May 26 - June 1 - Sunday to Saturday
View of Great Salt Lake from near the Bountiful Temple
Sunday May 26
Music and the Spoken Word was excellent this morning with a
theme based on Memorial Day. The music
was really enjoyable. The tabernacle was
full. We arrived earlier than normal and
still decided to sit in the balcony as the main floor was almost full. We found out later that some people were turned away because the tabernacle was full. Next week we move to the Conference Center.
Our Sacrament meeting was inspiring with a theme. of Article
of Faith 1 and Elder Gong’s April conference address. Our Relief Society/Priesthood lesson was
President Nelson’s conference address “Come Follow Me’.
We had our Fifth-Floor dinner from 5 to 6:30pm in the social
room on the first floor of our apartment building. We had eleven from our floor plus twelve young
Elders. Sister Tolman provided the soft
and hard taco shells plus homemade salsa.
It was amazing but we ended up with enough food for everyone and I don’t
think anyone went away hungry. We hadn’t
planned on so many young Elders but it worked out.
Dinner in the social room in the West Temple Apartments
I have been working on the Affleck line from my Grandfather Walter Affleck Kerr and found the actual
birth date of Robert William Affleck (L2MT-4W1) who is the son of Samuel Affleck
and Lily Robson. With the actual birth date of February 1909, I was able to
reserve his temple work. I found information
about Robert’s wife Rose Kennedy. When I
looked at Robert’s mother Lily Robson and checked the sources attached to her,
I thought something was not correct. I
did more checking and found out she had been connected to the wrong
parents. I needed to find out her
parents but didn’t find them until Monday.
Monday May 27
I think that Lily Robson needed me to find her family so I
continued work in the morning. I had a conflict on her birth year but as soon
as I decided that her birth date was 20 September 1889 and not 20 September
1888, I found her family on the 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 English census. Lily is now connected to the correct family.
Went to breakfast with Seniors and Sister Tolman's cousin Dan Wilding and his wife Linda. We had planned to go up City Creek Canyon with their whole family but the weather turned cold and rainy so we went to Dan and Linda's house. I helped Dan with FamilySearch. He had some photos of his father on his phone. I helped him install the Memories and Tree
apps and he uploaded three photos and was really excited to check out his
ancestors and look at photos and family members. We played a game of Five Crowns
which took a while with six of us playing.
Sister Tolman won with the fewest points and Elder Tolman had the highest
point total. It ended up being an enjoyable
day.
I sent some temple names to my sister Gerri to complete. She indicated that her son wants to take his
son and his wife to the temple to do baptisms as he is now old enough. I sent her 7 female names for baptism through
initiatory and 10 male names for baptism and confirmation. Included are the names of the family members
that I found for Lily Robson married to Samuel Affleck. The picture below shows Lily and her parents and siblings plus Lily and Samuel Affleck and their children on FamilySearch.
Tuesday May 28
It was a relatively busy day in the library. I was continually answering questions from
guests and missionaries from 8am to 11am when we went to lunch. Elder Anderson and I worked with Mickey
Johnson. She lives in Georgetown which
is north of Austin, Texas. We helped her
download her tree from FamilyTree to Rootsmagic so she could upload the information
to Ancestry.com. I also helped her learn
how to better use FamilySearch.org. She
had just started using FamilySearch and had made a lot of progress. She appreciated what I taught her.
I helped Stephan and Carol Clair from Richmond, Virginia. Carol had some information on ancestry.com
but we expanded more on FamilyTree than what she had. I helped them between 1 and 2pm and then continued
to help them after our meeting and finally at 5pm Sister Tolman said she was going
to the apartment since we were supposed to leave at 4pm. I left about 5:15pm.
When I got back to our apartment I noticed that Elder Sherrill (our branch president) had texted me and wanted
us to attend a sealing session with them in the Bountiful Temple starting at 7pm. We said yes, ate dinner and then left just
after 6:15pm. We had an enjoyable session
with four couples and two sisters all missionaries from our mission. We completed sealings for 19 our people. Below is picture of the sunset over the Great Salt Lake taken from near the Bountiful Temple.
