Glen and Lynne Tolman Missionary Blog

Saturday and Sunday August 25-26 Saturday is our day off.   We got the apartment cleaned and straightened.   Sister Tolman did the laundry and I did the vacuuming.   David and Jacqui Price visited us from about 1pm to 4:30pm.   We just stayed in the apartment and visited.   We finished our visit with a game of Five Crowns.   David and Jacqui are not game players but we have played Five Crowns before with them and they have since bought their own copy of the game.    Five Crowns Game We attended a concert at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square.   It was a female barbershop chorus.   They were really good and better than last week’s concert.     We talked to a missionary couple who were seated in front of us.   She is frustrated with not being able to find family members to add to Family Tree.   We invited her over on Saturday night and I volunteered to help her and teach her how to find her cousins.   Her name is Sister Hendricks. Sunday morning we went to the confere

Wednesday thru Friday August 22 to 24 We continued our work on the 17 on-line training modules and we both completed them Friday morning.  We completed the assessments by just after noon Friday. We are so happy to have completed this training so we can start helping others next week. We thought that this might take two weeks but we finished in one week.   Our mission so far has been lots of training with our first week at the MTC, the next two weeks in the training center at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and a week of training at the Family History Library.  Each of the trainings were different and we greatly benefited from each one.  We left home on July 28 and here we are four weeks later at our home (shown below) for the next year and a half.  Our address is 185 N West Temple Apt 508, Salt Lake City, UT 84103. West Temple Apartments On Thursday night from 6:30-9pm we enjoyed a dinner and get together at the Garden Park Ward (this was my ward growing up and wher

Monday August 20 Thanks to Michelle for sending us the mail from Tempe.  Included was our early voting ballots which we completed and mailed in on Tuesday. We had our weekly devotional at 7:30am.   The new missionaries were introduced.   All the new arrivals were the young Elders.   Many had their families with them.   President and Sister Fenn spoke to us attended Music and the Spoken Word this morning.    President Fenn spoke about the importance of prayer and how prayer helps us in our lives.   He gave several examples of how prayer and faith have helped him.   - With his first call a mission president to Chicago, he left a very lucrative job and it was difficult for him initially to decide to go.   - He almost drowned while as a leader on a youth outing to Havasupai in Arizona.   He was not a strong swimmer and was swimming in a deep pool and couldn’t get across. He yelled for help but no one heard him.   He felt the prompted to turn over and float on his back. This w

Saturday August 18 We cleaned the apartment.   I vacuumed the floor and Sister Tolman did the rest of the cleaning and laundry.   We worked on some family history and did some reading.   We had an adventure as Sister Tolman found a discount store called “The NPS Store” (National Product Sales, Inc).    We went there to check it out.   When we walked in I asked if we needed a cart and Sister Tolman said “Yes”.   We brought home a cart full of food at less than half the cost at a regular store.   You can read about this store at www.npsstore.com/about   Here is a quote from the website “NPS uses both brick and mortar and online channels to sell a vast variety of items from just about any category. The NPS Store located on 1600 Empire Road in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a bargain hunter’s paradise with great deals to be found on grocery, clothing, housewares, electronics, and collectibles 6 days a week. Across the street is the NPS Industrial Store where you can find great deals on s

We followed our normal routine this morning. For me it is get up just before 6am, read for 10-15 minutes including Book of Mormon study time, exercise for 10 minutes, have personal prayer, shower and shave and then eat breakfast (normally cold cereal and milk plus juice and sometimes some fruit).   We try to leave between 7:10 and 7:15am so we can get to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to our training area which is on the 3 rd floor by between 7:25 and 7:30 am. This morning was our turn to give a spiritual thought, scripture and prayer.   We sing a song to begin and today we sang hymn #263 “Go Forth With Faith”.   This ia a favorite hymn of mine.  For my thought I shared that all of us have had challenges in our lives and that as we move ahead with faith, we can accomplish difficult and challenging things.   I shared several challenges including when Sister Tolman and I were first called to be over Family History work in our stake and knew very little about it.   Since then w

Monday August 13 We had our Monday morning mission devotional at from 7:30 - 8:15  am.   This is for all the missionaries in the mission.   Two Zone leaders shared what is done in their zones.   The zones discussed were the TROC (Temple Records Operation Center) and the US/ Canada Service in the Family History Library.   The TROC coordinates all the records operations around the world in collecting and indexing records. Today was the day for our interviews with the mission presidency.   We had three 7 minute interviews with President and Sister Fenn and the two counselors and their wives.   We expressed the desire to serve in the Family History part of the mission in either the Training Zone which provides training to new missionaries and missionaries before returning home or the Help Services Zone which helps first time visitors and those just beginning research in the US and Canada. After the interviews we had a chance to visit with Elder Ted Hodges the Mission Executive

Saturday August 11   We had a full day of various activities as Saturday is our day off this week. Belnap Family Reunion .   We went to the Belnap Family Reunion held in Sandy, Utah, at the Sandy Crescent LDS Stake Center, located at 2195 Pepperwood Drive.   We were there from about 9:45am until 1pm.   We enjoyed presentations about my ancestor Gilbert Belnap who is my great-great grandfather on my mother’s line.   We finally met cousin Brent Belnap who has been active in the Belnap Family Organization for many years.   Here is the link for their website.   wp.belnapfamily.org We enjoyed a meal of hamburgers, hot dogs, chips and watermelon. Picture of Gilbert  Belnap Quote from Gilbert Belnap on the Trail of Hope in Nauvoo Car battery replacement.   The Impala started giving the warning that the battery needed to be replaced.   I thought this was the case yesterday but was sure today.   We are so grateful that we got the warning before the battery died.   I

Tuesday August 7 We started out with a group picture taken at 7:30am.   We also had a couple picture taken.  See them below. Group Picture Couple Picture - Elder & Sister Tolman Here is a picture of Lynne and me with President and Sister Fenn our mission president and his wife. We had training in the morning followed by lunch that Lynne fixed for us.   We have some nice insulated lunch bags that we use that are labeled "FamilySearch.org/Mission"   We keep getting asked where we got them and we tell them at our assignment at the Mesa FamilySearch Library.  We have an hour for lunch and eat outside in a shaded area with tables and chairs between the Joseph Smith Memorial building and Temple Square.  The only problem is we have to be careful not to attract the bees which keep wanting to share our food. We had some training videos about the thirteen different zones in the mission zones after lunch.   We will be serving in one of these zones.   We

Yea, we finally have our parking place resolved.   We now have an assigned parking space #84.   We checked our mail today and our mail box was stuffed with mail from previous missionaries.   We did get a couple of items addressed to us so we are now getting mail either directly or forwarded from our Golf address.   We had a 90 minute devotional this morning.   All the new missionaries were introduced.   This is a weekly event.   We really enjoyed the meeting.   We started our training at 9am. Today was basic training on computer skills and FamilySearch.org.   Both of us got through the first two lessons fairly easily.   We work individually and are evaluated individually by trainers who sign off that we have passed off the learning. We had a tasty lunch with asparagus, stuffed chicken, and thin spiraled spaghetti.   Desert was a crepe with vanilla cream and strawberry filling plus ice cream.   President and Sister Fenn (our mission president) sat at our table.   Both attended