January 6 - 12 - Sunday to Saturday

One day this week, I saw a lot of pictures on Facebook of the island Maupiti where I had my first assignment during my mission in French Polynesia from 1967-1969.  I have added two pictures.  The first is a very similar picture that I took from the top of the mountain looking at the pass between the two small islands (motus).

Sunday Jan 6

I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep as we just received on Saturday a branch assignment to determine which October General Conference talks to use for Priesthood and Relief Society meetings and the subjects for Sacrament Meeting talks for the first six months.  Previously the mission president had done this.  I worked on this before we left for the choir broadcast and came up with a proposal to review with the other branch leaders on Monday.

We attended Music and the Spoken Word this morning and had to be careful walking to and from the Tabernacle from our apartment as we had freezing rain which made walking difficult and we needed to be very careful.

By the time we left for church at about 12:45pm it was snowing.  We left early so we would have plenty of time to walk to the JSMB for church.  We had to brush off a lot snow off our coats by the time we made to the church.  Our branch president went to San Antonio as his son was put in the Bishopric and he wanted to be able to ordain him a High Priest.  He also had the chance to participate in ordaining his grandson a Deacon.  He asked me if I would conduct Sacrament meeting as January was his month.  The second counselor was sick so I was the only one there.  Fortunately President Fenn our mission president and President McKnight his first counselor were both there.  We had an excellent meeting.  Several young Elders bore really strong testimonies.  We ended the meeting just over the 60 minutes that we now have for Sacrament meeting.

On the way home from church the sun had come out and it was a lot warmer and it was much easier walking home.

We missed being in Arizona for our grandson Austin being ordained a Deacon but we were able to talk to him and Michelle and Brooks.  We are so proud of him.

Monday January 7,                                                             

We attended the mission devotional from 7:30 to 8:30am.  The Turners (our missionary friends going back to the MTC) were two of the speakers. 

I will share part of what Elder Ricky Turner said.  As a background, when as a young man he was called to serve in Canada Halifax mission.  When he landed in the airport in Toronto, Canada he became disoriented and was delayed and did not make it through customs and to the airline counter in time to make his connecting flight.  He prayed that somehow he would be able to get to his destination. Here is what happened quoting directly from his talk.  “The time for my flight had long since passed, but I continued to pray. I finally reached the front of the line and presented my documents to the attendant.  I anxiously asked, “I know I missed my flight, what do I do now?” What happened next was quite amazing.  The attendance looked at me and said, “Don’t’ worry.  Something has happened that has never happened before. A large gaggle of Canadian Geese has landed on the runway.  Because they are protected, the airport is closed until they can be safely chased off the runway.”  Looking out the large plate-glass windows, I could see a number of workers attempting to scare the geese away by driving jeeps around honking their horns and shooting shotgun blanks.  Seemingly unconcerned, the geese simply flew up with every pass of the Jeep, circled around the airport and then landed on the runway in the same place again and again.  This allowed me enough time to be driven out to my plane.  Once on-board, I offered a prayer of thanks and buckled my seatbelt.  Immediately upon saying “amen”, I looked out the window and witnessed the geese lift off the tarmac and fly away for good.  At that moment, I knew that the Lord had heard and answered the earnest prayers of a young missionary far from home.”

Sister Tolman is working on the lesson for Relief Society for Sunday Jan 13.  While she was working on the lesson Elder Tolman walked to the credit union to deposit the rent check.  I normally walk through part of the City Creek Mall to and from.  The mall has flowing water from City Creek Canyon.  There are trout and other fish as you can see in the picture below.

In the early afternoon we went shopping at Walmart and Costco and ate lunch at Costco (the $1.50 foot-long hot dogs and drinks).

I attended the branch leadership meeting.  We reviewed the proposal I put together on Sunday for topics for January Sacrament meeting and the Elders and Relief Society lessons for January through April.  We modified what I had put together and came up with a better plan.

I called the City of Tempe to follow-up on our alarm permit which hadn’t been recorded.  When I checked, the clerk looked at her notes and found that I had mailed the envelope without the signed permit.  I found the permit and mailed it in.  Hopefully they will waive the $50 late fee.

We went to a social group with the McKnight’s and others we know.  A couple who were missionaries on our floor and had been missionaries in Ghana shared their experience with us.  It was very interesting.  We stayed afterward and visited with some of the other missionaries.

The weather has been up and down today with snow off and on and tonight walking back to our apartment from the social we had to be very careful as it was very slippery walking.

Tuesday January 8

We attended the prayer meeting at 7:30am.  I updated the branch lesson plan based on yesterday’s branch leadership meeting and sent it out for review.  I talked with Elder Dahlin for a while about what is going on in our zone.  We had our weekly zone leadership meeting at 2pm. We haven’t had a meeting for a while since the last two Tuesdays were New Year’s Day and Christmas Day.  We will have some changes this year as the library will be open for most holidays except for July 4,  Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Years Day.

Wednesday January 9 

We talked to Laura first thing in the morning around 7am.  We then went to the Jordan River Temple and attended the 9am Endowment session.  The temple isn’t as busy this week as last week.  When we just arrived back to the parking lot at our apartment, Sister Tolman’s brother David called and she had a good phone visit with him.   We had to hurry and have a little bit of lunch before going to the library as Elder Tolman conducts the prayer meeting that starts at 12:30pm.

I helped Susan Larson from Washington.  She has been visiting the library for 25 years.  I helped her with a couple of items including printing and storing some documents and recovering a web page using the browser history option (the shortcut Cntl-H works great).   I ended up helping several other individuals with minor technical problems they were having.

