September 8 - 14 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday September 8

We really enjoyed Music and the Spoken Word this morning.  It was a special treat to have President and Sister Nelson attend the broadcast as well.  He greeted the choir members and said a few words to them after the broadcast thanking them for their participation in the birthday celebration on Friday.  Here is a picture of them. 

 Here is what Lloyd Newell gave for the spoken word today.  
“Our Decisions Determine Our Destiny - Sunday, September 8, 2019

“Every once in a while, a series of choices, experiences, and circumstances combine to create a person who seems to stand out, someone we naturally look to as a role model. Russell M. Nelson is one of those uncommon men.  He recently celebrated his 95th birthday, which for most of us would be an accomplishment by itself. But it’s the content of his life, not just its length, that makes Russell M. Nelson a remarkable person. He has spent much of those 95 years helping others—as a husband and father, as a renowned heart surgeon, and as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, traveling the world giving counsel and encouragement to thousands. It might be tempting to think that people like this are simply destined for greatness. But as President Nelson once said, “Each day is a day of decision, and our decisions determine our destiny.” 

His life has been one decision after another leading him to his destiny of excellence, service, and devotion. Take, for example, his decision in his mid-40s to learn Mandarin Chinese, a decision that led to multiple opportunities to serve the people of China. Speaking to young adults, he has said: “Don’t be afraid to pursue your goals—even your dreams! But know that there is no shortcut to excellence and competence. Education is the difference between wishing you could help other people and being able to help them.”  Or consider another pivotal decision he made as a young intern assisting a surgeon. During a difficult operation, the surgeon became furious and insulted another member of the surgical team who had made a mistake. Dr. Nelson resolved then and there to master his emotions. He became known for his calm demeanor and self-discipline in the operating room—and his life. To many people, Russell M. Nelson is a world-renowned heart surgeon, but to even more he is a kindhearted man of God. He brings light to a darkening world. He lifts and inspires others to seek everlasting things. He is that way because he chose to be that way—his decisions determined his destiny and made him into a most uncommon man.”

At our Sacrament meeting President and Sister Fenn were our speakers.  I had scheduled with President Fenn to speak at our branch about a month ago and followed up recently to make sure that he had it on his calendar which he did.  He looked at his calendar Sunday morning about 10 am and remembered that he was speaking and realized that he had not told Sister Fenn.  Sister Fenn spoke for five minutes about the blessings of having the Book of Mormon as a guide for us.  This left about 30 minutes for President Fenn.  We really enjoyed his message.  He encouraged us to walk in the light, follow the prophet and continue to read and study the Book of Mormon.  He shared a special experience about when his father-in-law Bruce R McConkie passed away.  Elder McConkie spoke in April General Conference in 1985 and gave a powerful address and testimony of the Savior.  He passed away not too long after this address with his family at his bedside.  His son Joseph Fielding McConkie gave him a blessing of release and he took one more breath and passed through the veil into the next life. 

Elder and Sister Tolman with Pres and Sister Fenn

This morning I had the impression that I should study and prepare to teach the lesson for Priesthood Meeting.  I studied Elder Renlund’s April talk “Abound with Blessings”.  I texted the zone leader to make sure that he had assigned an instructor and he indicated that he had.  At the beginning of Priesthood meeting, I asked the brother if he was ready to teach and I got a blank stare indicating that he was not prepared.  As it turns out both the previous branch president Elder Sherrill and I were both ready to teach.  Elder Sherrill said that he would like to teach which he did.  He led a wonderful discussion and we were all uplifted from our participation. 

We fed six young Elders for dinner.  We had been told that we had four but since Sister Tolman requested six, she was ready to feed six.  She fixed Taco soup and cornbread and there was enough food for all of us.  Here is their picture. 

L to R are Elders Allred, Lane, Bellos, Sister Tolman 

and Elders Hardman, Meija, and Mitchell.

We visited Seniors around six-thirty and had a good visit with them.

Monday September 9

We attended the Monday morning devotional.  Sister Allan shared an interesting story about Nauvoo and her mission there with her husband.  Her husband had skills ideally suited for repairs to the wagons used in Nauvoo.  They turned in their missionary papers showing these skills.  Several months went by with no notice and then they received a call about serving in Nauvoo.  Their paperwork had been misplaced and suddenly appeared at the same time that a request from Nauvoo came needing the exact skills that Sister Allan’s husband had.   As she spoke I had the feeling that she would make an excellent Sunday School gospel doctrine teacher.  

We visited the Hogle Zoo.  We have now finished 8 of 16 activities on our Connect Pass.  Some of the unusual animals at the zoo were a gorilla, polar bear and grizzly bear.  See a few pictures below.  We were there for several hours.  

