July 7 - 13 - Sunday to Saturday

We had a beautiful sunset on Tuesday night.

Sunday July 7

Sister Tolman fixed breakfast burritos for our daughter Janny and her children April, Courtney and Elijah.  We completed packing her vehicle as they will be returning home this morning.  We all attended Music and the Spoken Word at the Conference Center.  Janny and family stayed for the run through and then left for home just after 9am.  As we stepped out to say goodbye and give them all hugs, I noticed that Patricia Keller whom I helped yesterday at the library was sitting on our same row.  I was good to see her again.  This is two weeks in a row that I have seen a person at Music and the Spoken Word whom I helped the previous day at the library.

We had an excellent Fast and Testimony meeting with all shared testimonies being short and heart felt testimonies of Heavenly Father, His son Jesus Christ, prophets, and the Book of Mormon.

We went to Seniors for dinner.  Sister Tolman took leftovers of pulled pork that she made on Saturday.  We watched an episode of the Good Witch series on Hallmark.  We then watched the 50th wedding anniversary video that our daughter Angie had converted from VHS to DVD and sent with Janny to give to them (thank you Angie!!).  We all enjoyed watching the DVD especially mom and dad.  It was enjoyable to see all the members of our family as they were 20 years ago when we all flew to Salt Lake City for their anniversary.  I can’t believe that I videotaped that much and it turned out really good.

We received a text from Janny indicating that they arrived home safely and only one stop on the way at Page, Arizona.

One thing we worked on with our grandson Elijah last week was a 300 piece puzzle.  It was difficult to complete as it was easy to mix-up placing puzzle pieces.  When they left, we had several pieces that didn't seem to fit correctly.  We finally figured out the puzzle after they left.  See it below.

Monday July 8

We attended the Monday morning mission devotional and learned about the TROC Zone which handles and coordinates the preparation of on-line records for indexing and then adding to FamilySearch.  After the devotional, we returned the parking pass and key that Janny used for her stay.   I noticed a new decoration in the center of the first floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building shown below.

Took a picture of hollyhocks. I see a few of these in Arizona but remember having them in my yard growing up.

Sister Tolman went to the library and then back to our apartment while I went to the credit union to deposit the rent check which we get automatically each month from the couple who are staying at our home.  We did the weekly cleaning and laundry which we weren’t able to complete last week as we were busy all week working and spending time with Janny and her family.  I took a picture of the temple on the way back.  The angel Moroni was shining brightly in the sun.

We enjoyed a picnic with Dave and Julie Curtis in City Creek Canyon.  They have a condo in Salt Lake and are visiting for the month of July.  

Dave and Julie Curtis and Sister Tolman

 

Picture of a mountain taken from where we stopped for our picnic

Tuesday July 9

We both had two hours today as Floor Supervisors at the desk with the assignment to greet guests,  determine what they want to accomplish at the library, and then assign missionaries to help them.  I helped from 8 to 10 am and Sister Tolman helped from 12 noon to 2 pm. We were busy off and on today and had several times when we didn’t have enough missionaries.   Between 8 and 10 am I helped a lot of individuals with minor requests such as how to print and quick questions such as finding a book and how to find books and other items using the catalog.  I showed one woman how to find out if the book was in the library and if not to see if it is available on-line.  I helped a man search for books on the catalog.  One book he wanted to read was not available in our library but was in Ogden where he lives.  He was happy that I helped him learn how to search and find books.

I helped a couple in the 60’s from Iowa.  Mostly I helped the wife learn how to search immigration records for her ancestors.  We tried to recover her FamilySearch account username and password but she will have to do that from her hotel where she can read her email.  While she was searching for ancestors, I checked to find ancestors on FamilyTree including the one for who she was searching immigration records.  I found him and traced him down to her grandparents and we added her parents to the tree.  After lunch I visited with the husband and found out about them and their plans for retirement which is just a few years away.  I enjoyed helping them.

I helped a woman who is at the library doing research for her family.  She had a question on Family Search about how to remove her FamilyTree since people were making changes to information that she had added with a lot of research and effort.  We talked for a while about how FamilySearch is a shared tree and that other can make changes.  I was able to help her calm down a little and showed her how she can add memories to her family.  In the end, I showed her how to disconnect her father from his parents so she won’t see that relationship.  She thanked me for helping her.

I helped Ed from Tucson.  He is a year older that I am and has been doing a lot of research on his family. I helped him with some updates on his tree on ancestry.com and then worked with him to update his family tree on FamilySearch.org.  He was looking to extend back from an ancestor which I found on FamilyTree but I noticed that his connection to this ancestor did not show on FamilySearch.  He doesn’t have the hard evidence connecting this child to the parents but it looks possible. I added information so he can make this connection when he verifies it.  We looked at another ancestor for whom he had a birth certificate.  I suggested that he add the document to FamilySearch.

We attended an hour-long concert at Brigham Young Park and it was excellent.  The group was the BYU Mountain Strings. They play traditional American Cajun, bluegrass and western music.  Here is the link for their website.   

