SWOT, SRS, PEF and Other Acronyms

It was great to be back to the office again today with a full week of service ahead of us.  On Monday mornings we have our weekly SRS/PEF staff meeting.  We only allocate a half hour for it, we like short meetings versus long ones, but the last two weeks they have been long.  Today we had to prepare a Self Analysis Operation Survey Report on PEF for Hong Kong, that was due today.  Last week it was a SWOT Analysis for the SRS for Hong Kong.  We also had a Vidyo conference schedule to review the SWOT Analysis from last week.  It was just about then that all the acronyms caught up with us and Elder Oveson final said, "What is Swot?"  Sameth said that is a really a great way to analyze a business that they teach about in University classes.  It is either something that is well known in Asia and not in the U.S. or we have been out of school way too long.

Okay, for some of you that are old like us, SWOT is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  We had identified those in our analysis, but we did not remember that is what they called the exercise.  In case you had not guessed, SRS is Self Reliance Services and PEF is Perpetual Education Fund.  Isn't it interesting that sometimes in our attempt to keep things simple by using acronyms, we actually make it harder?

Our day was packed with stuff to do, from the projects that we were already working on, to new projects and emails that needed to be taken care of today and would not wait.  This afternoon we had a one hour video conference with Hong Kong that went very well.  They understand the issues that we continue to face with licensing from the government to run the full program, but they are supportive of what we are doing.

Sisters Fife, Dy, and Hum

Sisters Killian and Q

We decided that for our picture today we would put in some of the Sister Missionaries who we rub shoulders with here.  Between 25% and 30% of the missionaries here are Sisters, they are a great strength to the mission.