February 17 - 23 - Saturday to Sunday

Organ Pipe display while the choir sung "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

Sunday Feb 17

Music and the Spoken Word was a President’s Day special and was amazing.  We really enjoyed the music which was all familiar.  The choir ended with Battle Hymn of the Republic which when sung by the Tabernacle Choir is inspiring.  The background display on the tabernacle organ was beautiful and is shown above.  I liked the spoken word by Lloyd Newell.  He told a story about George Washington that I had not heard before and it shows his outstanding leadership qualities.  The Spoken Word ended with the quote from his eulogy in 1799- he was “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” 

Here is the story about George Washington. 

     According to popular legend, an officer in the Revolutionary War once directed his men to fell some trees and construct a much-needed bridge.  As the soldiers struggled mightily with the task, an imposing-looking man rode up and observing their work said to the officer “You don’t have enough men for the job, do you?”

    “No,“ the officer replied.   “we need some help”.  The man, looking down from his saddle, asked, “Why don’t you help you men?”   “Me?” the officer responded in a huff.  “Why, I am a corporal!”

    The man got down from his horse and worked with the soldiers until the bridge was completed.  Then, mounting his horse, he said to the officer, “Corporal, the next time you have a job to put through and too few men to do it you had better send for the Commander-in-Chief, and I will come again.”

    The man, so the legend goes, was General George Washington.

Our branch meetings were excellent with well thought out talks in Sacrament meeting about Trusting in the Lord.  Elder Tolman is conducting the meetings during the month of February.  On the way home it started snowing and we continued to have some snow flurries.

Sister Tolman fixed dinner for us and six young elders.  We had smothered burritos that were tasty and filling with cookies for dessert.  After dinner we went to a going away party for the Prigoones who are leaving for home this week on Thursday (Australia)

We went to the Seniors for a visit and stayed there from about 7:30pm until 11pm.  We hadn’t planned on staying that long but Sister Tolman’s brother David showed up and we had a good visit.

Monday Feb 18

It is President’s Day and due to the holiday our Monday devotional was moved to Tuesday.  We had the full day off.  Went to the oral surgeon for a 10am appointment and the area where my tooth was extracted is healing fine.  He indicated that most likely I won’t need to get a tooth implant unless I really miss the tooth.  So far I am doing fine.

Since I had the emissions test for the Impala completed last week, I needed to work on the out of state emissions exemption.  This took about an hour with all the documentation and forms to fill out on-line.  I thought that I had everything but I needed both the front and back of the car registration.  I finally completed the process and on Tuesday the exemption was approved.

We went to Desert Book near the City Creek Mall and Elder Tolman purchased two books- Led by Divine Design by Elder Ronald Rasband and a book on the history of the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii titled “Miracle in the Pacific”.  On the way back we stopped at the Family History Library to warm up and stayed for about an hour.  It was lunch time and we visited with Elder Dallin and a missionary couple Elder and Sister Clark.

We ate leftovers from Sunday dinner for our main meal and then went to Crown Burger for blackberry shakes.

Tuesday Feb 19

We attended the mission devotional.  It was cold yesterday and cold today.  Put together a summary of our schedule for next week for input into the scheduling system.  Our schedule is way different because we will be working at RootsTech on Wed through Saturday and will work a later shift on Tuesday (2pm to 11pm).

I helped a woman with scanning some of her pictures and pages from a Book of Remembrance.  The scanners are really good and will pick up multiple photos on a page and you can leave the pictures on the page.

I spent the morning documenting some research that I did for Don Clarke as he will be visiting the library in the afternoon and I found some family members to add.  

Just before our 2pm meeting, I helped a young couple from Taos, New Mexico. We added parents and found hints and with some adding and merging we had a very complete tree for one side of the family.  When we looked at the tree she noticed that a couple was in two places on her tree (one place as an ancestor for her father and one for her mother).  They said how can that be and I said it wasn’t a problem as this would make them 5th or 6th cousins.

Helped Don Clarke for 30 to 45 minutes.  We added family members and merged some records.  We added three new relatives to the tree and connected another relative to her parents.  He and his wife are going to Kauai on vacation so I won’t be helping him for several weeks.  He indicated that he wants to have Sister Tolman and me for dinner at their home in Park City when they get back from vacation.

I heard from Nathan Holder whom I helped the end of January.  Here is what he sent to me in the email that he sent.  “Elder Tolman - hey, thanks again for all the help while i was out in Utah a few weeks ago. I did get a chance to go skiing the next day and found out real quick that I am not as a good as a skier as I thought I was, haha!  But definitely good times indeed and I look forward to getting back to Salt Lake! 
And I appreciate this extra info on confirming the marriage record. I talked with my aunt, and she could not remember her grandmother's maiden name, but when I said "Mary Searle" she was like "YES, that's it!". This is still real exciting and I look forward to diving back in on this family...wait, excuse me...my family from Somerset, England!    Thanks, Nathan

Wednesday Feb 20

Attended mission conference today from 7:30am to 9am at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  It was a great conference as President and Sister Fenn talked about Doctrine and Covenants Section 76.  I still remember the special experience that we had visiting the Johnson Farm on one of our trips to Kirtland.  There were so many amazing events that happened there.

Helped several new missionaries learn about FamilySearch.  It was enjoyable to help them.

Sister Tolman ‘s uncle Mark Ethington visited and she helped him with scanning some pictures for about two hours or so.

I attended the communication meeting and reviewed the presentation I developed with the committee and they approved it with some minor additions suggested.  I completed these changes and gave the updated presentation to Elder Dallin.  I will also be developing a presentation that will help new missionaries understand what they need to do to help set up FamilySearch accounts for our guests.

