February 3 - 9 - Sunday to Saturday

These picture symbolize what has happened this week with the snow and cold.  The snow from the nearby streets is piled at the end of our street (West Temple and 2nd North).  We also have some pretty views of the snow on the mountains from outside of our apartment windows.

Snow piled at the end of our street

The Oquirrh Mountains

I believe that this is Antelope Island

Looking out on 2nd North Street and the entrance to our parking lot

Sunday Feb 3

Attended Music and the Spoken Word in the morning as usual and our Branch meeting from 1 to 3pm. 

Picked up the Seniors and went out the Sister Tolman's sister Marn's for dinner and to watch the Super Bowl.  We enjoyed visiting with everyone.

Input for this week from Sister Tolman

This week in February is and has been for many years a fun week.  We were blessed to have five out of the ten of us born in February: me on the 6th, Janny the 8th, Becky the 11th, Julianna the 13th and Laura the 19th.  It seemed like it was one big long party when the girls were growing up.  From one cake to another to another all accompanied by ice cream, the Tolman family tradition.

This week my sister Marn and her husband Mike brought my parents up to the Church History Museum to see the paintings by Henry B Eyring.  They really enjoyed the exhibit.  I was able to get a few pieces of watercolor paper with some beginning drawings on them to try watercolors with.  Then we walked over to the Family History Library to show them where we worked.  Mom said that now that she knew where we worked she was going to come and visit.  I doubt if we will have much time to visit so it would be better if we showed them things at their house.

After seeing the exhibits we went over to Crown Burger for lunch.  They took Glen and me to lunch for my birthday.  They also gave me a card with a gift card in it to Seagull book.  We had a very relaxing time together.

Wednesday dawned with lots of snow around town.  It had snowed overnight and we saw a bus and a semi both stuck on North Temple as we walked to the temple.  It was my birthday and it started with a session at the Salt Lake Temple.  Later we went to work and at dinner time we walked over to the City Creek Mall for dinner.  We went to Costa Vida and had chicken enchiladas and it was very good.  When we returned only our young elders were on the floor so I shared cinnamon rolls that I had made with them.  They were excited to have this special treat.  We finished our shift and it had been a very good day. 

I heard from each of my girls in one way or another and I heard from several of my granddaughters as well.  One other thing was that on Tuesday afternoon Glen had walked over to the credit union and on the way home he stopped at the store and bought me flowers.  I know they will still be great next week for Valentines because he brought me an entire bouquet of my favorite flowers, Daisies.

I have had a great time helping several different people this week.  One of them, Mrs. Johnson was here a couple of months ago and it was fun to connect with her again.  
We have another sister that is here again.  She has been scanning a couple of nights a week for about three weeks.  She is trying to get ready to go on her mission with her husband by having all of her papers and documents with her.  She is a ball of energy and it is amazing what she does get done.  She is going to a family history library in New York City.  Her name is Sister Maureen Sederburg.

Sister Tolman and Sister Sederburg

I also helped a young woman get the training she needed to get started as a ward consultant.  We never know what we are going to help someone do when they walk off of the elevators.

Monday Feb 4

Attended the Monday morning mission devotional. 

Went to the Church History Museum with Marn and Mike and mom and dad Senior.  Mom Senior really wanted to see the water color exhibit showing Pres Henry B Eyring’s paintings.  Quoting from the description of the exhibit “Since the mid-1970s, President Henry B. Eyring has produced hundreds of small-scale watercolor paintings that, like his journals, capture his feelings and memories about important moments and people in his life.”  To read more go select Pres Henry B Eyring Exhibit.   

We then went to the third floor of the Family History Library as mom and dad Senior had not seen where we work five days a week.

Tuesday Feb 5

Woke up early and worked on the training document to be used for 10 minute training in all of our prayer meetings.

We attended the prayer meeting at 7:30am and met some of the new missionaries.  One of the couples is going to New Zealand and waiting for their visas.  As I talked to one couple, the wife told me that she is a direct descendant of Judson Tolman.  It turns our we are second cousins as her grandmother (Martha Laverna Tolman) is my grandfather’s sister.  What is even more of a coincidence is that she grew up in the Garden Park Ward where I grew up and lived on the same street (1149 Princeton Ave).  Her father was Elmer Hall who was a ward clerk.  They moved from the ward in about 1952. 

