April 7 - 13 - Sunday to Saturday

We enjoyed attending the Sunday morning session of General Conference which included Music and the Spoken Word the 30 minutes before conference.  We were on the first level in the Plaza 1 Section.  These were excellent seats.  Here are some pictures.

Sunday April 7.

We really enjoyed General Conference for the morning session in the Conference Center.  Music and the Spoken Word, and wonderful messages from the speakers.  It was so great to be there.  We had excellent seats and were able to see the speakers and feel their spirit as they spoke to us.  Before the session started, I talked to a young woman in her 20’s who served her mission in Tahiti.  The man next to Sister Tolman in the picture was in the Tabernacle Choir at the same time as her uncle Mark Ethington.  

We enjoyed the afternoon session in the Legacy Theater in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  General Conference was inspiring.  Eight more temples including another one in Utah in Tooele.  We are looking forward to the plans for the Salt Lake Temple and Temple Square and the Plaza that will be published on April 19.  Here are some more pictures taken at the end of the morning session of conference.

Outside the conference center

Monday April 8

We attended the morning devotional which was good as usual.  We took some pictures of flowers and blossoms on the way back to the apartment.

Notice the star in the middle of the red flower on the bottom left

Monday April 8

Sister Tolman fixed an excellent breakfast of eggs, toast and hash browns.  I spent time getting ready for our 3pm Branch Leadership meeting.  The branch leadership needs to decide which talks to use for Priesthood and Relief Society and subjects and possible general conference  talks to be used for Sacrament meeting.

I sent temple names to Byron and Peggy including the Richardson family that I mentioned in last week’s post.

We attended Book of Mormon class which was excellent.  We continued with 3 Nephi which we discussed at our last class.  We reviewed the scriptures from the Book of Mormon which teach about the Doctrine of Christ.  We started with 3 Nephi 27: 13-14, 15-19 and 20-22 and also discussed 2 Nephi 31: 17-20. 

Tuesday April 9

I helped three friends from Florida.  They are women in the 70’s and visit every year.  I helped them get started. I helped two of them get their ancestry tree information into FamilySearch.  Most was in the tree already so we just needed to add a few people.  It was enjoyable helping them get started. I will likely spend some time helping them with questions every day. 

I helped Don Attridge find out about one of his ancestors.  We printed out some temple cards for him and he was off to the temple to complete some temple work.

I helped three women from Germany get their accounts set up.  Two were mother and daughter and a friend of the mother.  We were unable to get the friend’s account set up but we were able to get the mother and daughter started.  We were only able to add parents and grandparents.  They were coming back after lunch to go to the International floor to see what they could find there.  I helped the mother install the FamilySearch mobile apps and we added a photo from her phone that included her and her daughter.  I showed her how to tag both of them and add a portrait for each.  She was excited about that.

I completed the Sunday bulletin and the schedule for Sacrament meeting talks and Priesthood / Relief Society lessons for May through October and sent it to our branch leadership team to review prior to getting approval from President Fenn, our mission president.

Wednesday April 10

The weather has turned colder today and I wore a coat for the first time since last week.  It was cold all day.

I led the prayer meeting and shared what we can do to helped guests connect with family even if we can’t find too many ancestors.  I shared my experience from Tuesday when I helped the woman from Germany add memories to FamilyTree.  I helped at the desk as assistant floor supervisor for the first hour from 8 to 9am and them from 10am to 11am.  Elder Homer asked me to help him learn how to use the FamilyTree apps to add photos.  I helped him for about 15 minutes or so learn how to do this.  It took a while but he is now able to use the app and tag photos and add portraits.

I helped a lot of people during the day with various requests from printing to downloading photos to flash drives to tagging photos.

Susan Klear from San Jose asked for some help with printing some blank four generation charts.  I wondered why she wanted these and she planned to write her ancestors by hand on the paper charts.  I showed her how we could print these charts from what is on the tree.  When I saw her username was DrSue, I asked her if she had a PHD and she said she had a PHD in Psychology.  She said she had some problems with her tree and I volunteered to help her get the tree straightened out.  I helped her for nearly an hour and we were able to fix a couple of difficult problems.  Someone had merged her great-great grandfather with her great-grandfather.  We were able to go back into the change history and figure out what had happened and fix the problems.  This was a challenge but I enjoyed helping her get this part of her tree straightened out.

