This weekend was filled with lots of love, joy, work, and tears. I had so much fun working with so many people, 3 in particular: Emily Clawson, Diann Jeppson, and Annette Jones. They are amazing women, and I’m so blessed and grateful to have had the privilege of working with them on the Salt Lake TJEd Forum put on by TJEd MarketPlace and co-sponsored by TJED Online. Being the Volunteer Coordinator was right up my alley!  I can’t even describe my experience in words that would be adequate, and it’s not just because I’m still exhausted.

To give you an understanding as to why my jackrabbit factor moment was significant to me, I need to begin with a little background information.   I only hope I can describe it well in writing.

Part of the revenue to produce the TJEd Forum comes from every seminar class and keynote being recorded to sell for downloads.  Of course, the recordings are also to benefit those who attended and those who couldn’t as well.  I don’t know about you, but listening to a seminar over and over again is what sometimes keeps me inspired and pressing forward!  Download sales are vital to keep costs down for attendees.

Each seminar room has a recorder and a room host in charge of each classroom and recorder. All of them were trained on how to use them and were given a recorder by our audio technician, Jerry Winters–who was awesome too by the way! One of the hosts was late for the training, and hadn’t received a recorder. I assumed this room host leader had his recorder or that the audio tech still had it. The Jerry said he had given out all of the recorders. I assumed that meant he had given out 14 recorders to my 14 room hosts. So someone had to have an extra one, right?

Gratefully I had room host leaders to help me do quick searches.  (Room host leaders are a few volunteers assigned to several room hosts so I didn’t have to run around fixing problems all by myself!)  I had the leaders check with each room host and each classroom to ensure that someone didn’t have two recorders or that a recorder wasn’t left in a room. I even had 2 people from the registration/information office (which was blessedly slow at the time) check each room as well as I tried to figure out what else I could do. Mind you, the keynote address was finished and everyone was moving out to find the seminar they wanted to attend first–thank heavens for cell phones!!!

I was trying not to panic. I had less than 15 minutes to find this recorder so all the classes could be recorded. I was overwhelmed with a flood of emotions. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I knew the implications if 5 sessions were missed, especially since they were youth forum ones and would not be repeated!

All of my room host leaders let me know that all of their room hosts had only one recorder and no one found an extra one anywhere.  The registration office assistants said they didn’t find one in any room they checked either.   At that point I told them to make sure the classes were started on time since we couldn’t wait for the recorder.  I had also been in contact with our audio tech and Diann Jeppson, the chairman of the forum.

My emotions were overwhelming me, and I decided I needed to just have a quiet moment to calm down and relax enough to let the Spirit tell me what to do next.  I went into the nearly empty registration office, sat at the back and bowed my head.  I decided that if I was going to cry, it wasn’t going to be negative emotions creating it but positive ones instead.  So I said a prayer of gratitude for finding the recorder and visualized having the recorder in my hands (mind you, I didn’t know what the recorder looked like).  I asked Heavenly Father to guide me to the next step.  The change from negative emotion to positive was clearly apparent to me.  I felt more at peace.  It allowed me to release the fear and let the Spirit speak to my mind.

I stood up from my chair and felt no particular thought or prompting.  So I took action anyway and walked out of the office.  I spoke with the registrar (and one of my best friends, Emily), and we talked for a moment.   Then she said she was sure that I just needed to do something else and it would show up.  (I’m so grateful for her encouragement and reminders of what I knew in my heart to be true!)  I did something–although I couldn’t tell you what– and walked back to the registration office.  Emily reminded me at some point in the brief conversation that some of the adult sessions were being presented twice, or in other words some classes were being recorded twice!  I just needed to find a class in the first session which was being recorded twice and use the recorder in the other room to buy me some time!  We figured out that Leslie Householder’s presentation (she’s the author of The Jackrabbit Factor, Hidden Treasures, and co-author to Portal to Genius) was being done twice in the first session and it was next to the room with no recorder.  I asked Leslie if it was okay to take the recorder and we’d record her second session.  She said, yes, of course!  The room host leader, Shelly, took it to the other room and got it taken care of.

