August 11 - 17 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday August 11

We enjoyed Music and the Spoken Word.  There are fewer people attending than in the past several weeks. By the second Sunday in September, the broadcast venue will go back to The Tabernacle.

Sacrament meeting talks were on the 6th Article of Faith “We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely,  apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.  Each speaker took a different take on the subject.  The first speaker talked about the different callings as listed in the Article of Faith.  The second talked about blessings that we have as members of the church and the last speaker talked her own personal blessings that she received when she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a single mother.

The Priesthood/Relief Society lesson on Elder Uchtdorf’s talk “Missionary Work – Sharing What Is in Your Heart”.

I finished reading “Anna – the Prophetess” by H.B. Moore.  The story of Simeon and Anna is recorded in Luke 2:25-38.  They both recognized the divine calling of the baby Jesus when Mary and Joseph brought Him to the temple as an infant.  Here is some information that I found on an online review that I agree with.  “Author H. B. Moore has a talent for bringing the scriptures to life. I love the heartfelt and caring perspective she brings to these amazing historical characters. As I read this book, I could only imagine the real Anna as she awaited the birth of the Savior. I loved the addition of the fictional Julia and what she able to learn from Anna and her wisdom. The alternative timeline was enjoyable and a great way to get to know who Anna could have been. I enjoyed Julia and her journey and the small miracles that came along the way.”  Here is the link for the review

We had six young Elders for dinner.  Sister Tolman prepared burritos with rice, beans, sausage and other fixings along with chips and salsa.  Dinner was a hit.  

L to R - Elders Wintersteen, Wacaser, Steele, Sister Tolman, Elders Irvine, Garr and Pastor

We attended a funeral viewing for Sister Tolman’s cousin Steven Wilding.  We were able to see a lot of relatives including all Steven’s eight siblings (5 boys and 4 girls in the family).  Their mother Norma is Sister Tolman’s mother’s sister.

Monday August 12

We attended the Monday morning devotional.  The subject was a presentation on what the Library Services Zone does.  They handle a lot of librarian type duties.  They re-shelve the books that are used by the library guests.  They make sure that the printer/copiers are kept stocked with papers.  They help guests find books and also help with the book and slide scanner.

Steve Bowles from our stake in Tempe called yesterday and we met him and his wife Shirley at the Library today and spent time with them from about 9am to 11am.  They are making some changes to the library in the stake center and in the family history direction for the stake and wanted our input.

We went to the Tracy Aviary in Liberty Park.  We spent a lot of time at this park during my growing up years in Salt Lake City.  We spent several hours there.  Here are a few pictures.

Bald Eagle 

We attended President Fenn’s Book of Mormon class.  It always strengthens my testimony of the gospel, the restoration and the Book of Mormon when I hear him.  The 90 minute class goes by quickly.

Tuesday August 13

This has been a memorable day in several ways.  At our prayer meeting President McKnight talked about the changes that were implemented in the library last week.  The greeters on the first floor are to identify where the incoming guests will have the best experience based on what they want to accomplish during their visit and then sent the guests to the appropriate floor. Last week the instructions were misunderstood and greeters on the first floor were not sending anyone to our floor. 

President McKnight also let us know that when our current Zone Leaders the Dahlin’s leave the fourth week of September, they will not be replaced and the missionaries on our floor and the US/Canada floor below will be combined into one zone.  This means that we will not be asked to serve as Zone Leaders but will continue to serve as Assistant Zone Leaders.  We are happy to continue in this role.  President McKnight also met with us in our Zone Leadership meeting and we continued our discussion on implementing these and future changes.

I helped several individuals today.  First I helped Sister Croft with her blog.  She added some more pictures and published the first three blog entrees and I showed her how to communicate the blog information to her family.  I also helped her learn how to upload photos to the photos on the Gmail account.

I helped Loretta, a church member from Queen Creek Arizona, with finding books and other information on FamilySearch.  I showed her the Research Wiki.  She was wondering if Utah had birth and death records in the mid to late 1880’s and they did not.  I helped David Kruger who has visited before from Oklahoma.  He wanted my opinion on some questions he had about some family members on FamilyTree.  I also helped an older man who looked like he might need some help.  He had some questions about one of his wife’s ancestors.  There were some children added to his family who didn’t appear to belong there.  I helped him see the issue with what had been added and he will follow-up with the person who made the changes.  He thanked me for the insight into what needed to be figured out and what documents to look for.

