July 14 - 20 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday July 14 

Today was the 90-year anniversary of the Tabernacle Choir broadcast.  The first song sung by the choir was “The Morning Breaks“.  This song was sung to start that first broadcast in 1929.  There have only been 3 announcers since the start:  Richard L. Evans (41 years), J Spencer Kinard (18 years) and Lloyd D Newell (since 1990).  

We had our picture taken in in the Conference Center lobby in front of a commemoration display. 

July 14 is also the French Independence Day called Bastille Day.  I enjoyed three of these holidays while on my mission in French Polynesia.  They have a lot of singing and dancing and the celebration lasts for about a month.  Sister Tolman and I also participated in Bastille Day in 1998 when we visited Tahiti together on a 10-day vacation.

We had six young Elders for dinner.  Sister Tolman fixed egg drop soup and chicken chow mein.  We have just enough leftovers for one meal for the two of us. See the picture below.   To seat eight of us we move the table into the center of the room.  We borrowed folding chairs from mom and dad Senior which we will take back to them before we return in January.

We went over the mom and dad Seniors for visit and watched a Hallmark Christmas movie with them.  It was one we have not seen.

Monday July 15

We attended our mission devotional which normally lasts an hour but was shortened so we could have a mission photo taken on the steps of the conference center.  It was a real challenge to get the photo taken.  After we get a copy we will post it.

We went shopping at Sportsman’s Warehouse, Smiths, Office Max, and Costco.  The first three were on 7200 South.  We needed some fishing supplies for Elder Tolman, some food for our dinner with JoAnne and Craig on Saturday, print cartridges for our printer and some food supplements and granola at Costco. 

Attended the Zone social tonight.  The food was excellent.  Elder Jenkins barbequed the meat (pork) and the missionaries brought the rest.  Sister Tolman fixed two salads and 24 cupcakes.  The entertainment was from Sunshade ‘n Rain.  They were really fun to listen to and sang songs from the 50’s and 60’s.  Formed in 1971, SunShade 'n Rain began performing in the intermountain area. Performers Gary Romer, Mel Teeples and Jeff Gregerson provide a unique mix of music and entertainment every time they take the stage.  Here are some pictures from the social.

My favorite person at the social

 

Our 8 Young Elders.  Front L to R- Elders Bastion, Barrington, Buttars

Back L to R- Elders Barron, Hall, Agren, Barron, Foxworth

They sang on June 4 at the Brigham Young Park.  We are sorry that we missed them.At that point we had not started attending the Tuesday evening concerts.  Their website is Sun Shade 'n Rain

Tuesday July 16

The library was not as busy today as it has been.  I helped a man who was trying to print out a map showing the nearest family history center to his home.  He had tried to print directly from the “Snipping Tool” and the print did not come out the way he wanted.   I showed him how to format the print and the image came out the way that he wanted.

A young couple visited the library from Quebec, Canada.  They only had about 30 minutes to spend so I showed the wife how to search for records and how to use FamilySearch to build her family tree..  She didn’t know enough about her grandparents so we were only able to find a few records with family members.  She plans to talk to her parents and living grandparents to learn about her family.  She and her husband went away smiling so we must have helped them enough.

The floor supervisor asked me to help with what they indicated was a difficult problem.  It didn’t turn out to be that hard to solve, it just took time. I showed her how to search the FamilySearch Catalog to find books and other resources at the library.  She had some eastern European ancestry so I suggested that she activate an account on myheritage.com.  She is a church member so has free access to ancestry.com and myheritage.com.  She said that her husband used to take care of all her computer needs and he passed away within the past year so she is struggling to figure out her access to the various internet sites..  I was able to help her recover passwords for these two websites.  Fortunately, she could read her email on her phone so we could make her accounts accessible.  We downloaded her ancestry.com tree to myheritage.com so she could start get hints from there.

We left the library at 3:30pm a half-hour early so we could get to the Salt Lake Temple for the 4pm sealing session.  The temple just opened today after being closed for two weeks for the semiannual cleaning.  The sealing office has implemented new procedures starting about a month ago.  We really like it.  Each patron has a limited number of names to do for each session so we now know what to expect.  Sister Tolman submitted 1 couple sealing and 3 sealings of daughters to their parents and Elder Tolman submitted 6 sealings to parents (3 sons and 3 daughters).  We finished on time and all the names were completed.  Our sealer was Paul Oscarson, the spouse of Bonnie L Oscarson who was the General Young Women President for five years from 2013 to 2018.

