The following responsibilities are not in order of priority but listed as a record of how we spent a lot of our time here as Public Affairs Missionaries.
Newsroom:
Corus was updated a week ago consistent to all requisite software, for all program developers annual assault to build a latest and greatest version. We missed the provided training that was held during working hours in Salt Lake and sleeping hours in Hong Kong. So, after hours of fiddling with Corus we were able to publish one syndicated article to Hong Kong’s English edition and two articles to Malaysia’s English edition.
We believe that after another day or two of fiddling with the new software, we will be able to begin training the Missionaries and Media Specialists assigned to other countries in the Asia Area. We will also be posting two syndicated and one original article each month to the Hong Kong Newsroom English edition.
News Brief:
As we have mentioned before we have been having trouble working with a new research and newsletter software called Meltwater that the PA department recently purchased. This is really Karen’s project and with Meltwater she puts out two to three newsletters a week. The recipients of these newsletters are the Area Presidency, Legal, Public Affairs and others as directed. These newsletters contain articles from various newspapers throughout the area reflecting issues requested by the recipients based on issues being worked on. It is an important role that helps keep everyone aware of what is being said and done regarding these issues in the various countries. The software program was working well for a couple of weeks, and then quit working. Karen has not been able to put anything out for a couple of weeks and has been working diligently with the computer techies at Meltwater, Hong Kong, and Salt Lake without any positive results. This week while laying awake one night contemplating the problem, an idea of how to work around the problem and post the articles came to her mind. The next day she was anxious to get into the office and find out whether or not her idea would work. You guessed it, it did work and she successfully delivered four news articles of helpful information. It really was quite impressive how she solved the problem. She tested her idea first and it worked, so she took her idea to our PA director Tom. He was impressed with her idea and told her she could use it temporally until headquarters in Salt Lake has figured out a permanent solution. I know I never would have figured it out.
Opinion Leaders:
We are still working on the Opinion Leader Database/CRM but are still on hold waiting for Salt Lake before we can move forward. We are really anxious to get this done as it will help all of the countries to better organize and build relationships.
Fact Sheets:
I did some searching to update and better organize the information in the Fact Sheet files. We started a photo bank so that we will have easier access to photos needed for annual updates. We reconciled the numbers on the India and Nepal Fact Sheets to the Power Point presentation used by the Humanitarian Missionaries. There have been times in the past where members of the Area Presidency would experience embarrassment when during a presentation the numbers on the handouts were not consistent with the numbers on the screen. So, they have suggested that we and the Humanitarian department work a little closer together in this effort.
Public Affairs Missionaries in other Countries:
Each week we have a call with either one companionship or the entire team of Senior Public Affairs Missionaries. This week we were on a call with Carol Ng and the Humanitarian Senior Couple in Malaysia so we missed our call with the Dowds who serve in Cambodia. Which was our loss because they are always really fun to talk to. In our weekly meeting with Annie we talked about adding the National Directors in a weekly call going forward. The purpose of adding these calls is they need the same support and training we are now giving the Missionaries. Annie assigned us Cambodia, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia because they all have an English Newsroom edition. She gave us all of their contact information so we will be following up on that shortly.
Projects:
We have two special projects that we can talk about, the first is the University Games which we have mentioned before. This week we confirmed that we have a minimum of five stakes in Taiwan that will be participating. The soccer team has reserved the following dates for us:
1) Sunday, August 20 – Open to doing a fireside (details haven’t been planned yet)
2) Tuesday, August 22 – Open to traveling to Central or Southern Taiwan to meet with members, but not both
3) Saturday, August 26 @ 2-9 p.m. – North Taipei Stake: Face to Face Conversation, Soccer clinic, and Community Outreach Project; North Taipei Stake welcomes members from the other stakes to join.
We are expecting 60 or more kids to participate in the Community Outreach Project. We are teaming up with a non-government charitable organization that will be bringing at-need children to a soccer field where member children will join with them to meet the soccer players and be taught how to play. The team challenged us this week when they told us they could facilitate up to 100 kids. This means we have some more work to do.
The Face to Face Conversation will be a format similar to the Studio “C” face to face that you can find on you tube. All the players are returned missionaries and will participate. We are being told that it will be broadcast live on Facebook.
The fireside is still being planned. The issue is will there be one large meeting or will they want to spit up the team and do multiple smaller firesides. The Stakes are meeting on this and we will be getting it finalized shortly.
The second project comes from our assignment as interim support for Malaysia. We are working with the Humanitarian Missionaries to provide Hepatitis vaccinations, a water pump, washing machines, and collaborating NGO’s for women’s shelters in four different cities in Malaysia. We had a long meeting this week and have the projects approved conditioned on what I would consider certain common-sense issues. We also are following up with young single mothers and caring for their new-born babies. We are hoping to make friends with this department of the Ministry so that we can gain credibility as a caring loving organization. We hope that as we do good things those in power will recognize us for who we are.
I should also mention that the week ended with a baptism and a holiday, (Establishment Day) with amazing fireworks.
July 1st celebration of "Establishment Day". The busses coming into Wan Chai were backed up as far as we could see.
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