BYU Mountain Strings at Brigham Young Park

Wednesday July 10                    

Happy birthday to our daughter Kim.  We miss her and think about her often.

I helped a man here with his wife visiting with a tour group.  He is from the San Francisco area.  His wife wanted to set up an account and work to build a tree.  I shared with him that we could probably find his parents on historical records.  We found his dad on the 1940 census and found his World War II draft registration card.  I printed both these documents for him.  His was excited to see his father and grandparents on the 1940 census.  We also printed out a WWII draft registration card for his father’s brother.  We then found his mother on the 1940 census and printed that as well.  I showed him where he could go near his home to get help at one of our local family history centers.  He then decided that he wanted to set up a FamilySearch account but we had no way to verify his account since he didn’t have his cell phone with him and we couldn’t access his email.  He will get an account when he returns home.

I helped a woman add ancestors to FamilyTree based on what she has learned on her ancestry.com tree.  We worked on several different lines and were able to find additional information on FamilySearch that she did not have on her ancestry.com tree.  We also found the 1870 census for an ancestor and were able to correct the indexing as this is now an option on FamilySearch to update the indexing when names are indexed incorrectly.   

I helped one of our missionaries, Elder Miller from Park City, upload family pictures from his phone to FamilySearch.  I had him install the Memories app and showed him how easy it was to upload photos from his phone.  He was wondering how he was going to get photos from his phone to FamilySearch and now he knows how easily it can be done.

I sat down and the woman next to me asked for help with printing or downloading pages from a book that was available on-line.  I tried several options and then needed to show her how to use the “snipping tool” to copy the page image and then download it to her flash drive.  She was so happy as she had been trying for more than a half hour to figure out what to do and then finally asked for help.  It was a simple thing to do but she was very grateful for the help. When not assigned to help a guest, I try to sit at a computer near the guests and very often am able to provide help.

I helped a man who is here in Salt Lake City on business and has been here two weeks.  He is just younger than I am.  When he came into the library, I was by the front desk and he said he didn’t need any help.  I followed him to where he sat down and he ended up needing help.  He used to have an account on ancestry.com and I showed him show he can access the free library version.  He logged on to his FamilySearch account after two tries.  I helped him fix a problem on his tree where someone had connected the wrong person as his great grandmother.  We found the great grandmother on the tree and then connected her to the great grandfather and his tree was then correct.  He had some more searching to do to extend his family line so I showed him how to search the 1870 census for what he needed and let him continue searching by himself.

I helped Charlotte from Texas.  She is here for the week with her husband.  She had some questions on her tree on FamilySearch.  I helped her for about an hour and we made some excellent progress adding and updating family members and attaching source documents.  

Renee Reidhead, a friend from Arizona, visited us in the evening at our apartment.  She joined us for dinner and visited for about two hours.  It was good to hear news from home.  She was here visiting her sister.  She and her husband Charlie were members of our ward before the last stake realignment.  Their children were the age of several of our children and were friends growing up in Tempe.

Thursday July 11                          

It reached 100 degrees today for the first time this year.  We talked to our daughter Laura.  She normally calls us on Thursday morning.  Attended an Endowment and sealing session at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple in the morning.

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

We were at the Library from 6 to 9pm as per our normal schedule.  Helped a new missionary, Elder Olsen, with questions that he had.  Helped a man copy several books to a flash drive.  He will use what he scanned teaching a seminary class.

Helped a couple about our age, Linda and Gordon, from Massachusetts.  One of the young Elders helped Gordon and I helped Linda.  I was unable to setup a FamilySearch Account for them due to a problem with the system not being able to verify text messages.  I have a separate FamilySearch account that I use for situations like this.  We used that account and found her paternal grandparents on the Tree and added her father and her mother and connected family members and attached sources.  She will work on getting her account connected when she gets home and can then connect to her parents who are now on Family Tree. 

Friday July 12                  

We have had warmer weather this week with a high of 101 on Thursday and a high of 100 today.   The forecast for the next 10 days is for high temperatures in mid to upper 90’s.  For our Arizona friends and family this is not hot weather but it is for those living here.  For us it is warm but not uncomfortable.

I completed writing an article for our mission letter titled “The Vineyard”.  Elder Dahlin asked me to write an article about an Elijah moment.  We went food shopping this morning.  Julianna called and we talked to her.  She calls at least once a week.  She checks our schedule and calls when we are not at the library.

One highlight for the day was helping two friends who have been visiting the library for a long time.  One now lives in Heber City and the other lives in Las Vegas.  They are members of our church and needed some help using their ancestry accounts and wanted to know how they could extend their trees.  When I looked at their accounts, I found out that they were continuing to use paid ancestry.com accounts.  The one thought that the free ancestry account available for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not include access to the world edition and I let her know that it did.  I helped them convert their paid ancestry accounts to the free accounts available to our church members.  They were very happy about that.  I showed one of them how to extend her tree by adding more ancestors by transferring information from her FamilySearch Tree to her Ancestry.com tree.  She will continue that effort at home.

