December 2-8 - Sunday to Saturday

We have taken some beautiful pictures of the lights on Temple Square.  Here are several taken on Monday morning Dec 3

Sunday Dec 2

We woke up this morning with a blanket of snow on the ground.  It is beautiful outside.  It continued to snow all day. Fortunately we didn’t have too far to walk as Music and the Spoken Word is in the Conference Center for the month of December.  It is just across the street from our apartment.  There was still snow on the sidewalk when we left at about 8:30 am.  

The choir and orchestra in the Conference Center

Sister Tolman called her mother to wish her a happy birthday as today is her ninety-first birthday.

By the time we walked to church the sidewalks were mostly clear but we left early to give us plenty of time to get to church without having to rush.  At the beginning of Sunday School everyone wanted to look out the window at the snow so they closed the blinds until after the lesson.  You can see the picture below of the view out the window.

Sister Tolman fixed us a wonderful dinner to break our fast today.  She fixed us rice bowls topped with chili, corn and cheese.

We invited some missionary friends, Elder and Sister Barber to go with us to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.  We had really good seats and were near the middle close to the front.  I talked to the women just behind us and she used to sing in the Tabernacle Choir.  Her name is Collette Yates and her brother-in-law Jeff Yates is the First Counselor in our Ward Bishopric.  She used to live in Logan and my friend Glenn Mortensen was her medical doctor.  It is a small world. 

The program was wonderful.  The music by choir and orchestra was really good and we enjoyed listening to the speakers. President Nelson was the concluding speaker.  

The final musical number was Handel’s Messiah.  If you missed the devotional, you can see it at https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/archive/christmas-devotional/2018/12?lang=eng

Elder and Sister Tolman at the First Presidency Devotional

Monday Dec 3

We left early for the Mission Devotional as we wanted to see the Temple Square lights along with the snow.  The lights are on in the early morning before dawn.  It was really slick walking to the JSMB so we walked very carefully.  One of our fellow missionaries (Sister Ashcraft) fell and injured her hip but fortunately she wasn't hurt seriously. 

We both took some beautiful pictures shown at the beginning of this blog entry.  I posted the one below of the Temple on on Facebook and later posted several others.

We picked up mom and dad Senior to take them to breakfast at IHOP in Bountiful as all their children and spouses were able to join them for breakfast.  The food was really good and we enjoyed visiting. Elder Tolman had a stack of four blueberry pancakes and Sister Tolman has a scramble, hash browns and pancakes.       

We had our zone Christmas party tonight with dinner and singing Christmas songs.  The dinner was ham, funeral potatoes, green bean casserole and rolls with lots of tasty desserts.  We stayed and helped get things cleaned up and as a reward got some leftovers.

Tuesday Dec 4

It was the coldest morning so far with the temperature about 20 degrees.  I don’t think that it got above freezing today.  Today is the only day we work in the mornings as we work from 8am to 4pm.

I noticed a woman by the printer and it looked like she needed help.  She needed to sign a document and then scan it to her flash drive.  The printers have that capability so I showed her how.  Her name is Janice and she is from Oregon and visiting with a group for the week.  She arrived last Saturday.  Her husband has been in bad shape for about five years and hasn’t been able to recognize her for about that long.  He just went on hospice last week.  The hospice nurse encouraged her to go on this trip and not stay home.  Her husband passed away on Sunday and she was signing a document that the mortuary needed.  We talked for about a half hour.  Mostly I listened.  I am glad that I was able to be there and be a support for her.  It is always hard to lose a loved one but in this case, in a way, she had lost him as a husband five years ago.

I briefly helped several individuals with various searches that they were working on.  I helped one woman find where to search for Civil War Pensions records on the Fold3.com website.    I helped another couple search for immigration records in Maryland.  In these cases I heled them limit their searches to the specific set of records that contained the needed information.

We ate lunch early 11am to 12 noon.  After lunch Sister Matthews asked me to take over helping a man as she needed to go to a lunch appointment.  I ended up helping David Fillmore for between one and two hours.  He had a lot of questions about working with all the pictures that he has on FamilySearch. I helped him do a better job of tagging photos and explained how Memories work on FamilySearch with the Gallery, albums, tagging pictures, and how pictures show up on the people pages in FamilyTree.  We also resolved some duplicates on his line.  He plans to come again next week and wants me to continue to help him.

Wednesday Dec 5

It stayed below freezing all day today so it was cold going back and forth.  Fortunately the sidewalks were mostly dry.  There was a wisp of snow on the ground when we went to the temple at 7:30am.

I am working on identifying the descendants of James Martin and his wife Minta who were slaves in Georgia.  Hopefully some of their descendants will be able connect to this family of 9 children and their descendants.  I have been able to add family for three of these children so far.  I am continuing to work on the Martin family history and added a marriage for one of the daughters and am working on figuring out her family. 

I helped several individuals.  I helped Rebecca from Louisiana connect to her family.  Another missionary was helping her husband and I noticed that she had a puzzled look on her face so I asked her if she needed help and she did.  One grandmother’s line stopped there and she knew that from her previous research that it went back farther.  We found the next generation on the tree and her ancestor was not connected to that family as her grandmother was the youngest child and had not been added by the person who entered the rest of the family.  I helped Jayne learn about attaching sources to individuals on the tree and also showed her the option to put a source in the “Source Box” for later use.

