June 30 - July 6 - Sunday to Saturday

Here are a few pictures of the beautiful flowers around Temple Square.  It is wonderful to be able to walk through and around Temple Square as we are serving our mission here.  It was so great to have our daughter Janny and her family with us during this week.

Sunday June 30

We attended Music and the Spoken Word and it was exceptional.  As they said during the broadcast, nobody does patriotic music like the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square.  It was truly inspiring.  A couple next to us was from Surprise, Arizona.  We also talked to Linda Wallace and her daughter and granddaughter whom we helped in the library on Saturday as they were sitting just a couple of rows in front of us.  

Conference Center podium area decorated with Independence Day Theme

Our Sacrament meeting and Sunday School meetings were inspiring and uplifting.

Monday July 1

We attended our once a week mission devotional.  For this devotional we heard from eight missionaries.  We are so grateful for our parents and the love that we always felt in our homes.  Several missionaries shared stories of their upbringing in very difficult environments.

At our branch leadership meeting, I noticed the date conflict as two events were scheduled for July 15, our Help Services Zone Party and the bi-monthly Hail and Farewell.  Fortunately, the Hail and Farewell had been scheduled for the week later so we are fine. 

We had our MTC group social.  We attended a barbershop event just outside the Conference Center on the southwest steps.  Went back to our social room for visiting and desserts.  We had a group picture taken with all the missionaries who started with us nearly a year ago.

Front Row- Mary Combs, Deanna Stephens, Dixie Stratford, Judy Laimite,
Elaine Ashcroft, Shirley Dircks, Marcie Seve

Back row- Rick Turner, Danette Turner, Glen Tolman, Lynne Tolman, Larry Bigelow, Sandi Bigelow, Elder & Sister Terry, Ken Barber, Debbie Barber, Cathy Phillips & husband, Renee Hansen

We had some time to rest as Janny and family will arrive late tonight.  After she arrived around 11pm she needed to pick up April at just after midnight so we didn’t get much sleep.

Tuesday July 2

Sister Tolman stayed at our apartment with Janny and family to help them get settled.

I helped Stephanie from the Phoenix area who stopped at the library with a friend.  She is on a long road trip.  Her friend wanted to add her family to FamilySearch.  Stephanie just wanted to find out a few things about her parents and grandparents.  I found her mother on the 1920 with her parents and siblings.  I also found her parent’s marriage date and place. I couldn’t find her mother on the 1930 or 1940 census records so I asked a research specialist to see what he could find.  In any case she was happy with what I had found for her.

I helped Johnnie from Georgia.  We added family members to his tree as we found them census and other records.  His wife was amazed at how much we had found.  I helped him until it was time for lunch.

I helped Cyril from Pennsylvania.  We found his parents on the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census.  We found him on FamilyTree already with his parents.   I wondered why we couldn’t find him on the 1940 census until Cyril let me know that he changed his name and then we found him and his wife.  He had changed his name due to employment discrimination as he was unable to find a job due to his polish ancestry.

Had branch leadership meeting and discussed resources needed to run the Help Services Zone.  We had dinner with Janny and family.

Wednesday July 3

I led the 7:30am prayer meeting as normal.  I had some branch work to complete with updating the information about the July Sacrament meeting speakers and prayers.  Our zone has the prayers and speakers.  Elder Dahlin gave me the information and I updated our on-line spreadsheet.  I use this information to build the weekly bulletins that we pass out before Sacrament Meeting.  This one of my branch responsibilities.

Elder Homer and I were asked to help a couple, Alan and Jean, visiting from Houston.  They are a little older than I am.  Based on our initial discussion with them, we decided to set up a single FamilySearch account that they would share.  I helped Alan get the account established and then he entered his wife on the tree.  Elder Homer then started helping Jean and I started helping Alan.  Alan’s ancestors were Jewish and born in Eastern Europe.  We were able to build three generations on the tree for him but we did not find any ancestors who were already added.  I spent over an hour helping him.  Some of the challenges were with name changes and adoptions.  Before leaving him to do more searching on his own, I had him install the FamilySearch mobile apps.  I took a picture of them with him phone and helped him upload the picture to FamilySearch.  He has family pictures to add when he gets home.

