August 25 - 31 - Sunday to Saturday

Elder and Sister Tolman at Red Butte Garden on Monday August 26

Sunday August 25

We attended the choir broadcast this morning.  The choir and orchestra were joined by the Bells at Temple Square.  

The Bells at Temple Square in the front

 

We were reminded of the song “Slow Down” sung by Sissel during the Pioneer Concert.  To hear it again access the link.

Our church meetings were very enjoyable with our Sacrament meeting subject being the 13th Article of Faith and Sister Craven’s talk from April 2019 General Conference – Careful vs Casual.  The Priesthood and Relief Society lesson was based on Elder Soares talk “How Can I Understand”.

We had our 5th floor dinner social at 5pm with four young Elders.  The food was a potato bar, broccoli, salad with brownies and ice cream for dessert.

We visited the Seniors for just over an hour and sat outside on the patio.  The weather was cool enough but once the sun went down Sister Tolman became food for the mosquitos.

Monday August 26

We attended the Mission devotional at 7:30am.  We heard from the Olsen’s who are from Canada.  Elder Olsen serves on our floor and Sister Olsen serves on the Discovery Floor.  We went to the library right after to sign up for a food assignment for a combined zone social for tonight.

We visited the Red Butte Garden from about 11am to 2pm.  The gardens are really beautiful.  Red Butte creek which runs through the garden is the creek that goes through the Garden Park Ward grounds where I attended growing up and where we held our wedding reception in 1971.  Our daughter Laura told us about the Garden so we were looking forward to a visit.  The weather was cooler with a high in the 80’s so it was a perfect day to visit.  We took lots of pictures and had some good walking exercise. 

Looking West from the top of the gardens 

A reminder of home in Arizona

We attended the combined zone social between our Help Service Zone on the third floor and US/Canada Zone on the second floor.  We will be combined into one zone in mid-September.  Sister Tolman fixed chicken and lasagna in wonton cups. They were all gone so we didn’t have any leftovers.  Whatever she fixes to take to dinners and socials is nearly always gone. 

Tuesday August 27

We worked in the library from 8 am to 11 am before the Be Our Guest Training at 12 noon.  I helped a man, Lee Osborne, who came to the desk while I happened to be there and said he thought he had found a bug in the FamilySearch software.  I told him that I would help him.  He has a background in IT as a database designer.  We talked about FamilySearch and how amazing the software is and I shared with him some of the history as he has only been working for two years using FamilySearch / Family Tree.  He lives just south of Park City and visits the library about once a month.  The problem he was having was with an ancestral family where a child was entered twice, once as a male and once correctly as a female.  We went through the normal process of how to make the correction and it did not work but gave a funny error message as to why not.  I helped him document the issue and send an email to FamilySearch to make the correction.  Sure enough I believe that he had found a problem that normally he could correct but in this case he couldn’t.

Sister Christensen came into the library as she does nearly every day.  I was working on some the Library Training that we are asked to complete and she raised her hand for help.  She had a question that didn’t take too long to answer. She asked my opinion on whether to keep researching or go to the temple.  I told her that was her decision but if it were me, I would go to the temple.  She decided to go to the temple.

When I sat down by Sister Christensen there was a man sitting next to me on the other side.  I visited with him briefly and continued my training.  After a few minutes, he asked me if I could help and I said that I would.  He showed me his tree on FamilySearch and there were ancestors missing which he had on his tree on ancestry.com.  He needed some help adding the ancestor.  Since the ancestor was born in the United States in the late 1700’s, I said let’s check to see if he and his wife are already on the tree.  We found them and then connected his ancestor as a son and noticed that a daughter needed to be added as well.  I congratulated him for improving the tree.  He noticed that the ancestor’s death date did not agree with what he had on his ancestry tree.  We made the correction on FamilySearch to match his ancestry tree and then found a source on FamilySearch which had the death date.  We found that FamilySearch had the correct date so we changed it back and then he corrected the information on his ancestry tree.

I visited with Phil from Texas who is traveling the country with his wife in their RV.  We shared some travel experiences to common places where we have traveled including Korea and Hong Kong.  He likes fishing and I told him about Panguitch Lake in Southern Utah.

Just as we were leaving our apartment building to walk to the library after lunch, I heard a voice calling my name.  It was Ira Gentry.  He was with his son Adam.  They were on their way to the Church Office Building to have lunch with wife and mom, Lynn Gentry.  We had a short but good visit with them both.  Ira had driven back from Arizona with Adam and had brought back some things from there.

We had the first of four half days of "Be Our Guest" training to help us learn the principles that have made Disney so successful with guest service and how we can apply this learning to improve ourselves in addition to helping our guests at the library.

We went to the Salt Lake Temple just before 5pm and participated in a Sealing Session.  We completed three couple sealings and three children to parents sealings.

Sister Tolman fixed a wonderful dinner of rainbow trout (caught at Panguitch Lake) with squash and zucchini from Byron and Peggy’s garden. 

Wednesday August 28

I talked again to Phil from Texas whom I met on Tuesday.  He will be leaving for Moab on Thursday. I encouraged him to visit Arches National Park since it is so close to Moab.  He shared with me that his father was not a church member growing up but joined later in life and that his wife is not a member and this let me know that he is a member.  I always enjoy engaging guests in conversation and learning more about them.  I talked to his wife for a few minutes as well.  They are both avid genealogists and are focused on gaining information from the books on our floor.

I showed Sister Winn the training that we will be doing at the library and let her know that she would have no trouble with the Tier 1 and Tier 2 training.  Here is the training pyramid. 

All the missionaries in the library will need to complete Tier 1 and Tier 2.