Wednesday May 29
I led the 7:30am prayer meeting and was the Floor supervisor
at 8am and assistant floor supervisor at 10am.
During this time I helped several of the missionaries with various
questions. I also helped a French couple
from Paris. They had a lot of information
about an ancestor born in the US in the 1890’s but we couldn’t find anything about
her on any records on FamilySearch or Ancestry.com. They didn’t have much time to spend at the
Library so I showed them where one of our libraries was in Paris and they plan
to go there after they get back home. I
enjoyed talking with them in French.
I helped Steve and Carol again before and after lunch. We added
more information to her tree and found a lot of sources for her ancestors. Elder Cluff also helped Steve. They may visit the library again around the
holidays. Carol says that she has tried
to get tickets for the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert for the last several
years but has not been able to get tickets.
They left about 3pm as they wanted to travel around the valley for some
sightseeing before returning home tomorrow.
I received a really nice text from Carol on Thursday. Here is what she said. “Elder Tolman, Steve
and I would like to thank you for your invaluable assistance with our fledgling
projects. We learned a great deal and the road ahead appears a bit less
daunting. Thanks to you and the other researchers (missionaries), we’ll fondly
remember our first visit to the Family History Library. Best regards, Carol and
Steve”
I helped Shirley scan a letter written by her grandmother. I
helped her with her Memories and FamilySearch and showed her how to tag individuals
in her photos. I helped her add the Memories
app. She has written some personal
stories and I showed her how she could add these to FamilyTree. I helped her friend as well. We left the library at about 4:45pm and soon
after we got back to our apartment it really started raining hard for about an
hour.
We talked to our daughter Janny and firmed up the timing for
their visit the first week of July.
Thursday May 30
We talked to Laura this morning. We almost missed her call as the sound and
vibration on the phone was totally turned off somehow.
Sister Tolman noticed she tried to call us so we called her back.
We attended the 9:20am endowment session at the Jordan River
Temple. We enjoyed attending there. We
talked to Michelle on the way back to the apartment.
Went food shopping at Lucky and Smiths, filled up the car
with gas and went to lunch at Wendy’s.
We worked our normal shift from 6 to 9pm at the library. I thought Ira Gentry might visit but he had a long and tiring day at work. He texted me and said he would visit the library sometime next week.
Friday May 31
I wrote a letter to LaMell Lippard whom I visited monthly for a long time at the Florence state prison. He had sent me a letter recently and I needed to write him back. I plan on visiting him when we return home as he left me on his visitation list.
I helped Alice from Hamilton Tennessee. She is a couple of years older than I am and was
at the library with a friend. She had
been researching all week and was tired and is leaving to return home on
Saturday. I helped her with some
activities that were easy to complete. She
had only put last names for her children and her three husbands. Her last
husband had died recently so I helped her update his information. She then added the complete names for the
rest of those still living. I let her
know that others on FamilySearch would not see the information. She has had an interesting life as she was
married five times to three different husbands.
She was married twice to her first two husbands. Alice and her friend joked
about that. I encouraged her to download
the mobile memories app so we could upload some photos from her phone. She uploaded a picture of her and a grandson
to FamilySearch. She was then able to
tag them both in photo and I showed her how to make that picture her portrait.
Sister Tolman and I helped Sandra Conrad from
Tennessee. Sister Tolman helped her get
her FamilySearch account and she was able to connect to one side of the family. I used another computer and looked for
records on the other side of the family that was not on FamilyTree. It was a dual effort but most of what was
completed was done by Sister Tolman. Sandra
was excited to see what was there but had a real hard time with entering information
on the computer since she was so used to doing things on her smart phone. We ended up helping her for over an hour and
delayed going to dinner until after 5pm.
There was still some work to do so Sister Tolman copied a couple of ID’s
so we could resolve some duplicates later.
We had corn on the cob and sloppy joes for dinner and were
back to the library within 45 minutes.
I
continued working on Sandra Conrad’s tree and found information on her father’s second
wife whose name was Willo. She had
talked about Willo but we hadn’t found any details until after she left. She will be excited when she gets home and
finds this information on FamilySearch.
