September 22 - 28 - Sunday to Saturday

Here is a picture of the Logan Temple.  We traveled to Logan on Wednesday and returned to Salt Lake City on Thursday.

Sunday September 22

We attended Music and the Spoken Word in the Tabernacle.  We were directly in line with the center of the building in the balcony.  Lloyd Newell was right next to us as he gave the spoken word during the broadcast.  An assistant asked us to be still and not move as he spoke so we wouldn't distract him.  We will keep up our streak of attending weekly as we were given tickets for the Sunday morning session of General Conference on Sunday October 6.  

We went to Sacrament meeting at 12 noon at the Rose Park Stake center to hear Elder Bartholomew speak as he finished his mission recently.  He gave both of us hugs before and after the meeting.  We enjoyed our association with him.  President and Sister Fenn were there as well.

We missed Sacrament meeting at our City Creek branch but attended the Priesthood and Relief Society there.  The subject was Elder Anderson’s talk “Great Love for Our Father’s Children”.

We had a choice between dinner with our 5th floor group or taking mom and dad Senior out to dinner at Sister Tolman’s sister Marn and Mike’s home.  We chose family and went with the Seniors.  Here is a picture of flowers in their backyard. 

Monday September 23

As of today, we now have four months left on our mission.  Time continues to pass quickly.

We attended the mission devotional.  We said goodbye to many good friends as we sang “God Be with You”.  We took our picture with the Dahlin’s who have served as Zone Leaders and we have served with them as Assistant Zone Leaders for 10 months.  They are good friends and we will miss them.  We walked from the JSMB to the library with them and had a good visit.  

Elder Tolman, Elder Dahlin, Sister Dahlin, Sister Tolman

Elder and Sister Woodman (Zone Leader is Library Services) Elder and Sister Dahlin

Sister Tolman had her hair cut.  We just relaxed at the apartment and didn’t go anywhere during the day.

I led the Branch Leadership meeting at 3pm.  With what we have accomplished and with General Conference coming up, we won’t need to have a meeting on September 30.  Our focus on our meeting on October 7 will be to work on subjects for the next six months of Priesthood and Relief Society lessons (two per month) and Sacrament meeting subjects.

We participated in the Mission Book of Mormon Conference with dinner at 4:30 in the foyer of the Conference Center, then a picture at 5:45 pm on the steps outside, and followed by the conference in the Assembly Hall at just after 6 pm.  There were a lot of missionaries walking from the Conference Center to the Assembly Hall as shown below.

President and Sister Fenn taught us about the Book of Mormon.  Here are a few items from what they taught us.  Our opening song was “Press Forward Saints” hymn 81.  The director for this meeting is Vanja Watkins who wrote the music for this hymn.  President Fenn noted that Sister Watkins just turned 81 years old to match the hymn number.

Here are five great truths from the Book of Mormon

1. It teaches of the Gathering of Israel and the Covenants that God made with the House of Israel
2. It brings people to Christ and teaches that it is only through Him that we are saved
3. It is the convincing evidence that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Kingdom of God on the earth.
4. It teaches that God will give revelation to those who ask.
5. It leads to conversion, pressing forward with a steadfastness in Christ and enduring to the end.

The Book of Mormon Leads to Testimony and Conversion.

• From the Book of Mormon, we gain a testimony that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Kingdom of God on the Earth
• Gaining a testimony can be both an event and a process
• Testimony is the foundation of continuing conversion.
• The Book of Mormon is the Keystone of Conversion
• We are converted as we become disciples of Christ. We can experience a mighty change of heart and be spiritually born of God.  As we “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ” (2 Nephi 31:20) our very nature changes.
• Conversion is an ongoing process.  We are typically born again by degrees

Following the meeting we walked back to our apartment building with the Dahlin’s.

Just after we returned to our apartment, I received a text from Ira Gentry seeing if he could stop by for a visit.  We visited at our apartment for about an hour.  It was good to see him.  He and his wife Lynn just returned from spending three weeks in Arizona.  He said he stopped by our home in Tempe and it looked good.  

Ira Gentry and Glen Tolman - December 2012 

Ira Gentry and Elder Glen Tolman - September 2019 (friends for 12 years)

Sister Tolman and I watched “The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd” as our evening study together.  You can watch it by googling "Testaments Video" and finding it on YouTube.

Tuesday September 24

We had our prayer meeting at 7:30am on the 2nd floor.  

Deborah from Bountiful came up to the desk while I was there and asked for help with her scanning.  She was working based on some instructions she received yesterday and wasn’t having much success.  I helped her and we were able to get her photos scanned and then uploaded to FamilyTree.  First we had to unjam some small photos from the scanner. Then I noticed that all the photos she had scanned only showed the back of the photos.  We started over and were able to scan the photos and then add them to FamilySearch.  One option on the scanning software is to upload pictures directly to FamilySearch but for some reason we couldn’t get her logon to work so we needed to logon to her account separately.  This led to my being able to help her in several different ways that would not have happened if we had been able to logon directly from the scanning software. I showed her how to tag multiple people in a photo and how to correct some tags that she had already completed that weren’t connected to individuals on FamilyTree.  I went over some things on her temple list and how to have some of her relatives start using Ordinances Ready.  I ended up helping her with a lot more than scanning photos and she thanked me for the extra help.

