does! We started our day with a spiritual  thought and prayer which is an essential component of any temple project.

There inside the temple, since this is a fully operating dedicated temple, the man at the front desk was checking each and every recommend before letting us proceed.  That’s when Hanna (one of my crew) couldn’t find her recommend.  It had been in her pocket when we met in the lobby and now it was gone.  Camron, without thinking, picked up the phone and dialed our bishop (since Hanna is in our ward) to get her clearance to enter.  Unfortunately it was 1am in Utah.  Yep…woke up Bishop Blake and his wife.  But, he took care of the problem and all was solved.  Since this is Hanna’s first temple job with us, we told her that every day you have to expect something that goes wrong.  Good thing is we got it out of the way first thing and the only one really suffering from it was Bishop Blake.  I hope he went back to sleep.

Sunda

Thinking about directing 28 people all at once, when 17 of them I have barely met, know nothing about what you are doing and need to do it perfectly can be an overwhelming task.  Well, of course it didn’t go perfect, but I am amazed at how the day went.  I had 17 dark skinned, dark headed people, with giant white smiles all eager to learn and soaking up every one of my instructions.  Some got it immediately, others needed more patience and coaching, but every one of them worked a long day, worked hard and did their very best with a deep desire to do it “right”.  One problem along the way was that their “English” is quite different than my English and some of us were struggling to understand the other person.  My crew was amazing and we are so excited about this incredible opportunity to serve with our new friends from Ghana and Nigeria where we all are working to beautify the temple together.

Sunda (pronounced Sunday) from Nigeria is such a quick learner and got everything figured out quickly and was as good (and maybe better) than my team.  Jys (pronounced Joyce) is the only woman of the 17 we are training.  She came over from Nigeria and has a heart of gold.  As I worked with her all day, she seemed to me be in her mid-30’s, but when I asked her age she told me she is 46 and a mother of 5.  These people all look so young but as we talked with them throughout the day, they are all much older than we thought.

Alicyn and Jys

Despite our crazy numbers, when I assigned team members to different tasks no one complained. There was a calm and peaceful feeling together with everyone eager to help and learn.

We got an unbelievable amount of work done today, far more than I had anticipated, and now that the day is over, I’m glad we have 28 instead of 17.  It felt like a whirlwind but somehow we pulled it off.

We finished around 5:30pm and after everyone left the temple, I stayed to walk the hall where most of the work had been done today.  Overall it is perfect.  I must admit the end result is much better than when I tried to teach a bunch of high school students some basic techniques for scenery backdrops for a play.  I think the difference in not only age and maturity, but the fact that each of my “students” here has a vested desire and interest in learning what to do and doing it well.  I hope they feel this experience is blessing their lives as much as I feel it is blessing mine.  Exhausted and signing out for the night…

Alicyn