September 4-8 Tuesday thru Saturday

Tuesday September 4

We attended the mission devotional at 7:30am this morning.  On the way to the devotional, we walked with Elder and Sister Hendricks and visited with them.  She is the sister that I have been helping learn to add families to FamilyTree.  She is making progress and we offered encouragement and willingness to help her as needed. 

The weekly mission devotional is normally held on Monday but was held today due to yesterday being the Labor Day holiday.  Normally the weekly devotional is skipped but it was held today as a new counselor in the mission presidency was sustained.  The new counselor is President Unger.  President and Sister Thornock were released.  They both spoke and during their messages it was confirmed to me that we are serving where the Lord wants us to be right now.  After the devotional, I shared this with Sister Tolman and she had the same feeling during this morning’s devotional.  We are so blessed to be here and to serve in the Family History Library.  

On the way back to our apartment, we met Sister Miller from Arizona. We served with her in the Mesa Family History Library.  She was a good friend.  She was out for a walk since she is up here visiting with her father and attending some family events.  As we were talking to her, Marn’s son-in-law (Carli’s husband Scott) was walking by and stopped to say hi and gave us a hug.

I helped a couple from the Vancouver British Columbia area in the afternoon. The husband knew a lot about his family but had never organized the information so we set up an account on FamilySearch and he started entering his ancestors.  It was amazing how much he knew about his parents, grandparents including detailed birth, marriage and death information. He entered the information and we were able to connect to some of his ancestors already on FamilyTree.  I spent about two hours with them and gave them some training on how to be able to continue after they go home.  When I left them for our dinner break at 4pm they were looking at one of the lines that kept going back and back in to the 1600’s and earlier.  When we returned from our dinner break they had left.  What we try to do as missionaries at the Family History Library is to provide a positive experience no matter the situation.  Some individuals have several hours to spent at the library and some just a short time.

Wednesday September 5

We walked to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building around 8am to arrange for a parking place for Angie and Robert when they come to visit in October.  This will let them park in our area when they come for General Conference on October 6 and 7.  This was a good walk for us.  When we got back, I turned around and walked back past the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to the credit union which is near 2^nd East and 1^st South (actually on Social Hall Avenue).  We received our rent check from the Watkins yesterday so I went to deposit the check.  We tried to automate a bank to bank transfer back in July but the best we could do was to automate a check mailing to our address here. 

Both Sister Tolman and I started helping individuals at about 2pm.  After we had helped them each for over two hours we found out that Sister Tolman was helping the husband and I was helping the wife.  Both of them knew a lot about their families and had very positive experiences.  We were able to help them get set up on Family Tree and learn a lot. They were in Salt Lake City for a business convention of some kind and decided to visit the library.  They were happy that they did.  At the end we got pictures taken and exchanged email addresses.  Their names are Carol and Steve Allen from Tennessee. 

This afternoon at about 3pm, FamilySearch implemented an updated Person Page on the Tree.  This happened right in the middle of when we were helping the Allens.  The changes are good but it was a real surprise when all of a sudden the changes were there.

Just after helping the Allen’s, Sister Hendricks arrived looking for help.  I was able to spend about an hour helping her just before our dinner break at 5pm.  She was so excited that she had found a family to add to FamilyTree and wanted to make sure that she hadn’t made a mistake and that her research and findings were accurate.  I found that her findings were right on and I helped her go through the process of adding the children to the parents from two census records.  The 1911 census showed the couple had eight children with six living.  She found the six living children so I will help her find the two deceased children.  She walked back with us to the West Temple Apartments.  She and her husband live on the 6^th floor and we live on the 5^th floor.

After dinner, we went back to complete our shift and worked from 6 to 9pm.  I helped some individuals who spend time in the library every Wednesday night.  They are church members and have been on Family Search for a while but I was able to answer some questions and help them with various questions that they had.

Thursday September 6

We slept in a little bit and didn’t wake up until nearly 7am. We attended the 9am Endowment session at the Salt Lake Temple.  On the way back to the apartment we talked to Julianna. We met Marn and mom and dad Senior for lunch at Wendy’s at 1pm.  We had a good lunch and visit with them.  Today is our day when we don’t go to the library until 6pm.  We went food shopping on the way home at also filled the car with gas.  The last time we bought gas for the car was August 4, the first Saturday we arrived here which was over a month ago.

