July 21 - 27 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday July 21

We enjoyed breakfast with my sister JoAnne Barlow and her husband Craig.  They stayed overnight with us so they could attend Music and the Spoken Word before returning home to Santaquin, Utah (about an hour drive).  Music and the Spoken Word was amazing.  

Choir with Sissel and her family in the front center

An emotional Sissel as the choir sings God Be with You 'Til We Meet Again

Here is a link to the Pioneer concert that we attended on Saturday night.  Pioneer Concert YouTube  A copy of the program is shown below. 

We saw Dave & Julie Curtis and Richard and Ann Ray for a short visit in front of our apartment.  The Ray’s flew up from Arizona to participate in the Pioneer concert on Saturday night and Music and the Spoken Word Sunday morning.  The Ray's stayed with the Curtis' for the weekend.

We really enjoyed Sacrament Meeting.  The subject was “The Gathering of Israel on Both Sides of the Veil”.  We were asked to give the opening and closing prayers. 

We had dinner with the Seniors.  Sister Tolman fixed one large trout for all of us and we took a tray of watermelon cubes.  We watched a Christmas movie on the Hallmark channel that we hadn’t seen.

Monday July 22

We enjoyed the Monday morning mission devotional.  It was a musical program for the most part with some narrative.  I was a very enjoyable devotional.  See the program below. 

We also said goodbye to missionaries who are leaving this week.  Half of the missionaries in our MTC group are leaving this week:  Elder and Sister Barber, Sister Stratford, Sister Dircks, Sister Laimite, Sister Coombs, Sister Hansen, Elder and Sister Terry.  Here is a picture of Sister Stratford with Sister Tolman.  These two have had a special bond during this past year.

After the program I returned the parking passes that I had reserved for Glenna and Lori and for JoAnne and Craig.  I met Sister Tolman on the first floor and as we were starting to leave the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, a thought came to me that we ought to have breakfast at the Nauvoo Café. That was an inspired idea as Sister Tolman reminded me that we haven’t been out for any type of meal in quite a while where she hasn’t prepared at least part of the meal.

Today I decided to try adding a family to FamilyTree using a different ancestral line. I have mostly looked for descendants on the Kerr and Affleck lines.  I looked at descendants from Bold Eaton who is the great-great grandfather of my great-grandmother Marinda Woodward.  I found a family to add to the tree.  First, I found birth details for Mary Handford which made her eligible for temple work and then added Fanny Ellen Easton’s husband William James Smith and their nine children and reserved temple work for them.  See the family listed below. 

We attended the Hail and Farewell dinner.  Sister Tolman prepared her standard won-ton salad.  We sat at the same table as Sister Stratford and Sister Dircks who are in our MTC group and are leaving this week.

Elder Sherrill, our branch president, asked me to help give him a priesthood blessing along with President McKnight, a counselor in our mission presidency.  Elder Sherrill has been having trouble with his knee from time to time.

About two weeks ago our Zone Leader Elder Dahlin asked me to submit and article for our bi-weekly mission newsletter titled "The Vineyard".  Here is the article that I submitted.  I have previously shared some of this in my blog.

Tuesday July 23

We received some help and training from Mike Hall who works for the library as a genealogist with expertise in Portuguese records and is assigned to Help Services on Tuesdays from 8 to 10am.  Since we aren’t normally busy then, he spends time helping us.  This time he gave us some hints on how Catholic birth, marriage and death records are set up and are consistent from country to country since the 1500’s.

As Floor Supervisor, I assigned Sister Nelson to help a woman find her family. I knew that she would have some trouble helping her since the women didn’t know too much about any ancestors past her parents.  I checked to see what progress Sister Nelson was making and found that she hadn’t found much so I used ancestry.com and was able to find out quite a bit and added a generation to her tree. 

