February 10 - 16 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday Feb 10

Attended Music and the Spoken Word.  We sat next to a family from Idaho.  They are here to take their son to the MTC.  He will be serving as a missionary in France.  I was able to talk to them some. He doesn’t speak French but has studied Spanish.  I told him the learning Spanish is a great help to be able to learn French.

It began snowing in the evening and the wind was strong blowing in my estimates well over 30 miles an hour.  We were happy to just stay indoors.

We missed not being able to attend the devotional on Sunday night where President and Sister Nelson and President Oaks but enjoyed reading about what happened and the messages they shared with the 60,000+ people who attend at the State Farm arena in Glendale in addition to all those who watched in their church buildings. Here is a link on lds.org about the devotional.

President Nelson wrote an article for the Arizona Republic that was published before the devotional.  Here are a couple of quotes from the article.  If any of you would like the full article, send me an email and I will send it to you,

"If there is anything I’ve learned in my 94 years of living, it is that a life with God is far better — more filled with hope — than one without Him. Faith in God is, and has always been, the pre-eminent force for good in this world. It is the most enduring source of peace for minds and hearts.

After three decades of doing cardiac surgery around the world, I thought I knew a little something about repairing hearts. Then I was called as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. In that moment, my focus shifted instantly to healing hearts another way — by turning all who will listen to the Master Healer, Jesus the Christ.

For the last 35 years, I have traveled the world, meeting with millions of men and women in more than 130 countries. I’ve witnessed the effects of poverty and wealth, seen the impact of education and the lack thereof, met the high in station and the humblest of souls, and been gratified by humanitarian outreach from so many who care deeply about the human condition — including the Church I now have the privilege of leading."

Monday Feb 10

With the snow from last night, we were worried about being able to get to the dentist appointment at 10am in Layton that Sister Tolman’s sister Marn arranged for Elder Tolman.  We agreed that we would check with Marn before leaving to make sure the roads were ok for travel.

We attended the mission devotional at 7:30am.  It was very enjoyable but it went long and didn’t finish until 8:45am.  We hurried back as quickly as possible.  We talked to Marn and decided we could make it as the roads were plowed and the snow had stopped. 

We made it to the dentist office just before 10am.  Marn worked there in the office for a long time and just recently retired.  Once I was able to see the dentist, Dr Salmon, he took an X-ray and saw that there were problems with the tooth which is the upper back molar on the left side of my mouth. The best option at this point after discussing with him was to extract the molar and possibly put an implant there in the future.  He didn’t want to do the extraction as he saw a possible issue with infection so Marn helped set up an appointment to see an oral surgeon that same morning.  We went to his office and he extracted the tooth.  So that was our morning on our P-Day.  We will go back next Monday for a follow-up appointment to make sure everything is healing all right.

At 6pm we enjoyed a dinner with Roger and Jackie Campbell.  They are long time friends from our time in Michigan from 1973 to 1981.  They were in the Royal Oak Ward with us when we lived in Michigan.  We visited them in 1986 when we took our long three week family vacation and they visited us several years ago at our home in Tempe.  We met them at the Lion House Pantry and had an excellent dinner and a good visit.  The Campbell’s live in Mapleton which is south of Provo in Utah Valley.  

I have to be careful what I eat and am limiting myself to softer food.  I haven’t had too much pain and did not fill the prescription for pain relievers.

We had a good phone visit with Becky as it is her birthday today.  She is one year away from 40 years old.

Tuesday February 12

I reviewed the training document I put together with Elder Dallin and he liked what I had done.  We will be using it in our prayer meetings in the near future.

I helped Don Clarke.  He is an Emeritus General Authority Seventy.  He and his wife live in Park City visit the library and then go to the Salt Lake Temple on Tuesdays.  He had a lot of questions about two people that he is helping in his ward which I was able to answer.  I showed him how to use the helper function on FamilySearch.  I had also done some research for him and shared that with him.  We made some corrections to a family and then added three children who died as infants.  I will help him more next Tuesday.  He and his wife visit the library on Tuesdays and then go to the temple. He thanked me for my help and said he would work on getting me a raise.

We had our zone leadership meeting and worked out the work schedule for the upcoming special days with this coming Monday being President’s Day and extended hours for Monday and Tuesday for the last week of February due to RootsTech.   Our schedule will change next week and we will be working the morning shift on Wednesdays 7:30am to 4pm.  We will start working the day shift on Saturday’s half the time instead of the late shift every week.

I helped with training several of the new missionaries.  I showed them some helps when printing documents and when attaching sources from outside of FamilySearch.

