Settling in

This last week has been one of just getting down and getting the work done.  The fun and games that live here in Nauvoo during the summer are gone.  The performing missionaries are now gone.  The crowds are pretty much gone.  Except for the pull of a new film introduced this last week in the temple, the session sizes there are decreasing and temple missionaries are frequently found going on sessions as patrons for lack of anything else to do.  With school having started in most places around the country, the temple baptistery is now often idle for hours on end.  Such a difference from what it was just a week or two ago. 

Starting in September, our afternoon shift will start and end an hour later than it has during the summer.  The earlier schedule through the summer allowed us to empty the temple each nigh before the pageant began so that we could turn the lights off and not have the temple detract from the outdoor production.  Now that the pageant is over, we can extend our hours a little more to allow the working class time to come in after work - at least for the last session which will be starting at 6 pm.

The new film that we show in the temple is a little longer, and has caused some minor changes in the schedule for ordinance workers.  We don't have as long between the end of one session and the beginning of another.  That means that workers don't have as long to complete the "veil" before needing to be at their next post.  When a session is late, it can really cause havoc, but on the whole we have been able to just quicken our pace and all has worked out - so far.

As new shift coordinators, we have been trying our hand at devising a new line assignment sheet for the shift, as must be done anew each week, as needs change.  Some have suggested that the effort is much like playing Sudoku, where we plop in assignments such that all have something to do, that all assignments are covered and there are not too many assigned in any one area.  That, and trying to make everyone's line interesting and within the bounds of their individual capabilities.  I am told that this task usually occupies most coordinators in the range of about ten hours each week.  And then, just when you think everything is in place, someone calls in, saying they are not going to be there, and a new effort is then required to fill in the areas that that person would have done.  While some shifts have more assignments to fill that workers to do them, our shift has more workers than we have assignments.  I find myself scheduling many to be endowment patrons just to give them something to do.