We left the library at 12 noon so we could spend the afternoon with Janny and family.  After lunch we went to Thanksgiving Point in Lehi. We drove separately and we left before they did but we managed to get there at the same time and place when we saw them pass us on the freeway and followed them.  She had thought that her family might like the Museum of Natural Curiosity.  We went there first and found out about what else we could do there and decided to go to the Museumof Ancient Life.  We really enjoyed our visit there and spent a couple of hours.  Here are a few pictures taken at the museum.

Eli, Courtney and Janny

April crawling out of a cave

 Elder Tolman in front of a large turtle

Candid shot of Janny, Eli, Courtney, April, and Sister Tolman 

Excellent example of a dinosaur replica

Actual fossils

Thursday July 4

We celebrated our country’s Independence Day today.  We went to Riverside Park in Rose Park for breakfast at just after 8am.  Mom and Dad Senior’s stake sponsors a free breakfast of pancakes, hash browns and sausage along with juice to drink.  We spent time visiting with the Seniors and some others who were there.    We went to the Seniors for lunch around noon (pizza and salad) and visiting.  We were so excited to see our new great granddaughter Jaylin and to see her parents Mikey and Tori (they all arrived late Wednesday night).  We really enjoyed meeting her for the first time.  We have seen lots of pictures but nothing is as good seeing her in person.  She is such a fun little girl.

Sister Tolman with Great Granddaughter Jaylin

Lois Senior with her first Great Great Grandchild

Jaylin discovering soft grass in mom and dad Senior's backyard

We then took some more family pictures including the five generation pictures that we wanted for sure with our great granddaughter Jaylin.  

Five Generation Picture:  Front- Lois and Rowland Senior.  Back- Tori and Mikey with Jaylin,  

Janny Butler, Lynne and Glen Tolman

 We had planned to go to Layton to meet up with Marn but the weather turned rainy and cold and we changed our plans to instead spent the evening at Seniors.  We had good dinner of chicken, potato salad, chips and watermelon.  We enjoyed the day there. 

Dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Seniors. Eli, April, Courtney, Mikey, Tori

The neighbors gave us a fireworks show so we didn’t miss going to the park in Layton for the fireworks and didn’t need to drive so far.  Here is a picture of Janny and her family with mom and dad Senior 

Friday July 5  

Attended the Bountiful Temple on the 9am Endowment session.  Janny and family went to Lagoon. 

Helped a local member Karen with some questions she had on her Family Tree.  She is her family genealogist and is getting ready for a family reunion coming up in North Dakota.  She keeps track of all her living relatives and produces creative family tree representations to connect with her cousins.

Sister Tolman and I helped the Wilkins family.   I helped the mother Janine and then later her husband Mark arrived from the main floor and I helped him for a few minutes.  Sister Tolman helped their daughter Lindsey who already had a FamilySearch account and didn’t remember when she set it up.  We ended up finding a lot of information already on FamilySearch / FamilyTree for their families.  I encouraged Janine to add the photos and stories that she has at home to FamilySearch.

I worked as floor supervisor from 4pm to about 6:30pm and during this time was able to help several people with quick questions such as printing a document and scanning a document to a flash drive. 

Saturday July 6

We worked at the library from 8am to 5pm.  We were busy most of the day and were helping most of the time when we weren't floor supervisors.  

I helped Patricia Felber Keller for about two hours in the morning.  Her objective was to build a tree for her two grandsons.  We added at least forty new family members and built four or more generations.  Most of these family members were new to FamilyTree and we added them using FamilySearch records and ancestry.com.  I would look for as much information as possible about each ancestor while she was adding them to Family Tree.   I printed some pedigree charts starting with her and then starting with her son.  She went to the main floor to print out some large fan charts (one each for the two grandsons).  Patricia was really pleased with the results and asked if she could make a financial donation which I told her she could on the main floor.

Janny and her family visited us at the library in the afternoon.  We enjoyed having them visit us there.  We took a picture on our floor and showed them around and then went to the Discovery Floor.  They enjoyed some of the Discovery Experiences.  We took a picture on our floor and a picture on the Discovery Floor.

On the third floor in the library - four generations

On the Discovery Floor - Four Generations

We had a delicious dinner for all of us consisting of pulled pork sandwiches and veggies.  After dinner my sister Gerri visited us as she wanted to see Janny and family.  Mikey, Tori and Jaylin left for the airport at about 9pm.  Things will be a lot quieter around her starting tomorrow morning.  We all plan to attend Music and the Spoken Word and then Janny leaves for home after that.   We have enjoyed having them visit this week.