David Travel June 2024

Last year I had a really busy July of travel and was traveling most of July. This year, June was the big travel month. I had the following trips planned. 

June 3-6: Minneapolis for Assurance Advantage Level 4 (Raddison Hotel Mall of America)

June 10-13: Denver for Assurance Advantage Level 3 (Downtown Denver)

June 14-15: Summer Range

June 16-19: Nashville, Tennessee - Partner Meeting

June 21-July 5: Peaden Family Nauvoo Trip

We also had a trip planned May 30-June 2nd with some friends to St. George and decided to cancel that one. Overall I slept in my bed 6 times between June 1st and July 5th. I really enjoy doing the Assurance Advantage trainings and Level 3 moved from virtual to in person this year (it was moved to virtual originally due to COVID-19). I've been helping with Assurance Advantage in some capacity since about 2016 or 2017, but obviously more since I joined the National Assurance Office. Something new this year is that with moving to in person and some other changes, there were quite a few changes needed for Level 3 this year and I was responsible for updating and creating new content and it was a ton of work. Overall I think Level 3 went really great. Level 4 is always fun and very relaxed since the participants spend most of the time looking at a file for internal inspection and we talk about that file and their review. 

Here is a picture of the participants in the Level 3 group. I really enjoy facilitating this training. We also are trying to do something fun at least one of the evenings and this time all the facilitators went to do an escape room. It was so fun and we made it out in our 60 minutes!

One other funny thing from all my trips - in Minnesota they don't usually have Dr. Pepper in most restaurants or other places, so I finally found a Dr. Pepper and took advantage of that. 

Fortunately I am really into the Lockwood & Co. series (Shantel introduced me to it) and so I had some good reading for the plane and hotels. 

The highlight of the trips was obviously going to Nauvoo - but the highlight of the work trips was going to the partner meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. I have not been back to Nashville since I served there on my mission. I've really wanted to go back with Shantel, but we have not been able to make that happen yet. It felt surreal as we flew into Nashville. As we landed and I walked through the inside of the airport if brought back memories from when I was an assistant to the president and would go and meet the new missionaries at the airport. As I walked to the ride share area it started pouring rain and it felt like I was home, that is the Nashville that I remember. As we drove downtown it was actually so different, there were so many new buildings from the last 20 years that it felt like a different city. However, there was still that familiarity and it was so fun to be there. We were downtown near Broadway and got to spend time on Broadway, which as a missionary we did not do except one time when we went to the hard rock cafe. I can't wait to go back to Nashville with Shantel some time. 

It was really enjoyable to be at the partner meeting and because I work with so many partners across the firm, it felt like I already knew and had a good relationship with many of them. On one of the evenings we got to go on a boat down the Cumberland River. I really enjoyed that, especially being able to stand on top of the boat and look out at the river, the trees and the City.