A young man probably in his early 30’s had been in the library on Tuesday and Elder Benton had helped him.  I helped him for about an hour.  He had made a few mistakes connecting people on his tree, so I helped him straighten that out.  I was greeter for the last hour so I asked Sister Tolman to help him find his grandmother on the 1920 census.  After looking at the census several times, she realized that the grandmother’s age was accurate on the census but had been transcribed wrong so they determined that this was actually his grandmother and great grandmother on the census.  Great work Sister Tolman!

Thursday Dec 6

I worked on some family history today.  I was looking at the family connected to Colin Jeffery Hinson whose endowment I completed on Wednesday.  He is a fifth cousin (our common ancestor is Joseph Kirkham on the Tolman/Briggs line).  I found his wife and then his wife’s family.  I was able to add several family members and connect the wife to others already on the tree.

We had walked by Macy’s to see the window displays in the City Creek Mall and then went to the Credit Union and then shopping at Deseret Book. 

Macy's window displays made of various types of candy

Notice the Saguaro cactus in the front

We went to Chubby’s Mexican Restaurant for lunch.  This place is on 10th North near to the Senior's home and has good Mexican food.

I helped John Slattery from Vancouver British Columbia.  Young Elder Hunt was working with him and I helped them find ancestors on Ancestry.com and add sources to his tree on FamilySearch. There were some baptism documents that we found and added.  I showed him all the Help resources available.  He plans to visit again when he visits the area.  His father at home has more information which will help him when he returns home.

Friday Dec 7

We cleaned the apartment this morning.  I worked on a presentation that we need to make in Priesthood and Relief Society Meetings to explain how we will implement the new program that starts in January.  I had the action to develop this and then review it with the Branch Leadership this coming Monday at our meeting.  I used the material on sabbath.lds.org and comefollowme.lds.org

I helped Elder and Sister Carter as they were helping a couple use the connection between ancestry.com and familysearch.org to make corrections and additions directly between the programs.  After we helped the couple, I showed them some of the ways we can use ancestry.com to help visitors to the library and also use it in our own research.

I was greeter, assistant floor manager and floor manager from 5 to 9 pm.  I was asked to help a man try to figure out a real interesting problem.  We finally figured out that the person in question must have had two families at the same time in different cities. 

Sister Connie Hendricks a full-time missionary in our mission stopped by and thanked me again for the help I have given her on learning to find descendants of her ancestors in England and being able to complete temple work for them.

Sister Tolman's sister Marn and her husband Mike visited us at about 8:30 pm as they had been at a concert on Temple Square.  It was enjoyable to have some family members stop by for a visit.

Saturday Dec 8

I helped Linda who is a fourth-grade teacher here in Salt Lake City.  I helped her get started loading pictures into her Memories on FamilyTree.  She has already scanned a lot of pictures and is ready to upload some of them to FamilySearch.  I showed her how to upload, tag, and select portraits for individuals.  We also resolved a couple of duplicates including a duplicate entry for her mother.

When I was the floor supervisor from 4 to 5pm, I assigned a young man to work with one of the young elders.  When he was leaving, I spent a few minutes with him and showed him more help resources including The Family History Guide.  He is a church member and has a full tree, so I showed him where to learn to do research on descendants of ancestors.  I also showed him the “Ordinances Ready” feature so he can start doing temple work for relatives while he is searching for more ancestors to add to the tree.  I also helped him download the mobile apps on this Iphone.

Sister Tolman - Snippets from different parts of this last week starting with Dec 1.

We got into work at 1:00 and found out that we don’t have a lunch because everyone leaves at 5 and we are the only two there.  We worked through the afternoon and I was able to help the only patron I helped all week.  His name was Tyler Duckworth and he was from someplace.  It was either Florida or Alabama.  He works for the military and he has worked several different places and so I was a little confused as to where he was from.

We were able to get his account set up and started adding people.  We had a hard time finding things for his Duckworth line so we switched and did some things for his wife’s lines and we were able to find some things that opened up and went back a ways.  He talked to his wife several times and that helped to give us the needed information.  He was excited to go home and show his wife and mother-in-law all of the connections that he had made.

Tuesday Dec 5. Today was a get up early day for work.  We had to be there by 7:30.  It was more of a curl up with a good book, a cup of hot chocolate and a nice toasty fire.  Yea that is a nice dream that won’t happen this winter season. 

We had a sandwich and headed into work.  It was another day where not many people came in.  We went in at one and our lunch was at 4.  This is one of the worst break times.  After we returned I was Assistant Floor Manager and then Floor Manager.  Somehow I end up at the desk a lot of the time, even if I am not scheduled.  Glen came over and asked me to help someone. 

I was able to help this man out that both Glen and Elder Benton had had the opportunity of helping.  Between the three of us we were able to unravel a couple of mysteries but that left more to unravel.  One thing that we were able to unravel was the census record that was indexed as 11 years of age and when you looked at the real record you could see that it could be 4 and that would fit.  Both the names and the ages fit once we were able to see that.  He still did not find the husband because she was widowed at the time of this census so that will take more work.

We went in to work at 6:00 and worked until 9.  I was asked to help a woman find a probate record.  We got most of the way there and then got distracted.  Elder Benton came over and ask us if we had found it and we went back to it and with a little bit of guidance from him we were able to find four pages with court records on the person she was looking for.  After that she had to read them and find out what they were.  She thanked us for helping her with her homework.  After this I spent most of the evening at the desk.  We had no one on the floor at 8:40 so we waited around 10 more minutes and then left.  There is no sense staying around when it is that slow.