Sep 30-Oct 5 - Sunday to Friday

Sunday September 30

Enjoyed Music and the Spoken word.  Somewhere over the rainbow sung with picture that looks like a rainbow.   We visited with a young couple who live locally who attended for the first time.  They plan to attend again.  Growing up in Salt Lake City, we never attended the broadcast in person but only watched it on television or listened to it on radio.

We met couple from England just returning home who served in the Temple Square mission.  They live near the Temple in Preston.  The Preston England Temple is located in Chorley, Lancashire, England. He said the locals say that the angel Moroni on the top of the temple is Chorley’s angel.

We met the couple who own the house next door at 137 N West Temple.  Jay and Elaine Hughs.  We met their friend John Robinson who lived on Yale Ave East of 13th East near where Elder Tolman grew up.  He was in the Yale Ward and Bonneville Stake.  Also their friend Joe Cirotti is from Philadelphia.  Jay Hughs gave us his book titled “Lyrics of Light” Volume 26. 

Left to Right

JP & Elaine Hughs, Joe Cirotti & John Robinson

Monday October 1

Attended the weekly devotional.  Sister Tolman got her hair cut and it looks nice.  See a picture on the Tuesday entry.  Went to lunch at Rubio’s since we had a free entrée for Elder Tolman’s birthday. Elder Tolman had the coastal trio and Sister Tolman a burrito special.  We talked to a cashier who talked to us about our mission and she told us about her mission upcoming in January at the Laie Hawaii Temple Visitors’ Center.

We went on the City Tour from 5pm to 8:30pm.  See separate blog entry for details.

Tuesday October 2

Sister Tolman helped Elder Tolman get some pictures and documents scanned.  The document below is now on Familysearch.org and can be seen as Memories on Glen Hatch Tolman's profile.

Ordination to an Elder by Glen H. Tolman and signed by Russell M Nelson

Shared some of the training material with some of the missionaries here and they liked the lessons and showed them where to find the lessons at gktfamilyhistorylessons.blogspot.com.   Did not help any guests during the morning but helped several missionaries.  Off to the missionary office to answer phones for Sister Tolman at 12:30pm.  It was a slow day there.

Sister Tolman answering the phone at the Missionary Department

Elder Tolman got back in time to start helping David Gallo before he started as Floor Supervisor at 1pm.  We got his account set up and found his family.  One highlight was finding a marriage record for his father which we scanned and added to FamilySearch as well as referencing the detail information which we found on ancestry.com but not on FamilySearch. The marriage records contained the names of the bride and groom and both sets of parents.  Elder Tolman was replaced by Elder Benton. 

The 1pm to 2pm hour was busy and we couldn’t keep up with the incoming guests and missionaries so we asked the main floor to stop sending more people for the next while.  We managed to catch up by 2pm and Elder Tolman went back to helping David Gallo.  Both he and his wife worked for over two hours on learning about their ancestors.  We added his mother’s side of the family.  Just before they left Elder Tolman showed him and his wife what could be done with Memories and FamilyTree and showed them the FamilyTree and Memories Apps which David’s wife promptly installed.  It was very satisfying to help them find out so much about their families.

At 4pm a couple arrived at our floor and needed help.  Elder Benton and Elder Tolman helped them. Elder Benton helped the wife and Elder Tolman helped the husband Tom Navara.  Before we got started, we figured out that we would not be able to setup accounts for them as they needed their phones which they left at the hotel which is not too far away. Individual accounts need to be verified by either a text message or by reading and verifying a received email.  Most email providers required a verification when email is accessed from a new location and that verification is normally with entering a code sent via a text message (so catch 22).

We decided to look on ancestry.com to see what we could find out about Tom’s family. We found information about his parents and grandparents on his father’s side.  With that information we were able to find his father and some ancestors on that side of the family.  We added his mother to the tree and found some information about his mother’s father and printed the WWII draft registration card for him.  We used Elder Tolman's account to make the changes and show Tom his family. We encouraged them to come back to the library to get their accounts set up.

We went to Seniors for dinner.  Marn brought a very delicious main course and Seniors provided the dessert which was pumpkin pie.  We had a good visit and then played a game of Five Crowns.  Sister Tolman took first with Elder Tolman second after his score of 67 on the round of 9 cards.  It started raining and we were in the rain all the way home.  At least the car got a cleaning on the outside.

Wednesday Oct 3

We attended the 8am session at the Salt Lake Temple.  We left a little late (7:37am).  We need to plan on leaving a little earlier.   We arrived at the temple at 7:45am (we walked quickly).

We checked FamilySearch and saw that Tom Navara had returned to the library and found more information about his mother’s side of the family.  They were leaving today to continue their vacation.  We were very happy they were able to get connected so they can continue learning more about their families.

A young couple (mid to late 20's) from Tacoma Washington came to the library.  Their names were Alex and Alexandria (she goes by Lexi).  The sister who helped Lexi was able to find her family easily and connect back many generations.  As we helped Alex, we found the names in his family were Lewis and White and he didn’t have much information about his family.  He knew his grandfather who died recently and was born in the 1940’s.  Ancestry.com was a help as the ancestry search engine normally finds related records.  We finally found a marriage record for his grandparents which gave the names of both parents.  This was the launching point which enabled us to connect with at least part of his family.  This was one of the more difficult puzzles to solve but we finally made progress.  The couple quickly picked up how to work with FamilySearch.  When we checked back with him, he was working on another part of the line and having some success.  He will work on the other parts of his family tree once he talks to his parents and grandparents to get more information.

