August 4 - August 10 - Sunday to Saturday

Elder and Sister Tolman at the Mount Timpanogos Temple

Sunday August 4

As per our normal Sunday morning activity we started our day with Music and the Spoken Word.   For our City Creek Branch Meetings this month it is my turn to conduct Sacrament Meeting.  Sister Tolman is the chorister for the month also.  So I conduct the meeting and she conducts the music.  Since it is Fast and Testimony meeting, I started the testimony portion of the meeting by sharing my testimony and to my surprise Sister Tolman was next.

We went to Seniors for dinner and had a good visit with them.  One of the benefits of being here in Salt Lake City for 18 months is being able to see family.

Michelle and Brooks called and we enjoyed a fun video conference with them and their children. We were still at the Senior’s so they were able to talk to them as well.

We talked to our daughter Janny.   She was in St George visiting friends.  Her experience this weekend reminded me of a trip that I took in 1970 with Bill Taylor and Teave Temahuki.  I served with them during my mission to Tahiti.  We took a trip around southern Utah visiting the National Parks and attending the Manti and St George Temples.  When we visited Zions National Park we hiked to the top of Angel’s Landing.  Here are two pictures that Janny sent taken at the top of Angel’s Landing which are very similar to pictures that I took.   It is a strenuous hike and dangerous in some places and definitely not for the faint of heart.  I would not attempt the hike at this point in my life. 

Janny on top of Angel's Landing in Zions National Park

The valley floor from the top of Angel's Landing

Around 10pm a thunderstorm hit with a very loud clap of thunder.  The storm continued for over 30 minutes.  We could see the storm for our balcony.  Sister Tolman captured several photos showing the lightening.  See a picture shown below.

Monday August 5

We attended the mission devotional at 7:30 am.

We walked to Deseret Book together at around 11am so Sister Tolman could get a gift card for her sister Marn.  I purchased a book by Jerry Borrowman one of my favorite authors titled “The Compassionate Soldier – Remarkable True Stories of Mercy, Heroism and Honor from the Battlefield”.  I recently read his book titled “Invisible Heroes of World War II – Little Known Stories That Should Not Be Forgotten”.

Sister Tolman went to lunch at around 11:30 am with her sisters and parents to celebrate her sister Marn’s birthday.  They went to Kneader’s in the City Creek Mall for lunch.   Below is a picture of Sister Tolman's parents taken inside of Kneaders.

We had our MTC monthly get together with dinner at the social hall in our apartment building.  We stayed around and talked to Sister Phillips and her husband.  We are scheduled to host the get together for September which is scheduled for Labor Day. We all agreed to skip September and we will host the activity for October which the group decided going out to dinner would be a good idea.

Tuesday August 6

Led the 7:30 am prayer meeting and did the training on printing from ancestry.com.  Mike Hall gave us some training on how we can use city directories in our research.  He was at the BYU Family History Conference last week and received a distinguished genealogy award.  Below is a picture of Mike with the award he received. 

My first assignment was helping a missionary use the photo scanner to scan some old black and white photo that he had.  There was writing on the back so we set the scanner to scan the photos front and back.  He was able to finish in just a few minutes and was grateful for the help.

I helped several missionaries with understanding the training that we presented in the prayer meetings today.  I showed Elder Abernathy with a guest he was helping how to access the free premium family history related websites at the library.  Helped Sister Godfrey as she was helping a guest with searching and attaching records.  Helped Elder Dalley with attaching memory sources.

I helped Edward and Bernice Darrow.  Both had received help from other missionaries. Edward wanted to find out more about his end of line ancestor who was born in New York in 1806.  We managed to find a death record for this ancestor’s son which listed the end of line ancestor and the maiden name of his wife.  This was all that we were able to find but at least it confirmed that the names he had on the tree were correct.  Sister Nelson was helping Bernice and I tried to help her get the mobile apps on her phone but she didn’t know her apple id needed to download an app.  I took her picture with Sister Nelson and managed to upload this to Bernice’s account so she could at least learn how to tag people in a picture.  Here is Bernice and Sister Nelson.

We attended the concert in the park.  The group was Lincoln Highway bluegrass band.  The concert was very enjoyable.  This is their website

Last week in the Church News there was an article about Maupiti that I mentioned in last week’s blog entry.   Here is the link.  I went through the pass from the ocean into the lagoon many times.  It is narrow and dangerous especially during stormy seas as it is difficult to see the pass itself as the waves break across the pass entrance.  You can see the narrow pass (break in the reef) between the two small islands (motus).

Wednesday August 7

Led the prayer meeting and presented the training same as on Tuesday.  I worked on the next training module which is printing from documents on FamilySearch several times during the day. 

Helped Elder Homer scan a 29-page story that his father had written.  The first time that he scanned the document he had the DPI (dots per inch) set too high so the document was over 15 meg and couldn’t be added to FamilySearch.  I helped him rescan the document and get it uploaded.  He was very happy for the help.

I attended a library training council meeting for Elder Dahlin about the implementation of the training pyramid for the missionaries.  They are getting close to being available for the missionaries.  Zone leadership will start the training and then the rest of the missionaries.

We attended the All Hands Meeting which was a communication meeting for the library.  Sister Tolman gave the opening prayer for the meeting.  Her prayer brought a calm and peaceful feeling in the auditorium.    

After the meeting I saw Ira Gentry for a minute.  He had planned to spend about 30 minutes for a visit  but had to leave to take care of a repair problem at their apartment.  We should get a chance to visit more probably next week.