Wednesday July 17

We attended the mission conference this morning between 7:30am and 9am at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  Six missionaries shared stories about pioneer ancestors.  The last missionary shared his own story as he is the pioneer in his family.  President Fenn was the last speaker and he talked about the gathering of Israel.  The first phase was the gathering to the Western United States.  The second phase which commenced in the early 1950’s is the gathering to the stakes of Zion around the world.  This began with the building of temples in London, Switzerland and New Zealand followed by many others which has allowed members from around the world to receive the blessings of temple ordinances for them and  their deceased ancestors

I helped a young engaged couple, Andrew and Courtney, from Indiana.  They were in the library yesterday and Courtney had contacted her mother and had a lot of information with which to get started.  She didn’t set up an account yesterday but did today.  I helped both of them continue research and build their family trees.  They were excited to continue finding ancestors.  Courtney’s ancestors are from Italy and she found an immigration record. They said they don’t know that they will do with any spare time as they will be filling it up with finding their families.  They were really excited to continue.  They leave to return home later today.  I helped both of them again after lunch.

I was asked by Elder Dahlin to participate along with several others in a meeting with Steve Young along with five others (three missionaries and three staff members).   He is gathering input from various individuals with a goal to make positive changes to the library to improve the library experience for all our guests.  

Wednesday 3:30pm to Friday at 11:45am

During this time Elder Tolman and Sister Tolman were temporarily separated with Sister Tolman in Salt Lake and Elder Tolman gone with a friend out of town.

Sister Tolman’s activity

Sister Tolman kept busy during this time.  She painted a watercolor painting shown below.

She also put together two puzzles that came in the same box.  That is a trick since the colors for the two puzzles were similar.  See below.

She also talked to our daughters- Becky, Julianna, Michelle, Angie and Laura.  She went food shopping at Lucky’s and Smiths and stopped to visit her parents in Rose Park and found some time to do some clean-up around the house including Elder Tolman’s job of vacuuming.

Elder Tolman’s activity

Several weeks ago my longtime friend from Arizona, Dave Curtis, who is here in Salt Lake for the month of July with his wife Julie asked me to go fishing with him.  To go on this trip, I did not need to miss any work at the Family History Library but did miss spending time with Sister Tolman and felt a little guilty when I found out she did my part of the weekly cleaning. 

Dave and I traveled to Panguitch Lake elevation 8200 ft in the mountains close to Panguitch. Utah (about a four-hour drive from Salt Lake City).

Sunset on Wednesday night from where we stayed at Panguitch Lake

 

Panguitch Lake taken from the pontoon boat on Thursday

We stayed Wednesday and Thursday nights in a cabin at the Panguitch Lake Resort and rented a boat for Thursday from the Rocky Point Boat Dock.  Below is a picture of our cabin and the boat dock.

Our Cabin for Wed & Thu nights.  It had plenty of room for two people

 

Rocky Point Boat Dock where we rented the pontoon boat.
We had lots of room to fish with two poles and not get in each other's way.

We launched our pontoon boat around 8am and spent until about 5pm out on the lake.  The fishing was amazing.  The limit per day is 4 trout each and I caught my limit in less than 2 hours.  We both used two poles.   I used a bubble and worms on one pole and power bait on the other.  The first fish that I caught on worms was a 17 to 18-inch cutthroat trout shown below.   Dave also caught one about the same size.  The fishing regulations for the lake is that cutthroat trout between 16 and 22 must be returned to the lake.  

17 to 18 inch cutthroat trout just before I returned it to the lake

We took food and water with us and ate lunch on the boat.   The scenery is beautiful.  Below are a few pictures from around the lake and on the boat.   Panguitch Lake is an amazing fishery and is full of active and well-fed trout.  Dave had done some calling and investigation prior to our trip so we had all the equipment and bait necessary to catch fish.  We fished in several places around the lake and caught fish in all but one place.  We kept the fish alive in a fish basket and if we caught a bigger fish we put the smaller one back in the lake and replaced it with the larger one.

Relaxing on the lake

 

Dave Curtis driving the pontoon boat

 

View from near the boat dock

We enjoyed a tasty dinner of trout (one smaller trout each), corn on the cob and some other fixings.  Dave is an excellent cook.  He did all the food planning from Subway tuna subs on Wednesday evening on the way to Panguitch to breakfasts, lunch and Thursday night dinner.  He did plan on us catching some trout which we had no trouble doing.