We received an email from Richard Ray from our ward asking for help with a Family History question.  Both he and his wife had duplicate records on FamilyTree showing they were deceased.  This record also showed them connected to children born in the 1800’s.  We put the children  who were born in the 1800’s with the correct parents and then let them know how to get their own duplicate records fixed.

Wednesday Feb 13

Sister Tolman went to have breakfast with her sisters at Kneaders to celebrate Sister Tolman and her sister Jayne’s birthdays.  Elder Tolman went to Neil’s auto service center in Rose Park to get the car emissions test done for the Impala and also get the oil changed.

We attended training for RootsTech 2019 from 1 to 3pm at the Church Office Building which helped us in our preparations for what we will be doing when we help there from February 27 to March 2.

I helped Velma from the Wednesday night group with merges of living and deceased.  Showed her the LDS Tools app and what she could see about her and her husband.

We had a break when we didn't need to help anyone and were able to talk to Julianna as it is her birthday today.  February is our birthday month with birthdays in our family for Sister Tolman and four of our eight daughters (not to mention other family members on both sides with birthdays in February).

I helped a mother and daughter from Seattle.  The mother knew details about her parents and her father’s parents.  Three of the four are still living.  Her father's last name is Smith so I didn’t have a lot of hope for finding much information about her ancestors.  Fortunately her father's first name is Carroll and he was born in 1939 meaning we might be able to find him on the 1940 census.  When we added her father to the tree a record hint came up about an obituary.  When we looked at the obituary it was her brother’s and she became very emotional as I am sure that this brought up some painful memories of his death.  Her daughter said they needed to leave but I just waited and a few minutes later I was able to console her and we continued to search for more family members. We found her father Carroll Smith on 1940 census along with his parents and grandparents.  We found marriage records with mother’s maiden names and added more people to the tree.  We found and added the WWII Draft registration card as a Memory for her grandfather.  When we found possible ancestors, they recognized and remembered many of the names confirming that we were finding their family members.  We finished doing a merge right before the computers went down at 9pm.  It was so good to be able to help this mother and daughter.  There is a family history center near where they live in Seattle so they can receive more help.

Thursday Feb 14

Happy Valentine’s Day. 

With the storms and wind this week, the valley air is clear.  Here are a couple of pictures taken from our apartment window.

We talked to Laura as we do normally on Thursday mornings while she is driving to work.  We then went to the Salt Lake Temple to complete sealings for some of our deceased ancestors.  We were able to seal a couple and their twelve children plus complete the work for several others.  There were a lot of people wanting to complete temple work for their ancestors so we ended up staying for three one-hour sealing sessions from 9am to 12 noon.  This was our first time completing sealings this year and we really enjoyed being in the temple. 

Sister Tolman fixed a great meal of pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, asparagus with hollandaise sauce.  I still need to be careful chewing and avoid the side of the mouth where my tooth was extracted.

There is an older man named Lane who is in the library almost every day.  He can be a little cranky and impatient when he needs help.  When we first arrived at the library, one of the missionaries asked me to help him as he had not been able to do so.  He was having trouble sending an email to an organization as it kept being rejected.  He couldn’t understand how that could happen and was losing patience.  After working with him for a few minutes, I noticed that he had made a mistake entering the email address- problem solved.

I helped Sister Adams.  She is a regular visitor to the library in the evenings as she lives close by and I normally end  up helping her when she has questions.  I helped her attach sources and document information about a family that she has been working on for a while.  I found out that she served a mission to France so we talked a little in French although she indicated she doesn’t remember a lot.

Friday Feb 15

Helped Elder Baker who is going to Vietnam as a full-time missionary and he and his wife are waiting for their visas.  I showed him my blog especially the lesson on how full-time missionaries can use Family History in their missionary efforts.  I gave him the link and also copied the lessons to his flash drive. I helped him for over an hour.  We also discussed how he can apply what he learned in the training to help him.

I helped an experienced genealogist, Donna Crow.  She is from Iowa and is on the way to Spokane to visit a daughter.  She arranged for a layover during the day so she could spend time in the library.  I first helped her print a historical record and then showed her how to add the record to her source box.  She wasn’t having much success on finding more information about her family so she had started transferring data from ancestry.com into FamilySearch.  I helped her with that and in doing so managed to correct a lot of duplicate records on Family Tree.

Sister Tolman and I took our dinner break at 6pm and walked to the City Creek Mall Food Court.  We decided on Chick Fil A and used a gift card Sister Tolman received for her birthday.  We both ate spicy chicken sandwich combos which were very tasty.   It was cold and windy to and from Citi Creek and started hailing just as we returned.