I helped a woman visiting from the east coast.  She had a tree on ancestry.com and wanted to transfer information from her Ancestry.com tree to FamilySearch.  Her heritage is mostly Hispanic and when we looked at what was on FamilyTree we found an extensive tree for her ancestors who were in California going back to the early 1800’s.  We connected her to the existing ancestors on the Family Tree and made some corrections and additions.  She was happy with what we were able to accomplish.  We found a family with 6 children that was duplicated on FamilySearch.  Rather than taking the time to merge the records, I told her that I would take care of it later which I did when things slowed down in the evening.

I talked to a man who was here with a friend.  She worked on building a tree while he watched.  He had a Detroit Tiger hat so that started a conversation.  He lived for 48 years in the northern suburbs of Detroit.  He graduated from South High School in Salt Lake City in 1962 and then from the University of Utah before moving to Michigan. 

I met a new service missionary couple, the Bradshaw’s, who work on the Discovery Floor.  They attended our prayer meeting by mistake a week ago and I told him that I would help him learn how to add to his tree on FamilySearch.  I had done some checking on his tree to see what I could find.  I saw him today and he indicated that he would come up for help in the evening.  I was able to show him what I found and we plan on spending some time together on Friday nights when it is not busy learning how to add to his tree.

Shared by Sister Tolman for Friday July 12

Tonight I was assigned to help a young woman and her friend.  Glen talked a little with her friend and he said that he didn’t have any information with him so he didn’t want to get an account.  He said he would watch.  So I started to work with Lindsey Palmer.  She was from Boston but her home had been in the Dallas area.  She was a cute, tiny bubbly person that got excited about everything we found.  When I say tiny she is only 4’7”.  This came up because of one of the records that we found.

As we got started no connections came up.  However, a short time later we found we had a duplicate as we started to attach a record.  We completed the merge and everything opened up on that line.  Some parts of the line went back to the 1600’s and she was amazed by that.  We then went back and looked at some records.  We found a census that had her family on it and she was able to see the profession and where the person’s parents were born.  She was so excited to see this.  And then we found her grandfather’s draft registration card and he was only 5’6”.  She turned to her friend and said “see all of my family are short”.  She was excited to see his signature on the bottom of the card.  They were catching a plane so they had to leave for the airport shortly so she and a different friend went down to the discovery floor to see who she was related to.  However, the other friend was so interested that he stayed and opened an account so that he could start adding things when he returned home.

The spirit of Elijah is truly contagious.  So often it starts out with only one person opening an account and ends up with others in the group or family also opening accounts.  It is exciting to see our families grow and expand as we find and add more information. 

Saturday July 13                           

We did some minor cleaning and straightening in the apartment during the morning including taking out the garbage and recycling and doing some laundry.   We found out that we will only be working from 8am to 12 noon on July 24th which will give us part of the day off for the holiday.

I helped a family visiting from New Jersey.  The father’s name is Daniel and was here with his son Teddy and daughter Abigail.  We set up one account under the father’s name and had all three work on the tree together.  It was enjoyable to help them. The daughter picked up how to use FamilySearch quickly and ended up adding a yearbook picture that contained the pictures of her mother’s parents.  They were in the same yearbook and on the same page.  She added the photo and tagged them both.  We found a lot of information about the family. 

Kristi and her two teenage daughters visited the library.  They were on Temple Square and had a little time before they needed to get to the airport to return home to Florida.  The mother wanted to find out about her husband’s family as he has Hawaiian ancestry and she wanted to show this connection to her daughters.  She also thought he had some Portuguese ancestry as well.  Since they had less than an hour, I wanted to see what records were available about this part of the family before trying to set up a FamilySearch account.  We looked on FamilySearch and didn’t find much and then looked on ancestry.com and found a lot of records about the family that showed both the Hawaiian ancestors and ancestors from Portugal.  We downloaded a lot of information from ancestry.com to a flash drive including findagrave.com, 1900 to 1940 census records and World War II draft registration cards.  While I was downloading the records, Kristi set up a FamilySearch account.  We were able to connect her husband back to his Hawaiian and Portuguese ancestors.  I was surprised that we found so much.   The three went away very happy.

I helped a young man from Germany who is in the US working for the summer.  We couldn’t find any records about his family but we created an account with his parents listed.  He will talk to his living relatives so he can add more to the tree.

I helped a mother and daughter who are both church members.  The mother was downstairs on the Discovery Floor and nothing was showing for her ancestors while some was showing for her daughter.  I had them log on to their Family Search accounts and I found a lot of problems on both their trees as there were a lot of duplicate records and extra connections for parents and grandparents.  I helped them eliminate the duplicates and was able to get their trees straightened out.

One of the young Elders came to the desk and asked someone to replace him as he was having trouble helping her as he couldn’t figure out what she wanted.  I worked with her for a little while and determined that she wanted to do temple work for a family member. I helped her find a deceased ancestor eligible for temple work and helped her print out three temple cards.