October 14-20 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday Oct 14

We enjoyed Music and the Spoken Word this morning.  It was unusual to see the men in white jackets and the women in black dresses.  

We sat next to a couple from New Zealand who are nearing the end of a three-month tour in the USA.  It was fun talking to them.  They have enjoyed seeing the sites around Temple Square.  I asked them if they lived on the North Island or the South Island.  They asked me if I had been to New Zealand. I said no but I enjoy studying geography.  They live on the North Island.

It was cold walking to the Tabernacle at 8:30am this morning but even colder when we returned home. It was around freezing at 32 degrees.  We wore my warm coats.

After church we went to the Seniors for dinner.  We looked at some old slides from the 1960’s including slides from South Africa and Europe.  It was also enjoyable to see pictures from the 1960’s when Sister Tolman was a teenager.

Monday Oct 15

It was cold in the morning so we wore coats and gloves (and a hat for Elder Tolman) to the mission devotional.  We really enjoy the Monday morning devotional. The eight missionary talks were inspiring.  I felt their spirit as they shared some about their personal stories and their testimonies.  We finished the meeting by 8:15am which is about 15 minutes earlier than normal.  This helps us get to know the other missionaries better and provides a chance to visit with missionaries whom we don’t see during our work week.  We visited with the Turners who have been with us since our MTC group.  I also talked to Elder Gale who is a professor from Michigan State University.  He really liked my dress hat (shown below).  Sister Gale wouldn’t let him bring all his hats to the mission but she liked the way my hat looks so I think that Elder Gale will be able to get at least one. 

Sister Tolman called her parents and talked to them for about 40 minutes recording their responses to several questions.  We also talked to Laura.  She is excited to have a job offer. 

We went to the movie “Jane and Emma” today at the movie theaters at the Valley Fair Mall.  We really enjoyed the film.  We received free tickets to attend an opera at the old Capital Theater in downtown Salt Lake City.  I remember going to movies in this theater when I was much younger.  I believe we saw “The Ten Commandments” here with my family as a child.  The décor including the seats haven’t changes.  The opera was Romeo and Juliet.  It started at 7:00pm and lasted until almost 10pm.  The music was sung in French and had English subtitles.  We were glad we went but three hours was a little too long.  At least we knew the story lines.  

Tuesday Oct 16

It was a little warmer today but I still wore my coat to work in the morning.  I was the Floor Supervisor from 10 to 11 am and it was busy at least part of the time but I was always able to get missionaries assigned to our guests.  I helped a woman identify what she could do to try to find information for her birth mother and also two half-siblings.  This was just before I was Floor Supervisor.  I worked on tag some photos for Gilbert Belnap, his two wives and their children.  I spent time organizing sources for Gilbert and Adaline Belnap and several others.  They have so many sources attached it is hard to see if there are duplicates so additional unneeded sources need not be added. 

I helped Susan Muster from Kentucky.  She and he husband are funeral directors and they are her for a convention.  I helped her do a lot of research which she has been doing for long time.  She needed help getting started on searching for records on FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com.  I showed her how the shoebox function works on ancestry.com and how to create sources to save records found on FamilySearch that she may need to review later.

We invited our neighbors, the Shaws, over for dinner.  We had a good visit and also played a game of Five Crowns.  They work at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building Monday through Friday during the day so for now we have Monday or Tuesday when we can have others over for dinner.  Once a month on the fourth Sunday we have a pot luck get together for all those who have apartments on our floor. 

Wednesday Oct 17

We attended the Mission Conference today from 7:30am to 9am.  I was excellent and very enjoyable.  President Fenn’s remarks were inspiring.  After the meeting, we went to the temple as we planned to do sealings.  After entering the temple, we ran into Lynn Gentry and she and Sister Tolman shared a hug and we all talked for a few minutes.  After going downstairs we also met Brent and Lorraine Jameson and had a chance to visit with them for a few minutes. They are in town for the Temple Presidents training. We will see them on Friday morning.  We stayed for 90 minutes and got sealings completed for about 15 ancestors.

We arrived at the Family History Library at 12:25pm and by 12:35pm no one had arrived to lead the devotional.  Since I had the spiritual thought, I asked Sister Tolman to give the opening prayer and then we discussed what I prepared about helping guests when they visit the library which is consistent with the training we have had this week.  I shared several experiences where I helped individuals without getting them an account on FamilySearch,.org.