Just as we were leaving, Elder Dallin asked me to help a local member sister work with some information that she had on PAF and needed to compare with what is on FamilyTree.  I showed her how the GEDCOM interface works.

We went back to the library at 8:15pm to make help the Park’s close for the first time.  We ended up helping a couple from Orlando find about their families.  I found his great grandfather on the 1930 and 1940 census.  He was a Gum Cooker (that right he cooked gum).  Lynne helped his wife.

Thursday Feb 21

We talked to both Laura and Julianna this morning.  We ate breakfast and went to the Salt Lake Temple.  Sister Tolman completed six Initiatory and Elder Tolman completed ten. 

Went to the Garden Park Ward lunch.  We went for annual physicals at the doctor today.

While there we met a man, Bill Wagner, who worked for the state office of BLM and used to work with my brother Byron.  

Bill Wagner

We heard the sad news that two members of our former Shalimar Ward (George and Arlene Ransdell) were killed in a car accident today that happened at Country Club and Southern.  I have helped George a lot with his family history research over the past three or four years).  We will miss them.  Here is a link to the article.  Leigh Ann Sondrup is Arlene's daughter and Sheli Jensen's husband Mark is Arlene's son.

Friday Feb 22

We were surprised to wake to about a half inch of snow on the ground this morning.  It wasn’t supposed to snow, but it did.  We haven’t had snow like Arizona with more than two feet of snow in many mountain areas and almost three feet in Flagstaff.  St. George, Utah has also had snow.  With the cold that we have had this week, the snow stayed on the streets.

snow outside our apartment

snow just north of Phoenix (see saguaro cactus)

We did our apartment cleaning plus food shopping in the morning.

We also noticed a crane near the Garden Apartments which are just west of our apartment complex.  The cold and snow did not stop this crew from doing some roof shingle replacement.  They were using a leaf blower and shovel to get the snow off the roof.  

Also this morning I noticed a sign by the exit gate of our apartment parking lot.  I am not sure what will happen to parking violators but it sounds serious.

Led the prayer meeting before the start of our 1pm shift.  Sister Tolman gave the spiritual thought which was excellent.

Helped Thomas Din whose parents and grandparents emigrated to the United States from China.  His family moved to Norfolk, Virginia so we were able to find records about his family and connect to his grandfather who was already on the tree.  We found many historical records that confirmed what he knew about his family.  Thomas now lives in Salt Lake and plans to visit the library again.  Just as he was about to leave I talked to him and his friend who is visiting from San Francisco.  He had not been able to find anything about his family.  We had a few minutes before they needed to leave so I helped him.  He had entered some data incorrectly and when he corrected that we found family members so he was able to see some things about his ancestors.  He is from San Francisco and not too far from Oakland so he plans to visit the Oakland Temple site where there is a large family history center where he can get more help.

Helped Jason who lives in Salt Lake.  I have helped him before.  We found that his grandparents had a child who died right after birth.  It took him a minute to absorb that information before he was able to continue.

Worked on the training for setting up a new account and was able to make good progress and should be able to complete it before Monday. 

Saturday Feb 23

Today was a busy day at the Family History Library except for the first hour or so.  I was the floor supervisor for the first 90 minutes and was able to make more progress on the training document that I am working on.   I also finished our shift as floor supervisor for the last hour.

With about a half hour left on my Floor Supervisor time in the morning, a person needed help with getting her tree loaded into FamilyTree.  Since that is an area where I have a lot of experience, I took the assignment.  Her name is Debbie and she is from Wichita Falls, Texas.  She has been researching her family for over 30 years and had a lot of good information that needed to be added to FamilyTree.  We began the matching process and found many ancestors already on the FamilyTree but some who were not and we added them.  We resolved a lot of duplicates and corrected and added many birth and death dates and places.  I helped her for over an hour and then she felt comfortable continuing on her own.  I checked back with her several times during the day and ended up helping her after lunch for a short time.  She was extremely grateful for the help and I was so excited to be able to get such good information added to FamilyTree.

I was then asked to help a husband and wife and their two teenage children (son and daughter).  We didn’t have enough helpers available, so I helped both of them.  The daughter sat by the mother and the son by the father.  I helped them get their accounts set up for FamilySearch and then we started building their trees.  They both were texting back and forth with their parents finding information about ancestors.  We were able to find their ancestors on the 1940 US census and other census records plus immigration and naturalization records.  They were all excited to see their family members on historical records and learn about their ancestors.  I helped the wife download the FamilyTree app on her IPhone.  They are from the San Francisco area and plan to continue to get help at the Family History Center on the Oakland Temple grounds.  Sister Tolman and I stopped there on our 2015 vacation and the library is well equipped and open most days.

I also helped a woman who asked if I could answer a question for her.  I ended up helping her and answered way more than one question.  I helped her learn how to merge records and we completed a lot of work on her FamilyTree.

There was a group of teenage boys and three leaders who are living in a boarding school in Draper who visited the library.  Sister Tolman helped several of them.  This whole group stayed for several hours and seemed to enjoy being there.  Sister Tolman also helped a woman with scanning photos.  She spent more than an hour helping her.  When she finished the husband thanked her for being so patient with his wife.

After returning to the apartment, we went to the open house and celebration for Nellie Leighton who just turned 100 years old is serves a missionary on our floor.   Here is a link in the Church News about her.  

Picture of Nellie Leighton when she was a few years younger 

Napkin embossed with her name and birth date