I was standing near the front desk and two friends walked onto the floor.  I visited with them for a few minutes to find out what they wanted.  They were in their early 30’s and on the way to Denver and had just stopped for the night.  The floor supervisor assigned two missionaries to start helping them get FamilySearch accounts and get started with their trees.  After a short time, I went over and started helping both of them as the missionaries were no longer assisting.  It was really fun helping Shawn as he picked things up really fast.  I showed him how to use ancestry.com to find more family and we quickly added a lot more ancestors to his tree and linked to more ancestors already on the tree.  I showed both him and his friend where to get help and then shared our help list with them.  I was happy to be able to provide additional help and also get the mobiles apps installed.

Thursday April 11

It was a crazy weather day today with cooler weather, rain, sun, hail plus snow in some parts of the valley nearer the mountains.  It was cool and cloudy when we went to the temple at 7:30am in morning.  It was raining when we went to Wendy’s for lunch in the early afternoon.  It started hailing after we returned to our apartment.  It was sunny when we went to the library at 5:45pm.

I met Ira Gentry tonight and we worked for almost two hours on his tree.  We extended his line two generations and needed to straighten out a family where someone had mixed up Ira’s ancestor with another family.  Fortunately, they had left a clue that enabled us to get the seven children connected to the parents. 

I helped several people between 8 and 9pm when I was assigned as assistant floor supervisor. One woman was having trouble saving documents to her flash drive.  When I checked, her flash drive was defective so we purchased another one.  She was used to using an Apple computer so she wasn’t familiar with the process for the computers we have which are all windows based.  It turns out she is friends with the woman, Susan Klear whom I helped on Wednesday. 

Friday April 12

Today is laundry and cleaning day as normal for Friday.  We finished watching a Hallmark movie which we started watching last night.

More than half my time was spent as floor supervisor or assistant floor supervisor.  It was very busy before our dinner break but slowed down when we returned at 6pm.  Sister Tolman left at 5:10 and I left at 5:30 and we finished our dinner and returned by just after 6pm as I was the floor supervisor again.  I did get a chance to help several people In between my shifts as supervisor.  I helped Scott from the Salt Lake area.  I had to go really slow as he had a hard time following what we were doing.  I was able to find the 1930 and 1940 census records for his ancestors which no one had found before.  These records showed that his great-grandfather did not marry after his wife died.  He noticed that his grandfather and father were living next door to him.

I helped JoAnn from Monterrey, California who is friends with Susan Klear whom I helped on Wednesday.  She had added three generations in her family and couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t connected to people already on the tree.  When I checked the last person she added, I noticed duplicates which she had ignored when she added her ancestors.  We merged three generations of duplicates and magically her tree now went back more generations.  Susan had told her that I would be able to help her get this figured out.

I also helped a member Sonny who lives in the Salt Lake area.  She has done a lot of German research and I showed her how to add sources using the images and locations of the records that she has found.  She has served previously as a family history missionary.  She thanked me for being so patient with her.

Saturday April 13

Today is our early Saturday shift.  Sister Tolman put together lunches for us to eat at the library as we normally need to be flexible with when we take lunch and how long we have.  We worked from 8am to about 5:30pm.  I said goodbye to several people who I have helped this week- my three Florida friends and Dr Susan Klear.  They thanked me for the help I have given them this week.  I always enjoy getting to know those out of town visitors who spend a week researching at the library. 

I did some research for Don Attridge who visits every Tuesday morning and found someone to add to the tree and some duplicates to resolve.  I found an incredible but sad story about his great grandfather who died in a head-on train collision and he was the engineer.  I added this story to  FamilySearch.org at this link.  The story shows his ancestor and also a picture of the result of the collision.

My friend from Hawaii, Noe Mateaki, visited the library today. She said that she was prompted to visit today and was happy that I was here to help her which I did for several hours. We found a lot on information about her deceased husband. We also uploaded several pictures of him.  She showed me which picture is of her when she danced the first night at the Polynesian Cultural Center in 1963.  It is shown below along with a picture of the two of us taken at the library today.

Noe is the dancer at the end on the right 

Elder Tolman and Noe Mateaki

A member sister Janice stopped by and introduced me to her son and daughter-in-law.  I had helped her in late March and showed her how she could get the temple work done for her daughter-in-law’s stepfather.  She showed me the temple card that her daughter-in-law had printed today.

For the last hour I helped a woman born in Fiji who now lives in California.  We get her set up to start building her tree.  She has three husbands and children from two of them.  He last husband’s ancestors had been added to FamilyTree already. We added her children and her parents and some grandparents.  I had her download the mobile apps and showed her how to add photos to the tree. I took a picture of her and her niece and we uploaded this picture to her Memories.  I told them about the choir broadcast tomorrow morning and they plan to attend.

Sister Tolman fixed homemade pizza for dinner tonight.  It was excellent.  We left half the pizza to eat for dinner tomorrow.