When we first arrived, I sat by a women who had been doing a lot of research and started a conversation.  She had found a document for a friend and I showed her how to make a screen copy and save it to her flash drive. I started doing some indexing of Irish birth records and did indexing off and on all day when I wasn’t helping others.

Later, I helped Suzanne from Iowa.  I found out what she wanted to accomplish and getting her an account and finding her ancestors fit her needs.  We set up her account and were very successful with building her tree.  We spent over an hour. I helped her get the FamilySearch apps on her phone. She was excited for what she found.  She had decided to visit the Library when others had encouraged her to visit.  We added a photo of her mother to the tree so she could see how that worked with her phone.

I helped Peter and Deb Chase from Pennsylvania.  They had already got started and I took over helping them.  We worked on another part of Peter’s tree and were very successful in finding ancestors and historical records.  I showed both the FamilySearch mobile apps. We found a document on ancestry.com which was not on familysearch.org so we copied an image of the document and uploaded it to Memories.  They were excited to continue building their family trees when they get home.

We had a going away luncheon for several missionaries who are leaving.  We will miss them. Lynne saved me some food. There was enough food so we didn’t need to eat dinner on our 5pm break.

After we returned from our break, I did some more indexing.  At around 6:30pm, I was assigned to help a younger women named Gina (probably late 20’s).  I started asking her questions and it turned out that her grandmother had done some research and recorded the results on ancestry.com.  We looked at what was done and it was some amazing research including lots of pictures.  Gina decided she wanted to stay longer so she added money to her parking meter.  She learned a lot and is going to get in touch with her grandmother to find out more about her family.

Thursday Oct 18

The third Thursday is our full day off that happens once a month.  Normally we are in the library from 6 to 9pm but not today.  Sister Tolman left at just after 10am to go with Shelly Senior (sister-in-law) and mom and dad Senior to a doctor’s appointment and then to lunch.  Elder Tolman went to lunch with the Garden Park Ward group.  Both Byron and Peggy traveled in from Jensen.  They were both there for lunch.  After lunch Byron went with me for 18 holes of golf and Peggy went shopping at COSTCO.  We enjoyed golf at the Mountain Dell Golf Course where we played last month.  The scenery is beautiful. We had a foursome from those who attended the lunch. 

We enjoyed dinner at a Dairy Queen in Bountiful.  We split a six-piece plate of chicken strips with fries and toast followed by two medium blizzards.  I had received a BOGO for a blizzard and this was the last day to use it.  It was good to get away and Sister Tolman didn’t need to fix dinner.

Friday Oct 19

We picked up Brent and Lorraine Jameson at 9am at the Little American Hotel at 5th South and Main Street.  Lorraine arranged with Sister Tolman to visit with us for several hours and use our washer and dryer since they need to get some clothes cleaned before traveling to Jerusalem for a tour.  They won’t be leaving for their temple assignment until after the first of the year.  We had a wonderful visit with them.  It was interesting to discuss the challenge ahead for them in starting up the temple in Kinshasha as they will have very few if any experienced temple workers there with them and will need to train the local members. 

I helped a man with scanning some photos and was able to do this myself.  Sister Tolman was watching from a distance and gave me a thumbs up when I was able to actually help someone as previous to this I always needed help.  I guess I am making progress.

I was the Floor Manager at 6pm right after dinner.  We were not very busy so I let the sister assigned as my assistant continue to help a guest.  I noticed a man who had previously arrived with his wife and indicated that only she needed help was sitting by her looking a little bored.  I went over and started a conversation.  I found out that he had researched his family and kept track of the information on paper.  I asked him if he would like to see some on-line records about his ancestors and he said yes.  We looked up this father on ancestry.com and found a lot of information and many records of him and other family members.  His name Philip Walmer and he is a minister and followed in the footsteps of his father.  We managed to set up an account for him and found out that his parents and many of their ancestors were already on FamilyTree.  He was excited to see what was already there.  Information about his siblings and parent’s siblings were not complete so he still has some work to do.  He spent the rest of the evening looking at what was on FamilyTree about his family.  He said that they would come back to the library on Saturday.