David and Jacqui Price came to our place for a visit.  They are in town for BYU Education week which starts next week.  We met at our apartment building and walked to Kneader’s Café in the City Creek Mall for dinner.  On the way there we saw Elder Gerrit Gong walking to his condo from the Church Administration Building.  Sister Tolman stopped and talked to him and introduced herself as David Senior’s sister.  Her brother David became good friends with him while he was serving as a mission president in Thailand and Elder Gong was the area President.  We had a short but very enjoyable visit and then he asked if we wanted a picture with him.  This was a special moment as Sister Tolman has been wanting to get a chance to meet Elder Gong.  She texted her brother David later in the evening and Elder Gong had already contacted David and told about our visit.  Here is a picture of us with Elder Gong.

We enjoyed dinner with the Prices at Kneader’s and returned to our apartment to visit. They recently spent a month in Tahiti. They brought me several sea shells from Maupiti.  Two were shells from the beach and one was a Tiger Cowry.  These are shown below. 

They shared an amazing video that David produced about their trip.  We watched part of it.  Here are a couple of pictures from their video.  

Maupiti - a small but beautiful island where I was first assigned as a missionary.

Manta Ray in the Maupiti lagoon

Wednesday August 14

I read two interesting articles from the Meridian Magazine. 

One article is titled “The Art of Lost and Found”.  Read the full article at this link.  This article reminds me about Sister Tolman and her ability to find lost stuff.  Here is a short quote “ I’m the only person in my house who can find anything. My powers are both blessing and curse.”

The other article is titled “Did Jesus Visit Russia after His Resurrection”. Read the full article at this link. The author visited Russia in 1992 and found a picture the depicted Christ visiting the Slavic people.  Here is a quote “inspired by an ancient folk tale that said after Christ’s death he visited the Slavic people, ancestors of the Russians, to bring his gospel. The people who listened to Christ were the humble and lowly in the farms and countryside. They took upon themselves his name which when written phonetically in our characters rather than Cyrillic is Kristiany. The word for peasant in Russian is Kristiany.”

We met a new missionary couple at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and brought them to our floor.  They are waiting for visas to Portugal and will be working on our floor until then.   Sister Tolman helped them get started with FamilySearch.  On Friday they found out that their visas are approved and are extremely happy they will be going to Portugal next week and be able to help at the Lisbon Temple Open house which starts on Saturday Aug 17 and continues to Aug 31.   

Worked with Elder and Sister Croft.  Elder Croft has done a lot of Family History and found many ancestors needing temple work. I showed him the descendancy research can be done to add more family members.  We reviewed several duplicate situations in his tree.  I showed him my family history lessons and how to find families to add to the tree.  Sister Croft communicated to her family about her blog and they couldn’t believe what she had done.  She told them that someone had helped her and she would add his picture to the blog.  Here is our picture. 

Elder Croft, Elder Tolman and Sister Croft

Carolyn Schumacker whom I helped on Friday brought some information to add to her ancestors on FamilySearch.  She doesn’t have a computer at home so I had printed out a pedigree chart for her.  She had some information to add to several ancestors so I made those additions under my FamilySearch account.  I printed a pedigree chart for the mother’s side of the family.  She plans to review it and bring some updates needed on FamilyTree.

I printed out temple cards to take to Byron and Peggy when we go to see them.  The cards are for the Smith family that I found last week and showed on last week’s blog.

Thursday August 15

We attended the 8am Endowment Session at the Salt Lake Temple and then left just before 10:30am to travel to Heber City as we had arranged to meet Byron and Peggy.  We met them at the Panda Express in downtown Heber City.  They had been camping at Wasatch State Park since Sunday night and are on their way home to Jensen.  We enjoyed lunch and visited with them for about two hours.  It was good to get a chance to see them.  We gave them the temple cards and they brought us some fresh vegetables from their garden- tomatoes, zucchini, squash and corn.  They also gave us four jars of raspberry jam. Here is a picture of us taken in their camper just before they left for home.

L ro R  Sister Tolman, Byron and Peggy Tolman, Elder Tolman

We went from Heber City to the Olympic Park in Park City and took a guided tour of the area.  It was exciting to see where some of the Olympic events took place in 2002.  Here are some pictures.

Practice area in the summer for ski jumping with backflips  (the skier is in the middle of his backflip getting ready to land in the pool) Good picture Sister Tolman 

 

Sister Tolman in the museum 

The ski jump hill with the Olympic Village in the background

Friday August 16

Today is our youngest daughter Christina’s 30th birthday.  We miss being with her and her sisters to celebrate.   We did listen to her sing Karaoke with several of her sisters on Thursday night (via Facebook).  Here are a couple of pictures.  