Three friends came into the library who had been visiting the sites in Salt Lake City and decided to stop at the Family History Library.  Sister Tolman and I helped two of them.  I helped Susan from Minnesota.  We were able to connect to family on one side going back many generations and added some on the other side.  We both worked about 30 minutes past our planned lunch hour but were happy to continue helping them.  Both were exciting to find out so much about their families.   I showed Susan how to continue learning and get help when she gets home.  She installed the mobile apps and uploaded a family picture and tagged herself.

After lunch, I noticed that one woman was sitting next to her friend who was being helped.  She was playing Solitaire on her mobile phone.  I asked her if she wanted to get some help with her Family History.  She said that she was having trouble accessing her FamilySearch account.  Her name is Jane Ann from St George, Utah.  I helped her logon to her account and found out she had been mistaking what she had setup as her password as she didn’t realize she had entered a capital letter for the first letter of the password.  Once she was connected, I helped her work on her FamilyTree and make some corrections.  We studied and worked on one family in particular and completed some merges and also disconnected one set of parents at the end of one line who did not belong.  We printed out some fan charts and I also emailed a copy to her son Greg.  It turns out that she and her friend are friends with a missionary couple who are in our branch.  One of them, Elder Jay McCandless, came over to the library to say hello.  I received a response on Friday from her son thanking me for sending the fan chart to him and for helping his mother.

Jane Ann’s friend was trying to make a connection to prove ancestry back to the Revolutionary War so she can apply to join the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution”.  The connection that she found was questionable and didn’t make sense so she will have to find another ancestor and find a new connection.

Wednesday September 25

I have been working on a training document showing how to help people update their family tree on Family Search based on information that have researched in other areas such as in ancestry.com.  One of the staff members in the library, David A Young, asked me to put this together.

I helped Delia and her friend from the Phoenix area.  Ironically Delia wanted to add the family members she has researched and documented on her tree on ancestry.com to FamilySearch.  So I used the methods that I am documenting on how to do this.  I showed her how to attach sources and merge duplicate records.   She was grateful for the help and indicated that she would be looking for me to help her some more over the next few days.  I also showed her how to use the Catalog on FamilySearch to find information that is only available in the library here.

Elder Duncan and I helped a new church member who was trying to understand how temple ordinances can be completed for his family members since he can only complete baptisms and confirmations.  We explained how the temple “sharing” function works and that he can enlist the help of ward members to complete ordinances that he can’t complete himself.

Sister Tolman fixed some of her “bunny” dip for a chips and dip social/lunch for our zone today.  We joined in at about noon and then left to go back to the apartment to get ready to leave for Logan.  

We left a little before 2pm and arrived in Logan at about 3:15pm.We stayed at the LaQuinta Inn.  Glenn and Martha Mortensen picked us up at the motel to take us to dinner.  Glenn and I were close friends through our growing up years in Salt Lake City.   We went on missions at about the same time.  Glenn left a year earlier than I did in June 1966 and went to Finland for 30 months and I left for Tahiti in June 1967 and served for 30 months.   When we lived in Michigan, Glenn did part of his medical residency in the Detroit area.  We had an enjoyable dinner and visit with them. I had ribs with onion rings for a side and Sister Tolman had fish and chips.  We had enough for two meals and took the leftovers home. Here is a picture at the restaurant.

Sister Tolman, Elder Tolman, Glenn Mortensen, Martha Mortensen

We talked for a while in their car back at the motel and then we decided to visit some more in our motel room.  We visited for several hours more.  It was really good to catch up with where we have been for the past almost 40 years.  Glenn had a successful medical practice in Logan in General Practice.  He delivered over 4000 babies during this time.  He and Martha served a mission together in Finland and had a wonderful experience there.  He is quite a fisherman and showed me some of the fish he has caught.  They dwarfed the trout that I caught this past summer.  He caught the biggest ones at Bear Lake.

When we were just under 12 years old, Glenn’s father JD Mortensen coached a minor little league team and we were teammates along with several others in the ward and neighborhood.  Glenn was the catcher and I was the pitcher.  We had an excellent team.  We went undefeated through the season and then defeated an all-star team made up of the best players from the other teams.  My skill as a pitcher was to throw the ball fast and in the strike zone.  We went on a lot of outings together when we were in the Aaronic Priesthood.  In the summer we visited the National Parks and went fishing in the Uinta Mountains.  Our fathers normally went with us.  In the Uinta mountains we hiked in and then camped for several days and had a lot of fun fishing in the cold mountain lakes.

Thursday September 26

We enjoyed a buffet breakfast at the motel and then traveled to the Logan Temple to be there at about 9am to take some pictures before attending the 10am Endowment session with Glenn and Martha as we planned to meet them at 9:30am.  The temple is located on a hill overlooking Cache Valley.  Here are some pictures.  

