May 19 - 25 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday May 19
We had light rain on the way to Music and the Spoken Word and heavier rain on the way home from our branch meeting.  We both took umbrellas so we avoided getting wet.

We had six young Elders over for dinner tonight.  Sister Tolman made a special request for some Elders who have wanted to enjoy one of Sister Tolman’s wonderful dinners.  We had breakfast for dinner with egg casserole, hash brown potatoes, French toast and fruit (grapes and watermelon).  All six enjoyed their dinner.  Those for dinner were Elders Briggs, Slack, Gatlin, Devine, Spears, Barron. 
L to R Elders Barron, Biggs, Slack, Tolman, Spears, Gatlin, Devine

Monday May 20
We attended the Monday morning devotional.  It was very interesting as we learned about the Discovery Floor (Main Floor) in the FHL. There is overlap between what we do in Help Services and what is done on Discovery.  The flowers are now all replanted around Temple Square.

On Sunday and today, I continued to work on Patricia McGinty’s family.  It turns out that what we found on Saturday about her grandfather was not correct.  The more I researched the more I became convinced that the family who lived in Casa Grande was not her family.  The two families share similar names and birth information but there were differences that continued to come up.  I had first documented the family we found on Saturday.  I completed that research on Sunday and this morning and that is when I figured out the we had two different families.  I found the 1920, 1930 and 1940 Census records for the new family and various birth records for the children that had the correct father’s name and maiden name for the mother.  The correct family that I found lived in Arizona until 1925 when they moved to Los Angeles.  

I send Patricia a text letting her know what I found and that her grandfather was a shoemaker.  Here is what I sent.  "Update on your grandparents.  Your grandfather Carlos was born in Mexico, moved to the US in 1909, married your grandmother Dolores Rodriguez in 1914 in El Paso, Texas, moved to southern Arizona in 1915.  Moved to Los Angeles about 1925, had at least 7 children.  It looks like he was a shoemaker and probably owned his own shop.  FamilySearch.org is updated with the information listed above.  Your grandfather was a good man!!" She replied to the text saying that her father was a shoemaker.  We had found the correct family.   It is amazing what we can figure out about people from searching historical records.
Patricia McGinty and Elder Tolman taken on Sat May 18

We attended the Hail and Farewell.  Sister Tolman fixed her wonton salad which continues to be a hit with the missionaries.  She may have to make more next time.  The stake technology specialist whom I contacted to get a wireless microphone set up is Sherry Stagg.  She asked me if I knew any Tolman’s in the Vernal area and I said I did.  Surprise, she knows my brother Byron and his family.  It again is a small world.  One missionary who is leaving is Elder Slocombe with whom I have been working in the branch leadership since November.  We will miss him.  He and his wife shown below are returning home to Alaska.

Tuesday May 21
I helped Don Attridge and Don Clarke as I normally do on Tuesdays.  Don Attridge will start visiting the library on Friday afternoons starting the week after next.  I helped him print out some temple cards before he went to the Salt Lake Temple to complete some sealings. 

I helped Don Clarke with some questions that he had for a ward member.  I helped him get set up as a helper for him and then we researched one particular family.  We completed going through Don Clarke’s temple list and found several individuals who needed some duplicates resolved.  He wants Lynne and me to join him and his wife on a fishing outing sometime in June.  We will see if we can work that out.  We will probably leave on a Monday and return the next day.  We would end up missing a day at the library. 

I helped several people get their accounts straightened out.  In the morning one guest had been trying to get her account set up for over 30 minutes and the missionary wasn’t getting any good help from the person whom she called at account services.  I looked at what was going on and thought that the screen browser was causing the problem. I had the guest use another computer and she was able to verify her account by accessing her email and logging in to her account.

One man was trying to get 24 pages of his family history research scanned and uploaded to FamilySearch.  We worked together and were able to create a PDF document with all the 24 pages combined and then add this document to FamilySearch.org.

I helped Sister Holt who was trying to help a member sister recover her account.  I helped her print out a fan chart and pedigree chart for her family.  She needs to get her membership number to be able to get her account straightened out.  What I did to help her was to find her parents under my FamilySearch account and then add her as their daughter.  I then printed out her 7-generation fan chart and 4 generation pedigree chart.  She was very happy with that and will follow-up at home to get her username and password recovered.

I spent some time between about 3:30 and 4:15 pm talking with and helping Sister Holt.  It was good to find out her situation and be able to help her some with her personal family history.  I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t offended her when I was saw she needed some help with the guest she was working with.

It was cold and rainy today.  The Seniors wanted to take us out to dinner at Chubby’s.  When we got to their home at 5:15pm they had decided to stay at home and have salad and pizza.  That was a good decision.  We watched an episode of “When Calls the Heart”.

