October 28 - November 3 - Sunday to Saturday

Ended the week with a visit to City Creek Mall on Saturday Evening
Enjoyed dinner at Red Iguana's and enjoyed the lights around the mall.

Update for the week from Sister Tolman

You meet all kinds of people at the Library.  Most of them are so much fun to work with.  I helped two men this week that were so excited to learn more about their families as the following stories will show.  The story after that will show the other kind of people that we meet occasionally but not often.

On Wednesday at 4:30 a young man named Theo came in and just wanted to find his tree and only had 30 minutes to help him as we closed at 5pm due to Halloween.  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.

On Friday it was pretty slow.  I spent most of the time Indexing.  I did help one man.  He was African American and in the Army.  He will be retiring from the Army next year.  He said he wanted to find something about his family.  His name was Jimmie Bethal.  We were able to start looking and found some information that took us back to the 1840.  This meant that that ancestor would have been born into Slavery.  It is hard going back further than that.  You would probably have to find some plantation records with a person whose name was Bethal.  He had had his DNA done and finds that he has roots that go back to Western Africa as well as a little native American and some Asian.  His wife went down to the US/Canada floor to see if she could get more help.

on Saturday during the first hour I helped a cranky woman on the scanners.  She said she wanted to work with Sister Isaacson but I could help her since she wasn’t available.  She was particular about how I helped her.  She was particular about which scanner to use.  She was particular about where to put the pictures.  She was just particular.  When Sister Isaacson got back from lunch I signaled to her and she came over and helped the lady.  One thing I know is that she tried to run away when she saw who it was.  That tells you something.  

Such is life at the Family History Library.

Sunday Oct 28

We attended Music and the Spoken Word this morning and the difference was that the Orchestra at Temple Square was not there.  We think it might be because of their concert on Friday and Saturday and not being able to practice. 

Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square without the Orchestra at Temple Square

We went to church early for the 12:30pm appointment to meet with President Buffington, the First Counselor in the Mission Presidency.  He asked me to accept the assignment to be the First Counselor in the City Creek Branch Presidency.  I accepted and was sustained during our Sacrament Meeting today.  Right after the sustaining they asked me to sit on the stand.  So it looks like Sister Tolman will be probably be sitting without me during Sacrament Meeting for the rest of our mission.  I talked to our Branch President after the meeting to find out what he wants me to do.  I also talked to the person I will be replacing and arranged to meet with him after the Monday morning devotional.

We had our Fifth Floor Potluck dinner at 5:30pm.  We had baked potatoes with the fixings and had an enjoyable dinner and evening together.  Our activity was led by Sister Silvers.  She went through all 50 states and asked what the capital city was, who had lived in the state and who had been to the state.  At least one in the group had been to a state when it was mentioned.  When she asked what the state capitals were, I gave the answer for the first ten or so states and then Sister Silvers asked Sister Tolman if I knew all the state capitals and she said yes.  I was asked not to answer any more questions on the state capitals unless no one knew the capital city.  I think I only answered one more.

Monday Oct 29

We enjoyed our Monday morning mission devotional from 7:30 to 8:30am.  We enjoyed hearing the stories and testimonies of the other missionaries.  When we hear about many of the challenges that others have faced in their lives, we feel blessed to have had wonderful parents, siblings, and supporting extended families plus our own children and grandchildren. We are so thankful for our family.

I spent about two hours working with Elder Hawkins to learn more about my responsibilities in the branch presidency.  It looks like my recent experience as Stake Executive Secretary and High Priest Group Leader will come in handy in fulfilling this responsibility.

We went to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum for several hours today.   It is about a half mile walk from our apartment.  

Sister Tolman in front of the museum

We went through about half of the museum and plan to go back.  Sister Tolman played an old organ.  She needed to pump the pedals to get the sound going.

The original eagle from the Eagle Gate near Temple Square

The Book of Mormon conference was really good.  We talked about the war chapters in the Book of Mormon emphasizing Captain Moroni and Helaman with his 2000 Stripling warriors.   President Fenn always writes down on the white board some of the information that he shares. 

Captain Moroni's attributes

Information about the 2060 Stripling Warriors

We enjoyed a get together with our MTC group after the conference.  We had potluck desserts.  I may have eaten a little too much.

Tuesday Oct 30

I helped a man from Boston, Jeffrey Quebec, who is here on business and wanted to visit the library.  Believe it or not his family lived in Quebec, Canada for many years and settled there from France.  They changed their name to Quebec when they moved to Canada.  I helped him for about an hour in the morning and then for several hours in the afternoon right up to when I have to leave at 5pm.  He had done a lot of research on his family which helped as his grandfather was connected to the wrong parents.  We also had some duplicates records to resolve.  He had his laptop with the details on this ancestors and I did the updating to the tree.  Normally I wouldn’t do this and would have the guest do all the tree updating but in this case, it made things go faster and he is a quick learner and already picked up on how to make changes.  He asked why our emphasis and family history and how long the church has been dong this and I shared with him a little about why families are so important and how long we have been doing genealogy work in the church.  He shared with me that he already reserved a time in the morning to visit Temple Square and go on a tour with the missionaries. 

I helped an eighty-five year old woman, Marilyn Scott, who is church member.  She had visited the library last week and I had told her that if she brought her RootsMagic database on a flash drive, I could help her compare her family information on RootsMagic to what is on FamilyTree.   I was able to access her data but when we looked at FamilyTree, it was apparent that all her information was already on the tree.  She did let me know that she had written short stories about her four children and put these stories into RootsMagic.  I extracted the stories and built one story titled “Brief Histories for My Children” and put this on her FamilySearch Memories.  She was so excited and plans to write some short histories of her life and put these on FamilyTree as well.