Sister Tolman took this picture and didn't realize the bird was in the picture

We really enjoyed attending the Logan Temple.  It is beautiful both inside and outside.  Glenn and Martha completed two of our family names so we were able to complete four endowment ordinances for our ancestors.

Glenn and Martha invited us to lunch at Morty’s which is a restaurant owned by one of their sons.  The food was good.  We shared a hamburger and fries since we were not very hungry.  We visited for about an hour.  We talked about possibly seeing them again if we are able to go to Brigham City to attend the temple there.  It was so good to be able to visit with my long-time friend Glenn.  Fred Mortensen who just recently returned from being mission president in India is Glenn’s first cousin.  Here is a picture from Morty's restaurant looking over Cache Valley.

Before leaving for home we drove for several miles up Logan Canyon.  The scenery is pretty and the leaves are starting to turn.  Here are two pictures. 

We stopped at the Brigham City Temple on the way home.  Below are some pictures of the temple and the tabernacle.  

Brigham City Tabernacle

 

Brigham City Temple

Elder & Sister Tolman with the Brigham City Temple in the background

We helped in the library from 6pm to 9pm.  I helped Lindsay and Juanita from Monterrey, California.  This is a second relationship for both of them.  I was able to find family for both.  They were excited to find some information already there and add some additional family members.  

Friday September 27

We completed our Friday cleaning and went food shopping at Lucky’s. 

We started our shift at 12:30 pm as usual.  I continued work on the training today.  I helped two sisters for several hours both before our dinner at 3:00pm and after dinner for a short time.  Louise was the sister who set up the FamilySearch account and she now lives in Cincinnati.  Her sister Marian lives in Detroit, Michigan where her family moved in the 1950’s.  Before that the family lived in the same county in Mississippi.  Their heritage is mostly African American.  We found census records from 1920 on but were not able to find many records before then.  We added some pictures and stories and I showed them how the mobile apps worked.  I printed out a pedigree chart so Marian could know how to build her tree when she gets an account later.

I showed the training that I have been working on to Elder Conlin and he gave me some good input on some changes to make.

Saturday September 28

We worked the early shift today starting at 7:45am.  Just after 7am, I received a text from the Assistant Zone Leader Sister Challis asking me to lead the prayer meeting this morning.  I was happy to do so.  We had the scripture, prayer and spiritual thought which I gave.  I also shared the training that I have been working on and received some favorable feedback.

It wasn’t busy on our floor until about 10am and then it stayed busy until we left at 5pm.  The first person that I helped was Judy from Colorado.  She has been at the library all week and is an experienced researcher.  I have talked to her several times.  She wanted some help comparing her tree on ancestry.com to the tree on FamilySearch.  The only problem was that she didn’t know her password for FamilySearch.  I logged on to my account and we worked on her tree starting with her parents who are both deceased so I could see them both.  We extended her family lines, merged duplicates and added a few family members using the techniques that I have in the training that I have been working on.  She had a lot of sources from family bibles.  I helped her upload a page from one bible that had a lot of birth information for her family.  I took a picture from my phone and uploaded the picture and created a source from it.  She will continue this type of activity when she returns home.

I helped Victoria from Dallas several times.  She and her husband were at the library most of the day.  Her family comes from Mexico and we found them on several census records.  She contacted her parents and verified that the census we found was actually her family.  With more work, she found some part of the family already on the tree and needed to merge some records.  I checked back with her and her husband several times during the day and they continued to have success.  I found out they are leaving for home on Sunday afternoon so I invited them to the choir concert in the morning and they were excited to be able to attend.

A couple with their son and daughter-in-law wanted some help.  The father wanted to learn about his family who lived in Salt Lake City.  We found a lot of historical records about them but none of them were on Family Tree.  Part of them had immigrated from Russia.  Their business in Salt Lake was making cigars which they did in their own shop.  We were able to find his father’s birth record showing the mother and biological father whom his mother never married.  He was adopted and raised by the man she married soon after he was born.  I helped the wife find out some information about her family and printed out a family pedigree chart starting with her mother who was already on FamilyTree.  Just before they left, she set up an account.  Her husband will do so after they return home.  It was amazing how much we found about their family using ancestry.com and FamilySearch.  This interaction shows we don’t need to set up a FamilySearch account in order for guests to have a positive experience learning about their family.

I helped David and Jean from Massachusetts.  Both wanted to set up a FamilySearch account so they could document what they found.  Finding David’s family was easy.  His parents were already on the tree with ancestors going back many generations.  His time then was spent looking at the information.  For his wife Jean it was not so easy.  We added her parents and then found them on some census records and were able to add grandparents. 

During this time I was assistant floor supervisor for two hours and floor supervisor for the last hour.  We were short of help with not enough missionaries so I operated without an assistant.

Sister Tolman helped a couple from Boston for several hours in the afternoon and they did not want her to stop helping them.   They were there with their grandson who is also their son since they adopted him.  They had some success finding their family.  One of the challenges was that the son/grandson who was around twenty years old kept asking questions about family which made it difficult for Sister Tolman to make as much progress if she were only helping one of them.