We were able to bring home seven trout apiece and the two trout eaten for dinner counted for our limit to have two days limit of fish in our possession.  Below are the seven trout in an 11x17 pan which gives an idea of the size of the trout.

I made it home in time to change clothes and get to the library on time to lead the 12:30pm prayer meeting.

Friday Afternoon July 19

I helped Monica and Joseph who live near Augusta, Georgia.  They are originally from Michigan.  Joseph is in Salt Lake City attending a convention and he and Monica wanted to learn more about their ancestors before returning home.  They had heard from friends about how they could find out about their family here in the Family History Library.  They have several children and appeared to be in their thirties.  They were both quick to learn how to find and add ancestors to FamilyTree.  I helped Monica first and then helped Joseph with several questions later.  They connected to many ancestors and I helped them complete some merges, evaluated and add sources.  They were really excited to continue their efforts.  They were at the library for between three and four hours.

My friend Don Attridge was in the library today for the first time in two weeks as he only travels from Tooele when the Salt Lake Temple is open.  He attends the temple on Fridays as he gets a ride with a temple worker who also lives in Tooele.  I helped him understand his ancestry.com DNA results.  He invited us to visit his place as he has decorated a Christmas room already.

I answered some FamilySearch questions for two experienced researchers.  I helped one attach the 1870 census to all family members of an ancestor and add one new family member to FamilyTree.  What is different about the 1850, 1860 and 1870 US Census is that family relationships to the head of household are not specifically defined (i.e. spouse, son, daughter, etc.).  After answering several other questions, I showed one of them how to use the “Ordinances Ready” function in FamilySearch and she was excited to see how to use this function.

Saturday July 20

This is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the lunar surface.  Read more about the Apollo 11 at this link.  From June 1967 until December 1969, I was serving a mission in French Polynesia (Tahiti and surrounding islands) and wasn’t able to watch the landing live as did so many others around the world.

Sister Tolman’s father called us at 6:30am this morning from the hospital.  Her mom went to St Mark’s hospital in the morning and was diagnosed with a hernia in her abdomen.  Originally she was going to have surgery but the doctor suggested waiting so she will visit her regular doctor next week and get surgery scheduled after that.  Sister Tolman spent from about 7:30am to 12:30pm at the hospital and worked the rest of the day from 2 to 5pm.  During the time she was at the hospital she misplaced her reading glasses but with a tender mercy someone picked them up and she found them at the nurse's station on the floor where they were.

I helped Bonnie Sense from the state of Washington.  She came to the library looking for a birth certificate for her ancestor Catherine born in Missouri in 1869.  We found that the records for that county were destroyed in a fire.  I found that this ancestor was already on FamilyTree.  Bonnie decided to get a FamilySearch account so she could access this information and add more information about her family.  We added her parents and then connected them to the ancestors already on FamilyTree.  She had a newspaper article about Catherine’s death which also included her birth.  I helped her scan the document and we added it to Catherine’s FamilySearch person page.  I help her attach some source records for her ancestors.  She appreciated the help and what she found which was way more than what she expected and wanted to make a donation to the library.

Helped a Ward and Temple Family History Consultant from Las Vegas who is on her way to Rexburg, Idaho for a family event.  She first wanted to know how to use the FamilySearch Wiki and I showed her how to use this valuable resource.   She had more questions about what she should do in her ward and I found out she has learned a lot about her calling and is doing a lot to help her ward members.  I showed her my Family History blog and how to use it to help her ward. 

I helped Marilyn & Peter from Los Angeles.  Peter didn’t know too much about his family as he was the last child born when his pare;nts were older and never knew his grandparents other than by name.  Before we created a FamilySearch Account for him, we found his parents on the 1940 census and then did some searching on Ancestry.com and found a lot of records so we knew we could add several generations to his tree. We created a FamilySearch account for him.  We added his wife Marilyn and they added his parents.  He added information for his wife’s parents.   I showed them the help available and where to get help in Los Angeles.  They were happy they visited the library today.

My sister JoAnne and husband Craig Barlow joined us for dinner and then we went to the Pioneer Concert at the Conference Center.  They are staying overnight so they can attend Music and the Spoken Word Sunday morning.  Sister Tolman fixed a wonderful dinner of one rainbow trout (fed the four of us), rice pilaf, and asparagus.  The concert was amazing.  Sissel has such a pure and beautiful voice.  She really added to the concert.