Wednesday May 22
I led the 7:30am prayer meeting and Elder Dahlin asked me to make sure that Sister Brown and Sister Winn had help with the 9:30am and 12:30pm prayer meetings as today was their first time leading a prayer meeting.  I worked with them both.  About half my morning time was spent helping them and attending the prayer meetings to be there in case they needed help.  Sister Winn’s tech skills are somewhat limited but with help she was able to be successful.  Sister Tolman was helping a guest and had just started just before 11am so we were not able to take our regular lunch hour together since I needed to help Sister Winn at 12:15pm.  I took about 30 minutes for lunch at about 11:30 and bought a sandwich and ate in the lunchroom on our floor.  Sister Tolman had lunch about 12:30.   

I woman asked for help to try to find employment records for a person who worked in a migrant camp in California in the 1940’s.  We were not successful in finding any records.  She told me why she was looking for this information.  It is to learn more about her birth mother as she was adopted and the employment history might give her more clues about her birth father.  Her birth mother was born in Nephi, Utah and taught school in Provo.  She moved to the San Francisco area in the 1940’s to work and during that time gave birth and placed the baby for adoption.  The additional information might give her clues about her birth father.

I helped Lisa from Sacramento add information on family Tree from her ancestry.com account.  We worked together and she picked up how to get this done. I also showed her how to use the Memories function and showed her how to add pictures to her tree.

I helped Elizabeth and Michael Godwin from Georgia. He had done a lot of research on both his and his wife’s family.  He had not documented the information on a Family Tree so I suggested that we use FamilySearch.   I assigned Sister Miller to help Michael and later I saw that Elizabeth was just watching. When I see that this happen, I will ask the spouse if they want to add information about their ancestors.  Often they do which is what happened as I sat down and asked if she wanted to work on adding her information.  To begin we just used her husband’s account and after about 15 minutes we had added more information for her than he had added for himself.  She needed to leave to move their car and when she returned, we set up her own account.  I helped her add the FamilySearch mobile apps and helped her start adding some family photos.  This really got her excited and now she will be working on adding family photos and stories while her husband still works on research.  Michael was excited to have Elizabeth be working on family history with him.

Thursday May 23
We attended the 8am Endowment session at the Salt Lake Temple.  I read a touching story about a man who fought in the World War II in the Pacific and how he was able to overcome his hatred of the Japanese people.  The article titled “The Red Rose and the Mission Call” can be read at this link.

The library was busy from 6 to 8 pm.  I took over as floor supervisor at 6pm and needed to make some assignments quickly.  We normally have more missionaries than guests but this was not the case at 6pm.  We only had one helper, Sister Tolman, and three possible assignments.   I assigned her where one of the missionaries was trying to help two guests.  The other assignments were not needed as missionaries were leaving for the day and had been helping the individuals for between one and two hours.

When we work at the desk with the assignment to match guests with missionaries we wear a Floor Supervisor badge.  It has a strong magnet attached to the back that makes it relatively easy to secure the badge to a lapel or to a lanyard.  See the picture below of the front and back side of the badge.

While I was at the desk and attaching the badge to my lapel, the magnet fell to the floor.  I tried to find the magnet on the floor.  I looked for several minutes and even got on my hands and knees but it was no where to be found.  About an hour later, I noticed something funny on my shoe and there was the magnetic strip.  It had landed on the metallic shoelace eye holes on my shoe.  See below.

I helped MerlyAnn and Tyler from a YSA (Young Single Adult) ward.  They were recently called as their Ward Temple and Family History Consultants.  I showed them the training material on the church website ChurchofJesusChrist.org. This link points to further training on familysearch.org callings.  They talked about using the focus of “Find, Take, Teach”.  I indicated that this focus changed last year to “Discover, Gather, and Connect”.  They caught on right away to the differences.  I shared my familyhistory blog with them and focused on the training of expanding your family tree and the training on the FamilySearch Temple feature.  I helped MerlyAnn understand how to connect her ancestry.com account to FamilySearch.org and I helped Tyler get his free ancestry.com account.  I believe they are on their way to helping their YSA Ward enjoy the promised blessings as they are involved in temple and family history work.

Friday May 24
It rained and hailed off and on in morning but we managed to go food shopping between the precipitation events.

During our shift at the library, I spent a lot of time at the desk organizing and getting guests assigned to missionaries.  We had some scheduling problems.  We didn’t have enough missionaries to cover the 5 to 6pm hour (we only had two available to help).  We had some missionaries gone due to the Memorial Day weekend.

I had a chance to speak French to a guest who stopped by but needed to go back to the hotel to get his wife and his family information as he didn’t have it with him.  I helped a missionary sister who is going with her husband on a mission to take pictures of records to be digitized and added to FamilySearch.  I showed her how to add memories to her Family Tree using the mobile app.