That bought me an hour of time to figure it out.  Shelly came back to talk to me, and we looked over the At-a-Glance schedule to see what we could do if we couldn’t find the recorder.   This is where I was absolutely astounded by how Heavenly Father planned to make this occurrence play out perfectly!

I looked at the second session for the same room Leslie was in.  It was being recorded in another room at another time of day.  Woohoo!  That’s 2 hours time to find the recorder.  The third session was also being recorded another time!  Then the fourth session was as well!  That gave me 4+ hours to find the recorder and still have all the presentation recorded.  I was so excited!!!  The last session in that room was not being presented twice though, so for the last session I needed to find another recorder to switch out.   I couldn’t find one, but then Shelly piped up that the room that we gave the recorder to, wasn’t being used that last session because all of the youth in that room would be in a combined session somewhere else!  We could give that recorder back to the original room!

I could not hold back my excitement!!!  I ran over to tell Emily our good news!!!  At some point, I told Jerry about our solution.  I couldn’t tell Diann yet because she was presenting in the first session, but I couldn’t wait to tell her.

Not 5 minutes later I was told that one of the room hosts had the missing recorder but didn’t need one because she was in one of the big rooms with the audio equipment.  So there weren’t really 14 recorders given out, just 10?  The other 4 rooms had bigger audio equipment and didn’t need the room hosts to do anything regarding the recording equipment.  I didn’t know that it worked that way or I would have checked those room hosts first!  Of all the questions I asked while prepping for the forum, that one I never thought to ask.

I called the room host and tracked it down.  When I held it in my hands I wasn’t as excited about holding as I thought I might be.  Then I realized it was because I felt that emotion during my prayer first!  I walked down to the room host who I took a recorder away from in Leslie’s class, and gave it to the room host for her next sessions.  I told several people of my experience, and of course, recommended Leslie’s books so they could find out more of what I was referring to when I said “Jackrabbit Factor Moment.”  Her booth was right across from the registration office too.  You can get her book for free here.

I was so relieved and physically drained after the recorder was found, yet I was still on an emotional high.   I am eternally grateful to have experienced this event.  It increased my faith and proved God’s love not only for me but also those who would be affected by the outcome.  I was just an instrument in His hands, and I wouldn’t want it any other way!

…with her eye, good lighting, and a great camera! Thanks to one of my best friends, Tamra, I now have some professional pictures of myself. Not bad for a couple minutes in her front room! My hair looks a bit funny to me in the second one and I could use some jewelry, but then I’m my biggest critic. I still really like them. Thank you so much, Tammi!

If you were volunteering for an event, and your trainer told you to meet them at a certain spot where many people may be gathering, would you want to know what they looked like? A name tag is good, but do you think the name tag would suffice? What would you do?

As much as I don’t like it, I think I’m going to be sending one of the above pictures (a link anyway) to my volunteers just in case they don’t know what I look like when they get to the Hilton for the TJEd Forum. They’ll be there early enough, but there will still be quite a few people there. I think a basic idea of who they’re looking for would be a good idea.

As some of you know, I’ll busy this upcoming weekend. I’m serving as Volunteer Coordinator (and equipment wrangler) at the Salt Lake TJEd Forum. I’ll be gone Thursday through Sunday, and gratefully my dear, dear mother will be taking care of my 5 children for me at my home!

Well, the Primary President informed us (meaning her presidency) that we’ve bee invited to give a talk next Sunday. She already knew I wouldn’t be there and thankfully had told our bishopric that I wouldn’t be there. Whew! If I hadn’t already planned to be gone…planned almost 6 months ago…I would be speaking in church this upcoming Sunday. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a “narrow” miss, but a miss nonetheless!

My ward will just have to do with my testimony last week. I think they can manage it without me. I’m only sad to miss the great talks by my friends in the Primary Presidency.