Angie, Christina Tolman, and Janny - Christmas 2011

 

Christina and Julianna - Christmas 2012

We went food shopping at Lucky’s and Smiths.  Sister Tolman fixed a good meal for our 3pm dinner. We had BLT sandwiches made with fresh tomatoes that my brother Byron and wife Peggy gave us when we saw them on Thursday.  There is nothing like fresh tomatoes.

I helped Don Attridge today as I normally do on Fridays.  He seemed to be a little better today.  We checked his DNA relatives on ancestry.com and found a cousin.  We reserved four Initiatory ordinances for him to complete next week.  We looked at his end of line ancestor who was born in Cork County, Ireland.  He needs to find some sources for the family and possibly find the parents.  He plans to try the British, Irish floor next Friday to see what he can find out.  If we can verify this ancestor, we can reserve temple work for some of this ancestor’s children.

Marlow and Mary Ann Ashton visited the library tonight.  Marlow served his mission in Tahiti about two years before I did.  Mary Ann was a missionary with us at the Mesa FamilySearch Library and previously served in our mission.  She had some copies to make so while Marlow was waiting, I let him watch the movie/video that David Price made of his visit to Tahiti and other islands.  He really enjoyed that and it kept him from getting bored waiting for Mary Ann.  I helped her get some documents scanned that she needs to use to try to get a refund.  We will see them at the Tahitian reunion in October.

Saturday August 17

This morning we found out that the Sister Croft received her visa to New Zealand so she and her husband will be flying out on Monday.  I sent her a text offering our congratulations and her was her reply “Thank You SO much!!!!  Thank you for the Big Part you have played in our Mission already!!!  We will never forget you!!!  Good thing we took that picture when we did!!!! The Croft’s.  Helping and getting to know missionaries who are waiting for visas has been an enjoyable part of our mission experience.

We had a very enjoyable day at the library.   I helped a family consisting of the grandmother and three grandchildren children.  The son Kyle Jenks just received his PHD and he was elected to be the person running the computer.  Kyles’s wife worked by herself with another missionary helping her.  With the four people helping they managed to figure out a lot of information.  The grandmother’s maiden name was Fowler. She said that her second husband was a Bird which is funny because the Fowler name comes from England and is a bird catcher.  They worked for more that two to three hours and I helped them for about half that time.   When they finished, I showed them how to print out fan charts and pedigree charts.  The grandmother was really happy with what we were able to accomplish. Here is their picture.

We were short help at the desk so I sat near the front so I could be available to get helpers as requested by the Floor Supervisor.  In between helping there, I was able to help a lot of people with tasks that didn’t take too much time such a helping with printing, making copies, finding books and answering quick questions about what they were trying to do on FamilySearch.  

Here is a funny thing that happened with our missionaries today.  Elder and Sister Disque help on Saturdays starting at about 1pm and normally bring in dough nuts or another treat.  They have been married nearly 70 years.  Elder Disque had just eaten a dough nut and sister Disque asked him if he would get her a dough nut and then put it where he had put his dough nut.  He said sure and promptly ate her dough nut.  She really got upset with him and had fire in her eyes.  He got her another dough nut and she managed to calm down a little.  

Saturday input from Sister Tolman

I was assigned to help part of a group.  There was a mother, two kids and the son’s girlfriend.  I was able to help the mother and one of the daughters.  The son kind of hung around us as well.  We did some adding and they followed some of the trails that went back.  Then we added other’s people.  The daughter was so cute.  As we worked she asked if I used technology much at home.  I said I did use my computer.  She said she thought so.   Later she said that I must have an amazing brain for it to work so well and so quickly to help them.  He asked if I ever saw anyone cry when they found special things.  I told her yes and paused.  She said I was very humble.  She was full of compliments and it made my day that someone her age would be so aware and complimentary.  We were able to find out when their family came over to this country from Russia and that excited all of them.  People are so much fun and I can see the spirit touch them.  Her name was Cassidy and she asked if she could give me a hug.  I gave her a hug and we took a picture of the family shown below.  It was a great way to close out the day.  As I look back on the day I don’t think I had hardly any spare time.  

We attended a concert at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square.  It was titled "Music from the Nations" by the Ensign Piano Quartet.  It was very entertaining and really good with four musicians playing on two pianos.