June 2 - June 8 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday June 2

Music and the Spoken Word moved to the Conference Center and will be there until after Labor Day in September. Thursday evening choir practices also move from the Tabernacle to the Conference Center.

The Fast and Testimony for our City Creek Branch was inspiring and we enjoyed hearing testimonies from so many branch members.

Today is our grandchildren Rachel and Matthew’s birthday. We talked to Rachel and communicated via email with Matthew. Matthew with return from his mission to Canada about two months before we return home in January.

We have several others in the family who share the same birthday. Our daughter Angie and her youngest Sarah share the same birthday. My sister Glenna and I share the same birthday and our grandsons Elijah and Austin do as well. It is amazing that neither Sister Tolman nor I nor our eight daughters share the same birthday especially since Sister Tolman and four daughters were born in February.

In the evening we watched a live Facebook live stream of an interview with Elder John Groberg and his wife about their experiences in Tonga. We then were able to watch “The Other Side of Heaven” which reminded me so much of my 30 months as a missionary in Tahiti.

Monday June 3

We attended the mission devotional and afterward arranged for reserved parking for Janny and her family for their July visit.

We went for a walk to Brigham Young Memorial park which is less than a half-mile from our apartment and is on the corner of State Street and North Temple. Below are several pictures.

Here are a few more pictures taken on the way home to our apartment. It is fun to be able to walk by the creek that runs along North Temple from State Street to West Temple.

Our MTC Group social was held in our apartment. We enjoyed lots of good food and visiting and each shared experiences we have had on our missions. We rearranged the furniture in the front room to make more room. It worked out great. We have one more monthly social before many of our group will be leaving for home the end of July since most are serving for one year.

Tuesday June 4

Sister Noelini Maleaki stopped by the library about 8:30am. I hadn’t seen her for more than a month and was worried about her. She showed me what she had been working on and I was happy to see that she was fine. She indicated that the recent storms had caused a lot of extra yard work with tree trimming. It was really good to see her and know that she is doing all right.

Ira Gentry visited today from about 9:30 until 11:00am. We talked and went over “Ordinances Ready” to see what names he could print from his current list and others from his ancestors. He has now completed his prison time and has a lot more freedom. He plans to attend the temple and complete family names including the Endowment work for his father.

I helped two member sisters with scanning. I just stopped by to see if they needed help. I showed one sister how the Memories mobile app worked as she already had the tree app installed. She downloaded the mobile app and she added photos to her FamilyTree Memories and tagged herself in a picture and added this picture as a portrait. She really thanked me for the help and indicated that her husband would probably enjoy this as well.

Over the weekend I prepared a document describing how we can better serve our guests during the busy times this summer. I reviewed this in the prayer meeting and we will likely share it with the missionaries starting on Monday.

A lady came to the desk and said her computer went blank. I walked back with her and she told me she had hit had accidentally cause the computer to shut down and re-boot. Rather than wait for the computer she had been using, I had her move to the next available computer to continue her work. Some problems like this one are really easy to resolve.

We went to dinner with the Seniors. They took us to their favorite local restaurant “Chubby’s”. We had chicken enchiladas a la carte which were very good. We watched the last two episodes of “When Calls the Heart” before we returned home.

Wednesday June 5

I led the prayer meeting this morning as normal.

Janice, a woman whom I have helped several times before came to the library today to share with me that she had completed all the temple work for a relative of hers. I helped her resolve a problem and she wanted to thank me again. She is a temple worker in the Salt Lake Temple.

I helped a man connect to a website that he could find at home but not at the library. He was asking a research specialist at the desk and I didn’t think that was something that she needed to spend her time working on. He was looking for the name and phone number for a living person and he had found it with a google search at home. I told him that I thought it was possible that the website he had used was blocked at the library. I had him do a google search on his phone which did not use the FHL Wi-Fi and he was able to find the information. We sometimes have unusual requests for help.

I helped a young man be able to read a book on-line. He found the book information on the FamilySearch Catalog and it indicated that the book was off-site which means it was had been sent out for scanning to make it visible on-line. I helped him look a little closer and it was visible on-line at the library and had already been scanned. The security for the book showed that he would be able to read it at home as well.

I met friends of my sister JoAnne Barlow. They are Steve and Pam Keele and they were friends when they all lived in Blanding. Steve and Pam still live there. I texted JoAnne and she plans to contact them to see if they can meet before they return home to Blanding.

I worked as an assistant floor supervisor for two hours and enjoyed connecting our missionary helpers with the library guests.