I helped Russell Figgins.  He and his wife are church members and wanted to get each other’s tree information added to their accounts.  Russell also wanted to add his stepmother to the tree.  His father is still living but she is deceased.  He gave me her name and about when she died.  With that information I was able to find her on FamilyTree and connect her as his stepmother.  He was pleased with what we were able to do on his Family Tree.

I helped Max who was here with his wife and friends.  He just moved from Louisiana and was recovering from a hospital stay.  I showed him the Temple option “Ordinances Ready”.  We printed out five Initiatory and one endowment to complete.  We checked on one of the individuals and found his child that needed temple work completed so we reserved his work as well.

I was asked a lot of questions by several guests in the library about such things as building and attaching sources from ancestry.com, finding an ancestor on records.  It was almost nonstop helping for the last couple of hours.

Update from Sister Tolman
I was at the front desk and a tall African American man walked in.  He talked to them at the desk and then I asked him a few questions and he wanted to know about indexing so we walked to the computer and sat down.  I showed him about indexing and we talked about the filming and preparing things to be indexed and the indexing that is actually done.  I had opened the vineyard this morning and I was able to read an article that described the whole thing that I had just explained.  It is so amazing to me how often the Lord puts things in our paths just to help us with what is coming up.   I never could have shared as much with him if I had not read that article.  He looked at the indexing program, I showed him the FamilySearch program and some of the things it can do and I helped him understand the memories and the app as well.

He said that the group that he was with was worried about the fact that if we filmed their cemetery records that we would just take them and do the baptisms for them and make them members of our church.  I told him that first of all there is the 110 years rule from the date of their birth.  Then I told him that we are only supposed to do temple work, meaning baptisms through sealings for people that are directly related to us.  Then I talked to him about how God gave each of a gift of agency and that even if we do the work here that the people on the other side have the right and the opportunity to accept or reject it just as he does here.  He liked that and said that he thought because of that explanation his group would be willing to let them do the photographing.  We had a very good conversation and I think he left feeling very satisfied with the answers that I was able to give him.  His name was Stephen Hammond and he was from Virginia he said he might look me up again during the week.  

Most of our experiences are great but every once in a while we get a guest that is anything but pleasant.  Glen assigned me to one of these guests this week .  He said he knew it was because I could work with her.  She was someone with an attitude, this from another missionary that worked with her later.  She wanted help but she wanted to do it her way and she had an impossible task that she spent an hour trying to get me to solve it, which we didn't.  It helps us learn patience and love for everyone.  I will say when I saw her come in later in the week I was very glad I was helping another guest.  At least I was patient and loving while I was helping her

Saturday May 25
When we went shopping earlier in the week, we noticed that there was a breakfast at Riverside Park in Rose Park this morning.  We went at just before 8am and enjoyed a breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash brown potatoes, ham, and juice.  It was a good breakfast for $5 apiece.  The pancakes were really good.  We finished the weekly cleaning this morning.  We didn’t need much for lunch since we ate such a hearty breakfast. 

We both had a chance to help individuals before our dinner at 4pm.  I helped a Karen who is visiting for a month with her daughter who lives in Lehi.  I pointed out the location of the Lehi Family Search Center which she can go visit the rest of her stay here rather that traveling all the was to the our library.  Before setting up a familysearch.org account, we found her father’s WWII draft registration card that showed his signature and Karen recognized that her grandmother had written the rest of the information.   Once we found the card, she wanted an account and we added her parents and connected to ancestors on both her mother and father’s lines.  She is excited to continue research in Lehi.  I showed her the mobiles apps and she was excited especially to use the Memories app.

I helped several people after dinner.  I helped one young man as he was just getting started.  He needs to talk to his uncle to find out more information about his grandparents.  We did find a yearbook picture of his father.  He uploaded this to FamilySearch and showed the picture to his girlfriend.  I showed him the mobile apps and he will continue his research.

I helped Linda from California.  She was here for about several hours and several missionaries had helped her.  I showed her a lot about FamilyTree.  We looked at her fan chart and saw where she needed to add an ancestor.  She had a book about her ancestors so we were able to connect to that ancestor and expand her tree.  I helped her combine 50 images into a single document to add to her tree.  I also showed her how to print a descendancy view for an ancestor.  She went away happy and told me that I had been the most help of anyone who had helped her today.  She was on the way to the main floor to enjoy the Discovery experience.

I helped several individuals who are here on a bus tour.  It turns out after we helped a couple connect to their ancestors they went down to the main floor and found  out that they are eight cousins.  The wife also had a strong connection to Abraham Lincoln.  I helped the husband download the mobile apps and then took their picture which he uploaded and then tagged him and his wife and added their portraits.

This was a good end to our week as this was a busy Saturday at the library.




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