I went back to helping Donna Crow again.  We managed to get most of her known information into Family Tree.  I showed her about Memories and I helped her add a picture and a story for a relative.  She indicated that her son married a Tolman and I said that we were likely related.  She checked with her daughter-in-law and got information about her family.  It turns out that she descends from Benjamin Tolman and her mother, Faith Tolman Munns, is my fourth cousin.  Donna indicated that this makes her grandchildren my fourth cousins twice removed.   This is only the second time I have found a cousin descended from Benjamin as he had three children and only one son compared with 29 children for my ancestor Judson Tolman and 22 children for his brother Cyrus.  To read a very interesting story about Faith’s father Benjamin Hewitt Tolman, select the link  Story about Benjamin.

Donna Crow and Elder Tolman

Elder Tolman's fourth cousin Faith is in the center in the front (both of us born in 1946

I helped a young man update FamilyTree.  He walked in at about 8:45pm so we didn’t have much time.

Saturday Feb 16

It was snowing last night when we returned to our apartment and by morning we had about an inch of snow which melted during the day.  Today was our cleaning day and we finished the cleaning and laundry.

When we both arrived at the library we kept busy helping guests from 1pm until our dinner at 4pm.

Elder Tolman helped Kelley from Chico, California.  She is her with her husband and friends to watch the University Basketball team play Arizona State. I told them Sister Tolman and I couldn’t lose as we have ties to both schools. She has a son who is on the Utah basketball team.  I helped them connect to ancestors and add sources.  I helped Kelley install the mobile apps and showed her how to attach photos.   I helped their friends who had not had much success.  We were able to find some ancestors to add and made some progress.  He indicated that he would be back in a couple of months and asked if I would be here then so I could help him. 

After finishing dinner at 5pm, I helped one more guest and since then it has been slow with very few guests in the library.

Sister Tolman’s Input Written on Saturday Feb 16

This is the week of Valentines and I remember as a kid we used to do valentines for the neighborhood and put them out on their doorsteps and ring the doorbell and run.  It was fun and we looked forward to it. I decided that I would help the young elders feel special this year so I did valentine sacks for them with a valentine and some candy and a gingerbread cookie with a valentine heart attached.  I left these the night before the 14th with a note attached.  The problem was that they didn’t get home to the young elders until the 15th.  Oh well I tried.  One of the young elders didn’t think there would be one for him because he is only there for two evenings a week so he was excited when there was one for him as well.  I also brought about 40 gingerbread cookies for the zone that were left in the lunchroom.

This week has been a week where I have actually helped a few people.  It is interesting because the people who are the floor supervisors often keep going right back to the top and since we are a “T” we can go quite a while this time of year without helping anyone.  One day we were just finishing up with something in the office area and I came out to the greeter desk.  There were two sisters who were talking to a group of five people.  They were trying to help them understand the benefits of FamilySearch/Family Tree and they were having a hard time especially with the idea of things being private.  I joined the conversation and it was lots of fun trying to help them.  They kept asking questions and we kept answering them and they left after about 20 minutes and they were determined to get accounts.  Two of them had accounts and we were pretty sure the others would get accounts also so that they could add their memories as well.  This was the part that really excited them.

We have had some interesting weather again this week.  We came to work at 1:00 on Friday and it was sunny.   We went over to City Creek at 5:00 and it was starting to gather some dark clouds and the wind was picking up and it had turned cold.  We left City Creek and the wind was blowing really hard and cold and it was starting to rain.  By the time we got back to the FHL at 6:00 it was hailing.  When we left work at 9:00 it was snowing and it was just fun soft snow. 

I took over helping someone when the helper went home.  The guest kind of knew what she wanted but we were not able to look for what she wanted without signing in.  She didn’t have an account because she thought you had to be as member to have an account.  I assured her that that was not the case and we got an account for her.  She put in her father’s name and it brought up the couple of both of her  parents.  We added them and it opened up a whole line of her ancestors.  Then she wanted a pedigree for the whole thing, meaning one generation to another.  Then she wanted family group sheets for everyone on the pedigree.   She had to buy a print card for $2.00.  We were able to print her pedigree charts and her family group sheets and we used up most of her print card.   She was so excited she said she liked paper and was going to go home and study them and spread them out and see if any of the land records or information from the books she had copied several years ago matched.  She lives pretty close so she says after she sorts things out she will return.   She will need to come in here because she doesn’t have a computer.   She was also excited to tell her daughters that she has an account.  It was fun to see how excited she was.

It is our week to clean the lunchroom on our floor.  Last night we sent a frozen lasagna home with some of our elders.  Tonight we sent home cookies and soda pop.  There were still some cookies left so we will take them home and feed them to the young elders tomorrow night for dinner.  At eight tonight I get to go through the freezers and fridges and throw stuff away.  This is not a fun time.  As you can see we have many different things that we get to do while we are here.