I helped Sister Chabries find the 1870 census for an ancestor.  She had not been to find the census record.  I showed her how to use ancestry.com and we were able to find the 1860 and 1880 census records which she had already found.  The 1870 census was listed lower down the list of possible related records.  When we looked at the census, the family name was listed as Davies instead of Davis and her ancestor’s birth state was listed as South Carolina and not Tennessee but due to the family members listed, we knew this was the correct family.  With that knowledge we were able to find and attach the census as a source on FamilySearch.

I showed Sisters Godfrey and Chabries about creating and attaching sources from outside of FamilySearch. 

I continued work on the Tier 2 training and completed the first section of Tier 2 and signed up to review it next Wednesday.

We had our second day of Be Our Guest Training.

Thursday August 29

We attended the 9am Endowment session at the Salt Lake Temple.  We had our third day of Be Our Guest Training.  Sister Tolman fixed homemade pizza for dinner.  It is really good.  

We were at the Library from 6 to 9pm.  Helped Michael Moore who turned 70 today.  He recently moved to North Salt Lake from Oklahoma and was called as the Lead Ward and Temple Family History Consultant.  He knows just a little about FamilySearch.  I helped him for over two hours with a variety of tasks.  We talked about his calling and where to focus with his ward members. I showed him a lot of the help resources and then we did some work on his tree.  I helped him add some memories.  We reserved an Endowment ordinance using Ordinances Ready and we reviewed information about this person.  Michael’s wife was in the library as well and was scanning a lot of pictures and a story for an ancestor. 

At 8:45pm a young couple arrived at our floor to print some temple cards.  They had a lot of sealing to parents ordinances needed.  They printed out about 20.  I explained how the sealings work at the Salt Lake Temple and that it would take two sessions to get them all completed.  They are from the Cache Valley area and are here visiting.

Friday August 30

We had leftover pizza for breakfast.  We went food shopping in the morning and needed to finish in time to meet with President Fenn and President McKnight at 9:45am.  We will continue to serve on the third floor in the library but will have a change in our leadership assignments.   I was asked to serve as the Branch President for the City Creek Branch.  This change will be announced at our Sunday Meeting on September 1.  The current Branch President, Elder Michael Sherrill, will be serving as Zone Leader on the Discovery Floor.  We will miss him.  I have really enjoyed serving with him.  My two counselors will be Elder James Challis who is currently serving with me and Elder Don Olsen who is new.   Sister Tolman and I will be released as Assistant Zone Leaders effective probably next week.   Once we were asked on Tuesday to meet with President Fenn, I thought the calling would be related to continuing to serve in the Branch Presidency so I had prayed to consider those with whom I would like to serve.  I had three names to begin with and narrowed them down to two.  Elder Olsen spoke in our devotional on Monday and based on hearing from him, I added him to my list of those to consider.  

We received a package from our daughter Michelle with four individual brownie mixes.  We will eat two of them on our wedding anniversary on Sunday.

We attended our last day of Be Our Guest Training.  Just before the training started, we took what we needed on our shift to the third floor. I noticed Noelani Mateaki was on the floor working on a computer.  I hadn’t seen her for about a month.  She was having trouble accessing her FamilySearch account.  I have helped her before so she showed me where I had written her username and password on a piece of paper that she keeps in her wallet.  I was able to access her account and then she realized what she had been doing wrong.  Once we finished our training just before 4pm, she was getting ready to leave and thanked me several times for helping her today as she was able to get a lot of work done for several ancestors.  She is such a good person and I was so glad that I was able to help her.  Helping her regularly has been a highlight of my mission.

Saturday August 31

I helped Shane Pope who is working at Hill Field for about a month.  He grew up in San Diego and lives in Kansas.  He has a tree on ancestry.com but no longer has an active account.  I helped him get his family connected and updated on Family Tree.  FamilySearch was not operating at full capability today so it was challenging from time to time to add to the tree.  I spent over an hour helping him and we had a lot of success and he learned quickly.  I showed him the Research Wiki and the Family History Guide and also where to get personal help at a local family history center in Kansas.  At the end of our shift, I showed him where the Layton FamilySearch Center is which is closer to Hill Field and will allow him to use ancestry.com and other premium websites while he is here without having to travel all the way to Salt Lake City.  Shane was very happy with what we were able to accomplish.

I helped several others with various tasks including helping one of our missionaries Sister Montgomery learn how to use PowerPoint.  I helped a woman from San Jose learn how to search for and add sources to her ancestors.

President McKnight stopped by and let me know that everything is in place to complete the Branch Presidency changes at tomorrow’s Sacrament Meeting.  We won’t have a leadership meeting until Monday September 8 due to the Labor Day Holiday.

Saturday update from Sister Tolman

Elder Tolman got up this morning and drove over to the store before we had to be at the library.  He bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers that are red and yellow and look sunny and bright.  tomorrow is our anniversary and it will be 48 years.  Amazing how fast time flies. 

Elder Tolman assigned me to go and help a young man names James.  He and his wife were there and she was just interested in watching.  They were from Seattle Washington and actually from the same place as the Griffiths in Snohomish.

We started his tree and he said he had a very abnormal family and it might be hard to put them together.  We were able to get a couple of generations started and he was so excited every time he saw a marriage record or a divorce record or a death record.  He said he didn't know his grandma's birth name or her married name because she had been married so many times. He kept saying my mom would love this.  He didn’t have a lot of information but he had enough that we could actually find a few things.  He had other things to do so we didn’t spend a lot of time together but he left happy and excited.  This is what it is all about. 

I am so grateful for Glen and I love him so much and look forward to many more years together.