We really enjoy serving here in the Family History Library.  During the day when I don’t have someone I am working with directly I will sit near others who are doing research on their families. l look around me and walk around the room from time to time and often a guest will ask me to help with a quick question that ends up with a discussion and being able to help them learn more about FamilySearch.  This gives me more chances to help other people.

Thursday October 4

Here we are at my birthday.  It is hard to believe that I am 72.  I received birthday wishes from all my children. It was great to hear from all of them.  I also talked to my twin sister Glenna (we were born on the same day 4 years apart).

We had an adventure this morning when tried to go grocery shopping. Sister Tolman tried to back the car out of the parking space and it only went a few inches.  Then Elder Tolman tried with the same result.  Oh no!  What happened to our car?  Sister Tolman checked in front and said “come and look in front”. The barrier at the end of the parking spot and a metal spike had wedged under the front of the car and we had started to pull it out of the asphalt.  Now what do we do?  We jacked up the front end and maneuvered the barrier until the metal spike was lined up so we could back out the car.  We removed the jack and backed up the car and then pounded the metal spike and barrier back in place.  We will be more careful from here on out when parking the car.

We went to lunch with Bishop Bruce and Sister Robin Goldthorpe since today is our day to start at 6pm instead of 12:30pm.  They are in town for General Conference and to see Bishop Goldthorpe’s mother.  We really enjoyed to visiting with them. We went to Kneaders Café in City Creek.  The food was good and we had a two hour visit with them.

At the library, I found several opportunities to help individuals at the library. I showed one sister how to use the various options to review and sort her temple list since she had more than 750 names. 

I helped a couple Ted and Connie from North Carolina.  They are in their mid-60’s.  We set up an account for Ted and also added Connie to the same tree since they only wanted one FamilySearch account.  We started building his tree and Ted’s wife Connie knew most of the birth and death dates for his parents and grandparents so Ted entered the information and Connie knew the detail.  Most of his family was from the same county in North Carolina.  We found a record on Findagrave.com which contained a lot of his family connected so I thought we could build his tree going back.  After about 45 minutes we had his tree showing the full five generations on his fan chart.  They were excited with what they found.  It was my turn for Floor Supervisor so I turned them over to one of the Sister Zollinger one of the Sister missionaries.  It was a good handoff time since we were just starting to build Connie’s part of the tree.  Sister Zollinger worked with them for another hour.  They left for the evening and plan to come back on Friday.  They were so excited and amazed about what they had found.

Sister Connie Hendricks arrived just about the time I was to start as Floor Supervisor so Sister Tolman volunteered to take my place.  Sister Tolman was busy at the desk on the floor as she spent the first hour as Assistant Floor Manager, then took my place as Floor Manager for an hour and then took the last hour with her regular assignment as Floor Manager.  Needless to say she was tired at the end of our shift.  She is a real trooper.

I have been helping Sister Hendricks with building her tree and finding descendants of ancestors to add to the tree.  Thank you to Sister Tolman for handling my assignment so I could help her.  I had previously found a family related to her that needed more research could be expanded with spouses for the children and their children.   We used my latest lesson that I developed to remind her how to go about building this family.  The parents in the family are Thomas Hignall and Ann Moss. Right away we found a daughter who was not on the tree and then found marriage and family for one of the sons.  I think before she is finished there will could be more than 50 people added to the tree.

Friday October 5

We visited my sister Glenna Neilson as the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and picked up a parking pass for Angie and Robert that will let them park right next to the conference center when the attend conference and when they spend time with us on Monday.

Elder Tolman with Glenna at the JSMB

We only worked from 1pm to 5pm at the Family History Library as we requested the time off for the evening in order to attend the Tahitian Missionary Reunion.  I worked the first hour as Greeter and we had over twenty people visit.  It kept us busy.  I was Floor Supervisor for the second hour and it wasn’t quite so busy during that hour.  For the next two hours I helped Elder Cleo and Sister Connie Hendricks.  I helped Sister Henricks last night and both came in today for more help.  Sister Hendricks is continuing to work in the area where she started last night.  I worked with Elder Hendricks today and we found an area on his tree where he can add family members. We resolved a fairly difficult situation where there were a number of duplicates to resolve and this opened up possibilities for temple work to be completed for a father and one of his children.  There is more work in this area to complete.  Elder and Sister Hendricks were grateful for the help and we will likely see them on Fridays,

We attended the Tahitian Missionary reunion. We picked up Marlow Kent Ashton and his wife Mary Ann and they went with us.  They previously served in our mission.  We met them at the Mesa FamilySearch Library and they are Arizona Snowbirds.  We ate some tasty Tahitian food including Tahitian Poe and poisson cru (marinated fish salad).  I was able to see several missionaries from my time including my first companion Rodney Morse.  We also visited with Robin and Rorii McCulloch from Hawaii, Russ Bench and his wife, George Dennis, and Michael McComber.  

Elder Tolman with Rodney Morse

Robin and Rorii McCullouch from Hawaii

Elder Tolman and Robin were missionary companions