Helped Amanda from Washington State.  She needed to update FamilySearch with information from her tree on ancestry.com.  We worked together and filled in the gaps on FamilySearch and added sources to several of her ancestors who had no sources on FamilyTree.  I worked with her for about 45 minutes.

Sister Dahlin asked me to direct the 9:30 am prayer meeting. We needed to switch rooms from our regular room and after meeting for 15 minutes in the different room we had to leave that room.  Fortunately we were able to get the announcements, opening prayer, song and some brief training completed.

I helped Don Attridge again.  I have helped him in the past but not for more than a month since the Salt Lake Temple had been closed. I helped him add a family to Family Tree and reserve some temple ordinances as he wanted to do some baptisms at the temple today.  I met him on the second floor right after prayer meeting and we went up to the third floor where I helped him.

We went home for lunch and enjoyed walking home in a hailstorm.  After the hail it started snowing and continued snowing until evening.

You can see the hailstones that covered the ground

Our Zone leader Elder Dahlin was unable to work today so Sister Dahlin cancelled our zone leadership  meeting.   We thought there were some issues that couldn’t wait so we suggested that part of the leadership team meet to discuss the resource needs we have for the rest of the month.  We held the meeting at 2pm.  Sister Dahlin asked me to lead the meeting which I did and we discussed and got resolved the items that we needed to figure out.

I helped a young man Caleb who was here with his girlfriend.  He had been helped earlier but was sitting there looking bored as his girl friend was still getting help.  I helped him add some more ancestors to his tree and showed him the Memories option and the mobile apps.

At the end of our shift Sister Tolman continued helping and I went to the Credit Union to deposit our monthly check and get some cash.  I stopped at Harmon’s and bought a bouquet of daisies for Sister Tolman’s birthday.

Wednesday Feb 6

Happy Birthday to Sister Tolman.  Here she is with the daisies that I bought for her.  These should keep until Valentine’s Day.

We had 6 to 8 inches of snow overnight so we woke up to a white morning to start out Sister Tolman’s birthday. We attended the temple for the 8am Endowment session and there were not a lot of patrons at the temple this morning. We saw a bus and a semi-truck stuck in the snow on North Temple between West Temple and Main Street.  We needed to walk slowly as the sidewalks were slick.

The snow on North Temple between West Temple and Main

Talked to a sister in the temple before our session started who is visiting from Michigan.  She is friends with our friends Wayne and Maurine Roach from Tempe.

Sister Tolman fixed two dozen cinnamon rolls.  She took most to the family history library.  In the evening she shared them with about ten young Elders plus the senior missionaries who were working then.

Helped the new missionary Sister Montgomery add more family members to her ancestry tree from FamilySearch.  I spend some time most days helping her and the other new missionaries with some tips on using FamilySearch and Ancestry.com.

Helped Jaclyn Lewis from Indiana who was here with her father.  I asked her if she wanted to get an account and work on her tree.  We worked on her mother’s side of her tree since her father was working on his side of the tree.  From several clues we made a little progress.  As soon as she found out the last name was Strole instead of Stroll, we made a lot of progress. She found out a lot about her ancestors and found out that an ancestor was nurse like she is.  She records her experiences on a video recorder so she recorded part of our searching while looking for information on her tree.  She was really happy with what she found out today about her mother’s side of the family and plans to share what she found out with her mother.  I asked her if this was more than what she expected to find today and she said “yes”.

I helped Shauna from Oklahoma.  She was here with a co-worker.  She had been at the JSMB and the Bennet’s had encouraged her to get some more help at the library.  When Sister Bennet asked how things were going and she said not so good.  She asked her to stay for at least 30 minutes and asked me to help her.  We had a wonderful experience finding information about her family.  She was really touched when she saw her grandfather’s WWII draft registration card which showed his signature and physical description.  One other area where we found a lot of information about was her grandmother.  She had been married four times and her grandfather was the last husband.  We found marriage details about all but the marriage with her grandfather.  With the information on her first marriage we found her grandmother’s maiden name which she had not known before.  For another ancestor, we tried and tried to find the family on the 1920 or 1930 census as he and his wife were married in 1918 and had a daughter born soon after.  We finally found out that he died in 1919.

To celebrate Sister Tolman's birthday we went to dinner at Costa Vida in City Creek and had chicken enchiladas which was the Wednesday special.  It was really good and we had plenty to eat.  We walked there from the library and back.  We had to be careful as it was slick in spots. 

