My LOA/LOS Conference

A Week in Beautiful Plantation, Miami

Every year the Legat program puts on a mandatory conference that I have to go to. This year it was held in Plantation, Miami. Last year it was in New York and the year before it was held in Clarksburg, WV. My title is LOA or Legat Office Assistant. What I really am is a jack of all trades. Whatever needs to be done I do. It has been a wonderful job and I have met so many incredible people. On the left is Bob Jones the guy who organizes all of our trainings. Since I was given permission to come a day early because of the long trip, Pat SiJohn (another LOA from Pretoria) and I offered to help him get the room ready for the conference. It was fun. He drove us around showing us a little bit of Plantation, Florida. It is close to Ft. Lauderdale. Next to him is Garnet from Bangkok. She has been in the Legat program for about 17 years and boy does she have some incredible experiences. Next to her is Matt. He is the LOA in Singapore and my "go to guy". Everytime I have a question I call him. He has been wonderful to me. We got to know each other when I went to my first conference at Clarksburg, WV. He and I were supposed to get into the Pittsburgh airport at about the same time. He was coming from Nairobi, Kenya and I was coming from SLC. He got there a bit early and I was delayed about 5 hours. I was so freaked out that he would leave me, but he waited all that time. He really is just the nicest guy. I am so glad that we are in the same time zone so that I can call him for advice.

Pat SiJohn and I got to be good friends when we went through training in Washington, DC. We just hit it off. She is originally from the Salt Lake City office and works in the Coeur d'Alene, ID Resident Agency. I have known her through the years and always liked her. We have managed our schedules so far to attend the same conference the last two years. We had so much fun together. We shopped and ate and shopped some more. She is one of those people who has an easy laugh, and I find myself laughing with her all the time. We are really enjoying our experience as first-time LOAs and love to talk about our experiences. Below we are doing one of our favorite pasttimes eating at a fun restaurant, The Red Lobster. Don't have any of those in KL or Pretoria.

One of the places that we got to visit was Miami Beach. We walked for over an hour down the beach collecting shells, talking and just enjoying the beautiful sunny day. We met up with Garnet at the end of our beach walk and walked together down the street until we found a seafood restaurant that looked pretty good. The food was wonderful and that is where we heard the stories of the Mumbai masacre. Garnet had been working in India at the time and her office handled that incident. She is a wonderful storyteller, and Pat and I were just spellbound listening to her. One of the fun things that she said, is when she was giving encouragement to her Legat she told him, "Dan, lock and load, lock and load. This is why we are here, this is what it is all about." How lucky we were to meet up with her.

I took over from Beverly Pawlik in the KL office. She transferred to a new assignment in Rabat, Morocco. She was a great trainer and had the KL office organized which made it much easier on me than what Pat was faced with in her office. I really have been fortunate in many ways in my Legat assignment. I trained with Beverly for about a month and she was so fun to be with and talk to. She has a talent of lifting one of her eyebrows when she is making statements that just cracked me up. I wished that she didn't have go I enjoyed being around her so much.

Sandy Sands on the left and Cheryl Ray on the right are gals that I have known for many years. They worked out of the Salt Lake City Office. Sandy Sands has been in and out of the Legat program for many years. She is serving in London at the moment. It took her four days to get to the conference because of the volcano erruption in Iceland that had completely stopped planes from flying to the states from Europe. She had a very important meeting with our AD over the International Operations Division on Friday so she persevered until she finally made it. She took trains and planes and spent many hours in the airports. Four other LOAs were told to turn back after they couldn't make it after two days, but because Sandy had to be at that meeting she just kept making alternate plans until she finally made it. Cheryl has been one of my dearest friends from the day I started at the Salt Lake office. Poor thing, she was really sick almost the entire time. She was just stretched too thin with all the trainings that she had to go to in such a short period of time. She is now the LOS (Legal Operations Specialist, they make more money) in Afghanistan. She has been to Baghdad, Australia, Lagos, Nigeria, and Rome, Italy. She had been home for a few years before she decided to do one last tour in Afghanistan. What a trooper. The Bigwigs love her in the Legat Program because she is so good, hence that is why she is an LOS.

I just had the best time at this conference. It is enjoyable meeting up with dear friends and meeting LOAs/LOSs that you only talked to but never met. Wonder where they will send us next year.