I helped several people with various questions about the books, printing and some other technical questions. I helped one woman get set up on her laptop and getting connected to the family history library Wi-Fi and explained about the books. Did some training on connecting Memory sources. I completed the printed program for Sunday and sent it out to be printed by the young Elders.

I visited with two new missionaries, Elder and Sister Temple from New Hampshire. They had finished training class for the day and were visiting the library. They just started on Monday of this week and are in the two-week training for all new missionaries. They are living in the high-rise apartments at City Creek. I believe that this building is second tallest in the downtown area. The Church Office Building affectionately known as the COB is tallest.

Assembly Hall on Temple Square on the left and City Creek Condos on the right

We enjoyed having a phone visit with Christina. She called on Tuesday while we were having dinner with the Seniors so we asked her to call back today.

Thursday June 6

Today is the 75th Anniversary of the World War II D-Day Invasion. We are so grateful for those who fought that day and began the phase of WWII that ended the war in Europe less than a year later. My father wasn’t there on D-Day but arrived later and participated in the war in France. We are so blessed that he made it home to continue his family.

We went shopping at Costco and enjoyed their hot dog lunch and stopped at Lucky’s to complete the weekly food shopping. Sister Tolman does all the planning. I just push the cart and load the groceries into the grocery bags we take with us. We also have a cart for hauling the groceries from our car to our apartment. A missionary couple left their cart with us and we will leave it for another missionary. It folds up for easy storage in our apartment and in the car.

Talked to member sister about her family who came to the Massachusetts in 1637. We talked about what might have brought them to leave England and settle in Massachusetts. She plans to study more about the general conditions in England at that time.

I helped Linda Walden from St George who had some problems with her Family Tree and trying to find some 1850 US census records. She had been unsuccessfully searching for some 1850 census records with help from the experts on the second floor. She also said that someone had made some incorrect changes and additions to some of her ancestors. I left the census record problem for another time and we looked at her tree back several generations and did not find any problems. I found that even though she had been using FamilySearch she did not understand some basics such as attaching source documents.

I helped Linda understand her temple list. We tried “Ordinances Ready” and found a second cousin “Susie” who needed her endowment ordinance completed. I suggested we find out more about this cousin before completing her temple work. This led to a family that needed to be corrected and resulted in two more ordinances to complete. We also found possible parents for “Susie”. I helped her understand how to access ancestry.com from home. When I first talked to her she was very unhappy with the help she had received but she left very happy with what we had been able to do.

From Sister Tolman

Once in a while we have a bad situation and it can be very unnerving. I had one of those this week and needed time to decompress afterward. Maybe this was to give me a greater understanding of our young elders. Anyway it took me about 15 minutes to calm down.

After this situation I went over in the chairs by the windows to decompress. Glen saw me and came over and asked what was wrong. I told him the situation and he was sorry but didn’t have much to say other than it wasn’t my fault and I wish I believed that but I don’t.

In order to make me feel better Glen assigned me to two people that were related as half brother and sister. They had found this out not too long before through their DNA. She had been adopted and had found her birth mother and he also had found his birth mother and had found out his as well. I don’t remember whether he was adopted. She didn’t want an account so we just started with some searches. She gave me a name and I looked him up in find on FamilySearch. He was there and we followed him and it opened up some of her lines to the 1700’s. She was so excited. We did some searches for other people and they were not in the tree. She finally decided that she wanted to get an account and make sure all of this stuff was added, so we did. She added her adoptive parents and I showed her how to mark them as biological for the mother she found and adoptive for her parents that she knew. She was excited about this. We looked at how to add memories and added some sources. She was so excited and everything that happened was amazing to her and she was elated. Her brother just mostly watched as we made all of these connections. He later took some of the ID#’s and added them to his tree as well. They were both excited and look forward to adding to their tree.

After my shift at the desk I went down and did a little bit of indexing. I was asked to come up to the desk and help someone. Sister West had decided that I could do what this young lady named Cheryl needed. Her mother had been adopted and had found her birth parents and wanted to add them to family tree.

I told her this was an easy thing to do and we went over with her and her husband and her baby to do this. She opened her account and I had her go to her mother and then I had her add a parent, this was a second parent and then we added the other parent. Now we had two sets of parents. So now we had them added and we changed the relationship of her mother to each of these sets of parents. She was so happy and so excited that she started to cry. She said she had been trying to do this but hadn’t been able to figure out how. She said her mother would be so happy now that this was done. She was going to go home and call her mother and have her get on her account.