I also helped Sister Moyer (one of the missionaries) solve an issue with FamilyTree.  I saw what she was trying to do and I showed her a better way and she was really happy with the result.

Wednesday Oct 31

It was cold this morning (in the low 30’s).  We attended the 8am session at the Salt Lake Temple.  At the end of the session, Sister Tolman realized that David Marriott (Neill F Marriott's husband) was a temple worker in our session.  She recognized him and he recognized her.  I had a chance to talk to him for a few minutes as I left the men’s dressing room.  He looked a lot different in his white temple clothes compared to his picture that I posted last week.

Today the library closed at 5pm and we started at 12:30pm so it was a short day.  The first hour I was Assistant Floor Manager and during the second hour I completed the Sunday printed program.  This is one of my responsibilities as First Counselor in the Branch Presidency.  I will also conduct the Sacrament meetings during November.

I spent some time working with a new missionary couple talking to them a little about helping guests and some ideas on how to help them have a positive experience during their visits.

I helped two older women visiting from Arkansas. Helped with the Windows Snipping Tool  (Windows screen capture tool) and with Ancestry.com searching.  I showed them how the “Card Catalog” under search lists all of the record collections that Ancestry.com has and allows you to limit your searches to records in a particular record collection.  They asked when I would be in the library again so I could help them some more.  Their names are Nell White and Mary Reid Warner.

We had three families bring their children for trick or treat so we gave away some of our Halloween Candy.  Julianna called on the way home from a Halloween party.  Here is what we had for dinner.

Mummies in a graveyard

Thursday Nov 1

Here we are starting a new month.  We have now served for three full months.  For our 18 month mission that means were have completed one sixth of our mission.  Time goes fast. 

We talked to our daughter Laura today.  This is her last day working at Intel.  She starts her new job on Monday at Ericsson-Worldwide based in Sweden. 

We sent food shopping in the early afternoon and it was raining but not too hard.  Sister Tolman fixed a wonderful lunch today including sautéed vegetables, chopped potatoes and meatloaf.

We visited the Church History Museum for a couple of hours.  There was an interesting exhibit of photographs.  I recognized one that is used in Familysearch.org.

Picture from FamilySearch.org

Picture in the Museum

Explanation of the picture (young boy with picture of his grandfather)

We also saw the exhibit on the pioneers and an exhibit on the Presidents of the church from Joseph Smith to Thomas S Monson.

At the library I was the Floor Supervisor for most of the three hours that we were at the library.  I did manage to find some time to help a few people.  I helped Mary Reid Warner with finding and printing some marriage information for an ancestor.  I helped her with the snipping tool again and then helped her find marriage records on Ancestry.com by limiting her search to the specific record collection.  This is done by using the “Card Catalogue” option under the “Search” option.

Friday Nov 2

Today was our cleaning day and we stayed in the apartment all morning.  Since we work Saturday from 8am to 5pm, Friday is our day to clean.    

I spent several hours helping Nell White find some information on a will from one of her ancestors and then print out the information.  I also saved the information and built a PDF document which I sent to her.  I then found out that she has a personal Ancestry.com account.  I made an appointment with both of the two women to do some training at 5pm when we got back from our early dinner.

Here is what we did for our training, We sent over how to do more effective searches on both Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org by selecting which record collections to look at.  I showed them the Family History Guide and how they can be reminded of how to do these functions.  They had previously thought that they could only find these types of records at our library.  I showed them how to find these records at home.  We also did some training on how to setup the Windows Snipping Tool on their personal computers.  I sent the following picture that I took via email and one sent me the following reply “Thank you.  We truly appreciate your time & patience.  We have both learned so much.  You opened a new world for us.  You are a good teacher.”

Elder Tolman with Nell White and Mary Reid Warner

Saturday Nov 3

This morning I helped Nell pin the Snipping tool to the task bar on her laptop.  Just before closing I said goodbye to Nell and Mary Reid.  It had been enjoyable helping them and visiting with them this week.

I took over helping Sarah Smythe who was in the library visiting with her husband.  Her mother is Native American.  She was so excited as we found information on her family.  We connected with some ancestors already on the tree.  While she was adding some living family members to the tree, I signed on as a helper for her and found even more records.  She can’t wait to go home and share what she found with her mother. 

After lunch, we were short on help so I helped a father and son at the same time which is challenging. The father’s name is Sam and Adam is his son.  There are from the Los Angeles area.  Adam is wanting to relocate here.  We decided to split up the work and have Adam work on his mother’s tree and Sam work on his own tree.  We made a lot of progress with Adam as he was able to extend the mother’s side of tree, adding ancestors and connecting to some already on the tree.   He picked up how to work with FamilySearch really quickly and didn’t need too much help after he got started.  We managed to find some records for Sam which was more difficult since his father’s side of the tree immigrated from Mexico.  With some effort, we were able to find historical records in Mexico for his family and build his tree. When it was time for me to let them work on their own, I showed them how to find help and how to add all the family photos that they have.

Sister Tolman was the Floor Manager and asked me to help a couple who said they had about 30 minutes.  She is a family history consultant in her ward.  She wanted to learn how to find ancestors needing temple work and how she could help her ward members.  We first went to the Consultant Resource under the Help menu and found two ancestors (one male and one female) needing temple work done.  She was amazed at how easy that was.  I also showed her my family history blog and went over some of the training material that I have.  They ended up staying over an hour and plan to return to the library next week for more help.