Elder Tolman was at the desk from about 7 to 9pm which gave Sister
Tolman, Elder Benton and other missionaries a chance to continue to help guests
during that time.
Input from Sister Tolman
for Friday May 31
When we first got to the library at 12:20pm, I went up to the 3rd floor
to put my sweater and purse away. As I was leaving David Young (a library staff person) signaled
to me to come and help him. He was using the Book scanner and wanted some
help. I couldn’t do much with that, it is something I need to
learn. However he had just scanned a book and wanted it all to be in one
document. It was a yearbook of his daughters. I remembered a man
had asked if there was any way to change a jpg to a pdf and a woman sitting
next to him said that she had done that so she showed him how and I kind of watched.
This gave me the knowledge that it could be done and so I worked on it with
David. We used jpg2pdf to do what he wanted to do.
There is another website to do it called smallpdf.com and you can do different
things with that one. Anyway after it converted them it put them into one
file and he was thrilled with that.
After dinner I was assigned to help a man from the
Seattle area named Keith Lee. He was here at a convention and came over
to the library. He said he just wanted to find out about his family, so
we sat down and got him an account. It was interesting because we tried
to set up the account once and it failed, we tried a second time and it
failed. Finally I asked Elder Tolman to come and help to see if he had
any different tricks. He tried what we had tried and then had him move to
a different computer. Then he had him verify his username and changed the
password and it worked. He was a miracle worker.
From then on we started entering
information. We worked for quite a while and added sources and people and
made connections. There were some parts of his tree that opened up and
went back quite a ways. He was very excited to see this. We were
able to find a draft registration card from World War I which had his ancestors
signature on it and that was very exciting. It finally got to a point
where he said that he was ready to maybe just look around on his own. We
chatted for a minute and he just started at the computer with tears in his
eyes. As I looked at him I had tears in my eyes as well. He said he
never expected to feel or react this way. He said he didn’t know
why. I told him it was because of family and that is what it
is all about. He patted me on the shoulder and thanked me over and
over. He then got up and left to go to dinner.
Glen was at the desk as he was
leaving. Keith told him that it was the best thing that has happened in a
long time. He forgot his phone and came back for it and I was able to
briefly show him how to add photos and stories using the app. People on
the other side of the veil want to be found and they are helping their
descendants to find them.
Saturday June 1
Sister Tolman went to the swap meet at 10:00am and found a
couple of skirts. I finished vacuuming the
carpets and completed the monthly financial reconciliation on Quicken.
I helped Sister Christensen who is a frequent visitor to the
library and lives in our apartment complex.
She has been doing genealogy for a long time and is doing really well on
FamilySearch especially for someone of her age (80’s). I helped her resolve a possible duplicate and
helped her off and on for a couple of hours.
Sister Tolman helped a woman with her FamilyTree she and her
husband are on a six-month trip in their R V.
She was very excited about everything we found. She said they are going
to be in the area for about two weeks so they will probably be into the library
often. Her husband was even more into it
than she was. At the end of the session
she said she had been raised as a Catholic and had found out last year when they
went to the British Isles that Martin Luther was right in his reformation
ideas. She was amazed by the library and
all that it does. She said she had never heard of our church and was interested
to find out about the church. She said that being a Catholic she had never read
the bible. I told her about the Book of
Mormon and its origins in ancient America.
In the end she asked for Book of Mormon to take home. I went back into the office and got her a
book and I shared my testimony in it and brought it out and gave it to
her. It will be interesting to see if
anything comes of this. I never thought
I would give out a Book of Mormon in our non-proselyting mission. The Lord truly works miracles all over the
world even in our little zone.
A three-generation family arrived on our floor. The grandson went right to a computer and got
started. The father and step-mother
started with missionaries help and the grandmother began as well. The grandfather just watched. Elder Tolman helped the grandson get his account. Sister Disque found some information but the
grandmother didn’t want to get a FamilySearch account. The grandson got the information found by the
others and built out his tree the quickest.
I only needed to give him a little help.
Soon everyone came to his computer to see the family tree.
step mother, father, son (grandson), grandmother and grandfather
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