Here is what we found.  Her father was born in 1926 when his mother was in her teens and likely was an unwed mother when he was born. His mother married two years later to another man.  She had heard that her father was raised by his grandparents.  This was confirmed by what we found on a 1935 state census and the 1940 US census.  On the 1930 US census he, his mother and the grandparents were listed.  We found records of her father’s mother but not her father’s father.  Her father’s name ended in Jr so this gives her grandfather’s name.  We tried to find the grandfather using this name and found several possibilities but nothing for certain. 

I helped another couple from Indianapolis, Indiana taking over from another missionary who needed to go to lunch and we were just back from our own lunch.  The husband was somewhat self-sufficient but needed some help standardizing birth dates and places.  The wife was not very comfortable using a computer.  We did make some progress.  I found some census records, findagrave.com records and death records for her ancestors so we were able to get some birth and death dates and places.  They needed to get going as the husband was anxious to leave as they needed to travel to Las Vegas today.  I printed a pedigree chart and a death certificate which gave her something to take with her.  

After our shift at the library, we went to an open house at the JSMB for the retiring mission executive secretary, Elder Ted Hodges.  He served four years in this position.  We have been acquainted ever since we met him in person in January 2018 when we talked to him about serving a mission here.  He had suggested that I be his replacement some months ago but I am happy to be serving where we are in the library.  During the open house, I talked to the mission secretary who handles the parking passes and various other tasks.  She is from the Phoenix area and as we talked, she knows a lot of people we know including Gary and Lucy Richardson, David and Marsha Allen, the Rays, the Despains and others.  She dated David Allen's older brother Grant and was his dance partner in the 1980's.  She will be returning home to Arizona in August to be with her family.

Wednesday July 24

Today is Pioneer Day and a state holiday in Utah.  On the way to the library we saw some preparations on West Temple for the Days of 47 Parade.  Took some pictures of horses and a stagecoach.  

At lunch Sister Tolman took a picture of a stagecoach as we were on the way to Senior’s to take some beans for tonight’s dinner at Jayne’s.  The stagecoach ran the red light.

During our prayer meeting, I shared the story of George Mercer Kerr and Jane Affleck and their journey from England to the Salt Lake valley soon after their marriage.  Helped Elder Abernathy get the FamilySearch account set up for a woman from Lubbock, Texas.  When they finished, I helped the husband download the FamilyTree mobile app.  After lunch I helped AJ from Iowa who is here working.  He is African American and has done some research and has an account on ancestry.com.  We found some ancestors on FamilyTree. We downloaded the mobile apps and I showed him how to add and tag photos.  He thanked me for the help and had to get back to work as he had taken a little longer than planned on his lunch hour.  I helped several other missionaries with minor problems as they were helping guests.

We went to Sister Tolman’s sister Jaynes for dinner.  Jayne was not there as her husband Greg is in the hospital having a pacemaker installed.  The surgery was this morning and he was back home on Thursday and recovering nicely.  We enjoyed dinner and visited with Jayne’s children and their families.  We got there about 5:30pm and returned home about 8:30pm.  We took the Senior’s home.  As you can see from a picture taken from Jayne's home, there is still some snow in the top of the mountains. 

Thursday July 25

We talked to our daughter Laura and then went to Salt Lake Temple.  We completed an Endowment session and then a sealing session where we completed sealings for four couples.

Friends from Arizona, Allen and Carolyn Butler, stopped by for a short visit.  They just completed the MTC and will be going to serve a one-year full-time mission in Lubbock, Texas at the Institute of Religion at Texas Tech University.  I was reminded about Texas Tech being the university in Lubbock when I helped a couple from Lubbock, Texas yesterday at the Library.  The Butler’s will also be able to serve as Temple Ordinance workers at the Lubbock Temple.  We both worked with Allen when we were first called at directors of the Family History library at our stake center in Tempe and I worked with him on the High Council.