When we first arrived at the library at 6pm it was busy so I needed to help two men who had about an hour to get help before they were going to listen to the Tabernacle choir rehearse at 7:30pm.  I sat between them and got them started. One already had an account and I helped the other get his account set up.  One’s parents were both born in England. He had a hyphenated last name so we had some trouble finding information but we finally found some records about his family.  Both had positive experiences.  When their time was about up, I had them stop and we went over how to get help with continued learning about using the help resources on FamilySearch.org and the Family History Guide.  It is important to make sure individuals know how to continue with learning about their families after they leave.

Friday September 7

Since we now are working on Saturdays from 8:30am to 5pm, we completed our normal apartment cleaning today.  My job is to sweep the kitchen floor, vacuum the carpets and take out the trash and recycling.

Our prayer meeting starts at 12:30pm each day and consists of an opening hymn and prayer, scripture, review calendar and announcements, training and a spiritual thought. 

We receive specific assignments for our work shift.  These assignments are scheduled a week in advance and are changed each hour.  Most of the time we are assigned to help persons who visit the library.  The other assignments are Floor Supervisor and Assistant Floor Supervisor where we make sure that visitors are paired up with missionaries.  The other assignment is Greeter where you greet the visitors and find out what they are interested in accomplishing that day and then have the Floor Supervisors help. 

Here is a copy of my assignments for the week.  The green “H.” is helper, maroon “FS” is Floor Supervisor, yellow “aFS” is Assistant Floor Supervisor, blue “G-1” is Greeter, “L” is lunch break,  “T/R” is time allocated to make sure the missionaries have time for our own personal family history research. 

My assignment at 1pm was Floor Supervisor.  This was my first time with this assignment and it kept me busy for the whole hour as we had a lot of visitors arriving and not quite enough missionaries available.  Normally we need to consider whose turn it is to help someone as we want to make sure that missionaries have equal opportunity to help visitors.  For this hour my concern was finding a missionary who could help.  We kept everyone busy during the hour I was assigned.

For the afternoon, I helped a woman compare what she had on her personal family tree with what was already on FamilySearch Family Tree.  We made corrections and added several generations of her Swiss ancestors.  She has visited the library before. I also helped her after our dinner break.

The library closes at 9pm on Tuesday through Friday.  At 9pm sharp, the computers all shut down and we leave for the night.

Saturday September 8

This was our first day of working Saturday at the library.  It is open from 9am to 5pm.  Our prayer meeting started at 8:40am.  With the recent changes that happened Wednesday to the “Person Page” on FamilyTree, we had some discussion about the changes.  I have adjusted to these changes and showed several missionaries how to take advantage and use these changes. I worked on some training that I am trying to complete and made some progress.  I will need to finish next week. 

We kept busy after about 10 am and stayed busy the rest of the day helping people and filling our assignments. Sister Tolman and I helped the Cutler's, a husband and wife (Connie),  right after lunch. Both had very positive experiences.  We set up accounts on FamilySearch.org for them and they were able to connect to ancestors already on the tree and learn more about their parents and grandparents.  We had a chance to visit with them afterwards just before they left. 

Here is Sister Tolman’s comments on her experience with Connie Cutler. 

   “A couple came up and I walked back to a station with the wife.  We went through all kinds of gyrations and finally got her account setup.  She started by entering her father and her mother.  She said she had a crazy mixed up family and she didn’t know what the truth was.  She said she had been told that her father was from Poland and she would love to find out some information.  We found a 1930 census record and it said he was from Lithuania.  It also said they spoke Polish.  As she looked at this record she started to cry to be able to see her family’s names.  I just sat and let her feel the spirit of Elijah that was touching her. We looked on a map and found that Poland boarders on Lithuania and so it may be that they lived in Lithuania close to the Polish boarder so that is why they spoke the Polish language. 

    Then we switched to her mother’s side and she said she didn’t have much information because her mother was always telling stories about when she was born etc.  So we started to look and found information about her mother and her birth and she started to cry again.  This had been a wonderful experience for her and she was so excited about the information we found.  I had to leave her and go be the floor manager but I knew the day had been worth it for her.   Later as I was being the floor manager this couple left and it turned out that I had been helping her and Glen had been helping her husband and they were both happy and excited to have made the trip here.”

I was Assistant Floor Manager at 2pm and had the Floor Manager assignment at shift end from 4 to 5pm.  Unlike the end of the shift at 9pm during the week visitors stay in the library right until just before 5pm.   This was our first Saturday in the library and we enjoyed the day.

We saw Elder Kent F Richards on the way out of the Library.  He is a General Authority Seventy Emeritus and spoke to us at the Provo MTC. We talked briefly and told him how much we enjoyed hearing from him six weeks ago.

Elder Kent F. Richards