I visited with a woman who has visited the library every year for about 20 years. She lives in the hill country area west of Austin and we talked about all the about the flooding that is occurring there and she showed me some of the videos about what is going on.

Saturday Oct 20

I first helped a couple get started scanning a lot of photo albums from parents.  They had a lot of photos to scan and were there for most of the morning.  The photos were on pages in a scrap book and they scanned the pages which had photos on both sides of the page.  The photo scanners make it so much easier to scan a lot of pictures in a short time.

We took an early lunch at 11:30am.  We brought our lunch with us as we knew the library would be short staffed starting at noon since the young Elders had a service project for the afternoon.

Philip Walmer and his wife arrived at about 12:30pm to continue where they left off last night.  I spent several hours helping him.  We were able to get a lot added to his tree.  We found several pictures of his parents and grandparents and two of these included him in the picture.  We uploaded these to his account and attached them to his family.  We also uploaded his parent’s marriage certificate that we found on Friday night.  Philip and his family lived in Brazil for forty years where they served a church ministry assignment. This was a really good experience to help him with his family history over the past two days.

Just after 4pm, I noticed that a man needed help as one of the missionaries was trying to help both the husband and wife.  I sat down next to the husband and started to help him.  His name is Joel Wiseman and he and his wife live in Anchorage, Alaska.  I helped him find a lot about his ancestors and I spent time making sure that he could continue when he returned home.  I showed him where there is one of our family history libraries in Anchorage and he was surprised.  I helped him install the familyhistory mobile apps and showed him how they work.  We finished just a few minutes before the time to close at 5pm.  Some of my best experiences helping others happens when I am looking around and notice that someone needs help and then find out what they need and help them.

Sister Tolman and I did a lot of the work needed to complete before we can leave for the day.  We did not leave for until about 5:15pm since many guests stayed right until 5pm.

This evening we went to a concert at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square.  The concert was titled "Songs of the Saints: Hymns".  It was enjoyable music from "Amazing Grace" to "Praise to the Man" played by a bagpipe group.  We all joined in singing "The Spirit of God" to end the concert.  In all there were 13 musical numbers.  We enjoy attending concerts when we get a chance.

Entry for the week shared by Sister Tolman

This has been a most interesting week, one that has been filled with music.  We had music at our devotional on Monday by The Elijah Choir.  Monday night it was a trip to the Opera to see Romeo and Juliet.  After two and a half hours we were anxious to have her “just drink the stupid potion already” But no it took another 10 minutes.  

Then on Wednesday we had our mission conference and The Elijah Choir sang “God so loved the World”.  Now it is Saturday we were able to go over to the Assembly Hall and hear Hymns of the church sung by many different vocalist, violinists and bag pipers. Two of the singers were only 13 and 6.   It left me with an amazingly sweet spirit.

This week I was able to help a mother and daughter to find and connect with parts of their tree.  They left only because they had to put more money in the meter.  They promised to come back and visit the international floor because that is where so many of their family is from.

One of the young elders and I figured out a new way to use the scanner and I am very excited to share it with others that may come in.  I spent time this morning scanning some of the pictures from dad’s scrap book.  It was so interesting to see some pictures of both mom and dad that I have never seen before.  As I was doing this a man came in with eight scrapbooks.  He said they belonged to his wife and he was scanning them so they could have copies of them when they leave on their mission in January.  He needed some help getting started and so I helped him with things a few times throughout the morning.  As I was helping him I noticed his wife’s name on some of the papers.  Her name was Neill F Marriott.  It was interesting talking to him a little throughout the morning.  He strengthened my testimony with some of the things that he shared.

Neill F Marriott - Former 2nd Counselor in General YW Presidency

At 4:30 a young man named Theo came in and just wanted to find his tree.  He knew his parent’s names but wasn’t even sure of his grandparents names.  So we added what we could and then started to see if anything came up about his grandparents.  You can truly see the hand of the Lord at work as you start a search with almost nothing and within a half hour at closing time you have two or more lines that go back to the mid 1700’s.  He was so excited to get busy and find out more.  We see this all the time as we share our testimonies of our Heavenly Father’s plan through the sacred work of Family History.

Elder Tolman has shared many of the other things that we participated in this week.