About 8:25pm the young elders were having a discussion about who was going to “have to stay” until closing. They finally decided and the two night zone people ended up having to stay. One set of our elders took the back stairs. The other set were just getting their stuff and heading to the front stairs when a group of four nice looking young women walked in and were assigned to the young elders that were having to stay. Our elder started to laugh. He said he couldn’t believe that they were all worried about having to stay and those that stayed got the cute young women. At least he saw the humor in the situation.

The variety of our floor is unique. We have an older couple that has just moved to our floor because they want to have fun. They said that the research part on the floor they were on is too boring. They are a neat couple and will be a great asset. We have a sister that is leaving and we will miss her. She is finally going to be able to start her mission in England. She has been fun to get to know. See her picture on the Saturday entry.

Friday June 7

I led the 12:30pm prayer meeting. I noticed that we were busy, so I made sure we finished early as I was the floor supervisor at 1pm. It was really busy at times but we were able to keep up and get helpers assigned to our guests.

Don Attridge was here starting at about 1:30 so I was able to help him a little from between assigning guests. I helped him print some temple cards. He also gave me a new card that he painted which is shown below and is titled “Reflections in the Grove”.

He had given me a book containing some of his ancestors. I worked on one family where two children were in the tree separately. I updated the parent’s information and added four more children to the tree. The parents and five of the six children were born in Russia before the family immigrated to Canada from the Ukraine area.

One the way back to the apartment for dinner I took a picture of two large rose bushes right next door. They are really beautiful and the fragrance adds to the enjoyment.

I was assigned for two more hours to work at the desk helping assign guests but managed to help a few people. I helped Linda Walden whom I helped yesterday and met her husband James and was able to help him as well. I shared my family history blog with him. They served a mission together in Australia. They will be returning home to St George sometime next week. Below is a picture of the three of us.

Saturday June 8

It was a busy day today with guests arriving first thing at 8am. Both of us had floor supervisor assignments with Sister Tolman having two in the morning and one in the afternoon and Elder Tolman had two in the morning. When we left at 5pm it was still busy with more guests arriving. We already work one hour longer on Saturday than we normally work on our other shifts.

My first helping assignment was Martin from Los Angeles. He and his wife only had 30 minutes and he had a specific goal in mind to find information about his birth father. He has an ancestry.com account so we focused on looking at records on ancestry.com. With the information that he had about the father’s birth, we found him on the 1940 census with his parents and siblings. I printed out the census record plus wrote down other information on the "Research Assessment Form" on what we found on FamilySearch. He was very happy to find what he came to the library looking for and we did it in less than 30 minutes.

Three individuals visited the library together with the goal to find information about one of their ancestors. The other two had Taylor and Belnap ancestors so we were cousins on the Belnap side. I was floor supervisor and assigned a missionary to help. When I finished my floor supervisor assignment, I ended up helping one of them be able to connect to his ancestors which was easy as he had the Taylor and Belnap lines. Later I helped the other man who had been working the longest attach some sources and resolve some duplicates. They all left the library very happy.

One man who is a church member visits the library regularly and raised his hand for some help. I was just walking over to sit near there so I helped him. I think that I was supposed to be the one to help him. We ended up finding a lot of information about an ancestor but not the one he had originally planned to research. He has the same name as this ancestor who is his uncle. We found a lot of information about the uncle and uncle’s parents and step-parents. Ancestry.com provided a lot of helpful suggestions with figuring out what was going on. At first ancestry.com was hinting records about this family that did not seem to make sense. As we searched more, we found out that these hints were correct. The man I was helping (Harry G. Johnson) and I were amazed at what we found in just a short period of time.

I visited some with James and Linda Walden and helped James connect three unconnected ancestors. He didn’t know the parents but knew that the three were siblings. We connected the three to parents that we added as Mr. and Mrs. plus the last name of the siblings.

The last person that I helped was Beverly Bakerbrown from the Los Angeles area. She wanted to print out some fan charts and pedigree charts for her ancestors. I showed her the different documents that we could print out plus some special fan charts and she wanted to print all of them which we did. It is enjoyable to see simple things like printing a colored fan chart be something that really helps a guest be happy with their library experience.

After dinner we went back to the library on the way to a concert in the Assembly Hall to say goodbye to Sister Schreiner who has been waiting for her visa to England and has been working with us for over a month. We have enjoyed becoming acquainted. She was really glad that we stopped by to say goodbye as we had left the library at 5pm before seeing her. Here is a picture of her and Sister Tolman.