I helped several people with various items including helping the visa waiting missionaries.  I helped the Crofts who are waiting to go to New Zealand.  I helped Sister Croft with some questions that she had on working with Memories.  I showed her how to use the photo adjust capability on her google gmail account.  I also showed her what they can do with the blog feature to document and share their mission. I helped Elder Croft with a difficult problem he had with a family on FamilySearch.  We were able to figure out a starting point for separating a family that had been put together by mistake.

Went food shopping at Lucky’s.  Sister Tolman fixed an excellent dinner with muffins and cheese vegetable chowder.  I am blessed to have such a wonderful companion on my mission.

Thursday August 8

We talked to Laura in the morning.  It is always good to talk to her.  She will be visiting Arizona next week to celebrate Christina’s thirtieth birthday.  We will be able to talk to her before she leaves for Arizona on Thursday.

We participated in an Endowment Session at the Mount Timpanogos Temple.  We noticed that the seats in the instruction room are wider than in other temples we have been to and there is more room between rows.  Here is a picture of the temple. 

We took a change of clothes so we could more easily visit the Ashton Gardens in Thanksgiving Point.  The gardens are beautiful.  The weather was just right with temperatures in the low 70’s and the sky overcast. We spent over two hours there and just as we were leaving it started to rain a little.  Here are a few pictures. 

\

Largest manmade waterfall in the Western Hemisphere

We were at the library in the evening for our three-hour shift.  It wasn’t very busy so I worked on the training that I am putting together for next week.  I reviewed the material with Elder Olsen and then with Sister Tolman.  Sister Tolman gave me an excellent suggestion on some additional material to include.

Friday August 9

We cleaned the apartment in the morning.

I helped the Crofts as soon as we arrived on the floor after our prayer meeting.  I helped Sister Croft set up a blog using her Gmail account.  She was surprised to see all of her photos under her Gmail account and I showed her how easy it is to add photos to her blog.  She had already created stories on FamilySearch about the first part of their mission beginning in the MTC.  I helped her use that information to add several blog entries.  Later her husband asked Sister Tolman if I had a headache after helping his wife and Sister Tolman said no.

Helped Elder Croft with some problems with an ancestor from England.  Showed him the 1851 Jurisdictions map for England which is helping him figure out whether or not children were part of a family as the map shows distances between parishes and cities.   The map is found here map link FamilySearch.

I helped Don Attridge attach some sources and print out some documents.  He was not feeling well today.  I look forward to helping him each week.  I hope and pray he feels better.  He told me that he has stage three kidney failure but so far he does not need dialysis.

I helped Carolyn Schumacker.  She has done lots of research over the years.  Her father is President Spencer W. Kimball’s cousin.  Unfortunately a misunderstanding occurred between her father and his Bishop when he needed to make a decision between completing his higher education or serving a mission and he decided to complete his schooling.   As a result his wife and children were not in the church. This hasn’t stopped Carolyn from family history work. Carolyn’s records are all manual but are extensive and well sourced.   She indicated that she would come back to the library in October and wants me to help her learn to use FamilySearch.  Her family history research would be a great addition to FamilySearch.

Today Carolyn wanted to find some records to print and a young Elder was assigned to help her.  He was able to find most of what she wanted but couldn’t find the 1940 census for her grandfather.  I checked FamilyTree to see if the 1940 census was attached as a source for him and it was not.  I found the 1940 census on Ancestry.com but could not find it on FamilySearch.  I looked at the image and decided to try some different spellings for the name and finally found the census.  The indexing on FamilySearch for the last name was “Panath” and not “Parratt”.  Sometimes it takes some creativity to find records.  Carolyn’s father is Lyman George Parratt (KW8K-M1W) where his obituary is found highlighting an illustrious career as a scientist and university professor. 

A couple came to the library and I started talking to them and they were not too hopeful about finding where in Poland the husband's ancestor lived.  I found out that the ancestor came to the United States in the 1900’s so I told him the naturalization papers sometimes show birth city and country plus a lot of other information. He decided it was worth a try.  I assigned the couple to work with Elder Conlin who was recently transferred from the US Canada floor and has more experience than some of our other missionaries.  The story has a good ending as they found the birth city and other information including original names and changed names.  Before they left I showed them what they can go with Photos and Stories and the Memories app.  They were really happy with what they found in the library.

Saturday August 10

This morning I arose earlier than normal at 5:45 am as I went golfing with some missionaries from our mission.  There is a group who golfs most Saturdays and I have been trying to arrange to go with them but with our schedule it is only possible when we work 1 to 9pm.  We golfed at the Valley View golf resort in Layton. The golf course is close to Sister Tolman's sister Marn's home.  I got back in time for our 1pm shift.  Here are a few pictures. 

Looking west with the Great Salt Lake in the distance

At the library I reviewed the training document that I finished yesterday with Sister Tolman.  She found a couple of minor corrections.  I added the training to our website and send it to Elder Dahlin for review.

I helped Michael Lombard from Massachusetts who visited the library with his wife, children and grandchildren.  I helped him find his parents and grandparents on the 1940 US Census.  We added them to the tree and connected his grandmother to her parents who were already on FamilyTree along with several generations of ancestors.  He was excited about what we were able to do.  I found some duplication problems in parts of his family and told him I would work on making those corrections after he left.  I spent more than an hour working on these problems and corrected most of them.