I helped a family where the son is under 13 and needed help from his parents to activate his personal familysearch.org account.  He was not very patient and had already tried four different usernames to try to activate his account.  I assessed the situation and determined we needed both the son’s phone and the father’s phone.  It was a comedy of errors.  Once we got them all together, the father’s phone was out of battery so we couldn’t active the son’s account.   I ended up helping both the mother who was born in China and the father who was born in New Jersey.  I helped them add family members to the tree and had the most success on the father’s line.  I showed them how to search for records.  They couldn’t stay long as they wanted to tour the state capital building before it closed at 8pm.  The son can get his account later at home.

Friday July 26

During my morning reading which always includes reading from the Book of Mormon and normally reading an article or two from the on-line Meridian Magazine, I read an article about how the beauty and diversity of the earth indicate God’s love for us.  The article is titled “The Creation as an Act of Love”.  Here is the link.    

I played 9 holes of golf with Dave Curtis at Nibley Park Golf course.  We only kept score if we made a bogey or better.  I managed three pars and Dave had two.  Sister Tolman and Julie Curtis went to breakfast and then went to Curtis’ apartment to paint with watercolors.  After leaving the Curtis’ we went food shopping at Lucky’s before leaving for the library to start our 1pm shift.

I helped a couple from Iowa. I helped the wife find a birth record from Germany on a microfilm for her ancestor.  We downloaded the digital image of the record and I emailed it to her since it is only available in the library.  I helped the husband get an account and build his tree.  Both use ancestry.com and they will now have the capability of searching records on FamilySearch.org as well.  I showed him the Research Wiki and how to look at the catalog and find all the record collections that are searchable. 

I helped Barbara and Tim Miller, a member couple from Houston.  Even though it was not my turn to help, Elder Benton thought that I would be the best missionary to help them.  I helped Tim with a few questions that he had on his Family Tree but he mostly worked on his own.  Barbara had an area of her tree that took a while to figure out.  Her great grandmother was born in 1879 and showed on the 1900 census with her parents and sister.  The 1880 census showed her great grandmother and siblings with a different last name.  This last name Bovinet also showed as neighbors on the 1900 census.  This was a second marriage for the great grandmother and we found her first husband with her on the 1870 and 1860 census records.  We found some duplicates and finally resolved the issues with this family and put them all together.  Ancestry.com was a great help in sorting out the family.  We printed the various census records and she was so happy to be able to show her aunt what she had found.  There is a lot of temple work to do and she reserved the ordinances for all these ancestors.  She was very happy with what we were able to do in about an hour and a half. 

Barbara Miller with Elder Tolman

Saturday July 27

We completed the weekly cleaning this morning.  We talked to our daughter Julianna. She and Angie and two others will participate in a jigsaw puzzle contest.  We heard from her later and they won the contest and set a record for the shortest time completing the two puzzles.  

I helped a man David who wanted to find out about his family.  We were not able to set up an account for him as his cell phone ran out of battery and he was unable to connect to his email on our computers or on his IPAD.  I logged on to my account and we found his father with a lot of ancestors connected and his mother with lots of ancestors connected.  The two were not connected, so we took care of that on my FamilySearch account.  I gave him the information so he will be able to connect to his parents once he gets his account set up.

I helped a mother, Heidi, and her son and daughter visiting from near Sandusky, Ohio.  We  added her husband to the tree and connected her two children and then started searching for her family.  It took a while but we found her grandfather and his parents who were born in Sweden.  We found a yearbook picture of her grandfather on Ancestry.com and uploaded the picture to FamilySearch.  It was time for dinner so I let them know to just raise a hand if they needed help.   The teenage son had been watching what we were doing so he took over and by the time dinner was finished, they had made a lot of progress.

I completed a training document on how to use the printers on our floor and we will use this in our prayer meetings probably next week.  I showed our new missionary Elder Petersen and he liked the training and learned some things from it.

It was busier than normal from 6pm on and we have kept our missionaries busy which is not normally the case on Saturday night.