Thursday January 10

I have continued to work this week on resolving some problems created by a man (Brother Rowley) whom I helped at the Mesa FamilySearch Library last year.  What he did added many duplicate records to FamilyTree and I have been trying to get these fixed.

We went shopping at Walgreen’s, Dollar Store, and Lucky.

We decided to go to Kneader’s for lunch since we have a gift card.  I decided on a Rueben sandwich and Sister Tolman had a nice salad and cup of potato soup.  I told her not to worry about the cost since we had a $25 gift card.  I handed the gift card to the cashier and she ran the card several times and it didn’t work.  Then she looked at the card and there it was on the front of the card in small letters “Deseret Book”.  I guess a Deseret Book gift card doesn’t work to pay for lunch at Kneaders.  When we got back to the apartment we thought about the experience and couldn’t stop laughing.

 

We stopped at the Family Discovery Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on the way back to the apartment and visited with the Abernathy’s who are missionaries on our floor in the library and are our next door neighbors.  I helped a couple there who had some family history questions.  I showed the man the “Ordinances Ready” feature and he reserved an Endowment ordinance to complete.  He is a temple worker at the Ogden Temple and was the officiator at the first session on Wednesday morning January 2.   

We started at the library at 6pm as is the usual for most of our Thursdays.  I talked to several patrons who are visiting the library for two weeks.  They visit every year and visit in January because it is less busy.

Message from Sister Tolman - Wed and Thu

On Wednesday night, I was asked to take over for Elder Dickert who was leaving for the day.  I helped a woman who was trying to find her family in New Mexico and possibly Colorado.  Her family had immigrated from Spain early on. As we worked, I found that there were a lot of people in New Mexico early on.  I didn’t realize that there was such a large community in the early 1800’s until we were working on this family history with her.  We were able to find and add information.  I worked with her for about an hour and a half.

On Thursday we arrived around 6pm and I was asked to replace Elder Willard.  It is interesting that the person who I ended up working with was the same person that I had worked with the previous evening when I replaced Elder Dickert.  This is the lady who was working on her family from New Mexico and they had found a record that was possibly her family.  We looked at it and studied it but we were not sure if it fit.  We left the tab that it was on open and researched other things.  After doing some research we found that the names on that tab fit and we attached them and the record.  It looks as if there may have been land grants in her family from the King of Spain around 1807.  We found some records from a certain area and she said “that is where I was born”.  We continued to work to find the connections.  She is very excited to continue researching her family in New Mexico and possibly back to Spain.  I spent 2 ½ hours with her on Thursday evening.  I enjoyed working with her and learning more about our American History in the process.

Friday January 11

We did our weekly cleaning today.  I also spent several hours working on the Rowley problems.

I was the floor manager for the first two hours starting at 1pm.  It was enjoyable to make sure that visitors were helped and that the missionaries all got a turn to work with them.  I ended up helping several people with various technical problems.

I met Cyndi who developed the family history website Cyndi’s list which she has been doing for over 20 years.  The website is https://www.cyndislist.com/  

We both got ball point pens from her on Saturday night with her website url and the message "Your Genealogy Portal" 

I helped Betty from Ft. Lauderdale Florida.  We resolved lots and lots of duplicates for her family tree.  I helped her learn more about navigating the Family Tree as well.  She is here this week and returns home on Sunday,

Sister Tolman fixed an excellent dinner of French toast made with cinnamon raisin bread plus a fried egg over easy.  It is good to sometimes have breakfast for dinner.

From about 6 to 8, I worked on resolving the Rowley problem resolving duplicates and other problems.  I talked to Susan Larson from Washington.  She does a lot of documenting.  She has written books for her grandchildren similar to what Sister Tolman did for her daughters.  She also wrote a book for her father which he cherished and wouldn’t let anyone else touch it.  He shared it with others but he turned the pages.

I seem to be the go-to person for technical problems.  One guest couldn’t connect to the Wifi even though she could earlier. I looked at her computer and the Wifi option kept turning off.  I suggested she re-boot her computer and that worked.

Saturday Jan 12

Sister Tolman talked to her sister Jayne for about an hour and we have the 70th anniversary dinner now set for the Seniors for Tuesday March 12.  They want to go the Spaghetti Company and they had made all the arrangements but forgot to let Jayne know about the final decision on the date.

We started helping as soon as we got to the library.  I helped Betty from Ft Lauderdale again and we resolved some more duplicates on the tree.  I also helped her friend Paula from Seattle.  I helped Paula compare her family tree on ancestry.com to what was on FamilyTree.  We worked for about an hour and made a lot of progress.  Most of her ancestors were already on FamilyTree.  She did have additional information for many of them and we added some people who were missing.  I have found that this process works best with two people working together.  I worked on the FamilyTree part and she looked at her ancestry.com tree and between the two of us we completed the analysis and made the needed updates.  She learned some from familysearch and added what she learned to her tree on ancestry.com

I showed both Betty and Paula how to use Relative Finder (relativefinder.org) to see how they are related to famous people.  That was a good break for them.  I also visited again with Susan Larson from Seattle.  The experienced genealogists who visit the library are really fun to get to know.  They stay a full day so we see them in the afternoons and evenings.

Two friends visited the library tonight and we helped them get started.  One of the young Elders helped the one young woman who wanted to get started on the tree and I helped her friend.  We found her grandfather on findagrave.com (he just passed away last year).  She decided to set up her account on familysearch.org and added her parents and grandparents including the one we found on findagrave.  We got her started and she will work some more on her tree when she talks to her aunt who has done a lot of research on her family.

Sister Tolman and I both helped a member couple visiting the library.  They live in West Jordan and wanted to see how the library has changed and what then can do to get more involved with Family History.

Today has been a lot busier than previous Saturdays.  I think the word is getting out that we are open until 9pm.