Thursday Feb 7

It has been really cold today with low temperatures in the teens and high temperature below freezing so we stayed indoors except to go to the Family History Library to start our shift at 6pm.

When I was eating breakfast one of my teeth felt really weird.  I finally figured out that possible a filling came loose on a back molar.  I called Dr Hatch and consulted with him.  Sister Tolman called her sister Marn who used to work for a dentist.  She set up an appointment and we are going to the dentist on Monday.  I don’t have any pain but need to get the tooth fixed.

Spent at least four hours working on the training document and it is mostly complete.  It is sunny today but still cold.  

Helped an older member Janet print Fan Charts and showed her how Relative finder works.   She enjoyed seeing how she is related to US presidents, church presidents, movie stars, and members of her ward.  To do the same go to relativefinder.org  and sign on with your FamilySearch username and password.  

Friday Feb 8

It was still below freezing today but the streets are clear so were able to go shopping.  We had an interesting lunch before going to the library at 12:15. This is our menu: half a banana each, glass of milk, and a piece of Sea Salt Caramel Chocolate Crème pie which we bought on sale for $1.75 at Smith’s.

Got some input from the group at our prayer meeting on part of the training.  Reviewed the training with Elder Anderson and he gave me some good input on simplifying some of the wording.  I updated the training with his suggestions.  Here is the one page summary of the type of things that we do on our floor.  The purpose of training that I developed is to help us as missionaries better understand our roles and emphasize how using the resource documents the library developed will help us provide a better experience for our guests. 

I helped Elder Hendricks.  I have helped him and Sister Hendricks multiple times over the past months and helped them learn how to add his cousins the tree.  We reviewed a cousin he had found on the tree using the Descendancy process that I had training him to use.  We found some sources, resolved some duplicates for his parents and reserved temple ordinances for four individuals.  He and his wife will be leaving for home in just over a month.  I will miss them.  I have really enjoyed helping both him and his wife learn to find cousins to add to FamilyTree.

I helped Jaclyn Lewis and her father again.  I helped them on Wednesday. He was trying to find more information about his great-grandfather.  We tried to find sources but could only find his father, mother and siblings.  I took them to the 2nd floor where they have some missionaries with more specialized research skills to see if they could help.

Helped Edna from Connecticut who visited the library last night. She and her family are from Puerto Rico.  Sister Tolman helped her husband.  They arrived on our floor at about 8:15pm so we didn’t have a lot of time available to help them.  I helped her add sources including a marriage record for her grandparents and birth record for her great grandfather.  I helped her install the mobile apps and she added a picture of her and her husband and a wedding picture for her parents.  We worked right up until when the computers shutdown at 9pm so we were a little late getting out of the library but we were happy to help the family as long as we were able.

Saturday Feb 9

We delayed our normal weekly cleaning and laundry from Friday to today so that has been a morning task for both of us. 

I found a newspaper article about my grandfather Walter A Kerr’s 85th birthday including an open house at their home at 132 University Street in Salt Lake City on Saturday February 13, 1965.  I am sure that I attended that open house but I don’t remember it.  I found a WWII draft registration card for him that has his signature and physical characteristics of 5ft 8 ½ in and weighed 164 lbs.

I also found and added a WWII draft registration card for my father Glen Hatch Tolman.  It shows his signature and that he was 5ft 9 ½ inches and weighed 172 lbs.  I am about the same height at 5ft 9 inches and weigh a few more pounds now that my dad weighed in 1940.  

I helped two young single adult church members.  Three of them visited the library together.  I first helped a young woman who is a returned missionary and served in Anaheim, CA.  She has a full tree so I explained to her how she can look for descendants of ancestors to add to FamilyTree.  While learning how to find cousins to add to the tree, I showed her the “Ordinances Ready” feature on FamilySearch. I also shared the training that I have on my family history blog. Gktfamilyhistorylessons.blogspot.com

She left and I helped her friend who was trying to figure out what was going on with her tree and some of her ancestors.  There was a mystery to solve and once we found her ancestor on the 1920, 1930 and 1940 census, we had enough information to figure out what was going on as these census records had information about three generations of her ancestors.

I helped a young mother who was here with her eight-month old baby boy and her husband.  I helped her merge some records and get her fan chart set up so she could get a multi-generation fan printed before she leaves for home (here in the valley).  The husband worked on some scanning.  They were here last weekend and I helped him. They live near Millcreek canyon in the area very close to Mt Olympus.  He said they had about 5 feet of snow in their yard.