One really large beetle

We saw four sister missionaries and when we talked to them one knew one of the young Elders from our mission, Elder Skaggs. Here is a picture of two of them with Sister Tolman.  The one on the right is Elder Skagg’s friend from college.  

We took the long way home traveling up Emigration Canyon to East Canyon Reservoir and down Parleys Canyon and back home.

I prepared an agenda for our Branch Leadership meeting and we got a lot accomplished.  This was our first meeting since I was called as Branch President.  We discussed three names for Sunday School gospel doctrine teachers including Sister Allan to replace two of our current teachers as one is going home soon and the other was called as a zone leader with her husband.  On Tuesday, I visited with Sister Allan and she accepted the assignment to service as a Sunday School Gospel doctrine teacher. 

We attended President Fenn’s Book of Mormon class from 6 to 7:30pm.  He taught that the Book of Mormon contains the roadmap for prayer starting with Moroni 10:3-5 and then 3 Nephi 19.  There are many examples in the Book of Mormon on how prayers are answered such as for Nephi, Enos, Alma, King Lamoni and King Lamoni’s father.

After the meeting I talked to Elder Van Orman the zone leader for the zone that has September Sacrament meeting speakers.  He had just updated the speakers for Sunday.  It was good that I talked to him or we would have had the wrong speakers on the printed program.   I also talked to President McKnight to find out how to get access for my counselor Elder Olsen so he can access the information that he needs to update the Sunday bulletins.  I was able to talk to the Elders who take care of that.  These two conversations saved me a lot of time and avoided potential problems.

Tuesday September 10

Helped Deon, a member sister from Idaho Falls.  I showed her around FamilyTree.  We looked at her temple list and I could tell that she had reserved some Initiatory ordinances using Ordinances Ready.  We reserved an Endowment ordinance for her and learned more about this person who was a second cousin.  We tried finding baptisms and found four women needing all the ordinances completed.  We reserved them and looked at several of them to find out more about them.  We talked about memories and she suddenly realized that FamilySearch is more than just names, dates and places and that the memories connect us to our families.  Her husband just passed away just over a year ago and she shared with me that they were sealed just three years ago.  We had a wonderful experience.  Tears came as I shared the Family History purpose statement “We create inspiring experiences that bring joy to all people as they discover, gather and connect their family, past, present and future.”

Helped two friends, Rhonda and Gretchen from Cincinnati.  They are here for the doTerra global convention.  I first helped Rhonda.  One of our missionaries was helping her print some documents and I was asked to help.   Today was her mother’s 81st birthday and she wanted to get some information about her parents to share with her mother.  We printed a marriage certificate and a WWII draft registration card of her grandfather.  I then helped her connect more family members.  She has a tree on ancestry.com but no longer has an active membership.  We found a lot of family members and then she asked me if we have tissues which I said that we did.  She was touched as she saw and learned more about her ancestors especially when she saw the picture of her great-grandparents and said that her aunt and a cousin looked just this ancestor.  It was rewarding to be able to help Rhonda connect to so much of her family.  I helped her set up the mobile apps for FamilySearch and showed her how to add memories.  She added a picture from her phone of her two daughters.  She uploaded the picture and tagged them both.  Rhonda and her friend Gretchen are here for a convention and today was one of the few days when they had some spare time.

Next I helped Rhonda’s friend Gretchen who is also from Cincinnati. She wanted to be able to print out one of the large color fan charts on the first floor which is what Rhonda was wanting to do.  I helped Gretchen extend her tree and connect to many ancestors.  Gretchen was the one who encouraged Rhonda to visit the library with her.  These two friends were very happy with their experience in the library today and I really enjoyed helping them.  Here is their picture below.  

Rhonda and Gretchen

Wednesday September 11

Sister Tolman has completed the first section of the Tier 2 training for the Library Learning Pyramid and received her purple pin.  I worked for the first couple of hours and completed several more sections and completed the training and turned in my completed worksheets. Elder Cluff signed off section 3 before lunch and then Sister Matthews signed off Section 4 after lunch.  I will get my purple pin soon.

It rained today and we walked back and forth to our apartment for lunch with our umbrellas protecting us from the rain.  I am sure glad that we took them to the library this morning. 

After lunch, I went to the first floor to print out a 9-generation fan chart as the last part of my training.  When I was leaving a woman asked me for help and I ended up helping her for over an hour.  Her name is Mary Jane and she is from Santa Barbara, California.   She had found a WWI draft registration card for her grandfather and wondered how she could save it.  I suggested that we attach it as a source to him.  She hadn’t yet built a tree on FamilySearch but had a lot of family members on her ancestry.com tree.  She wanted to know how to transfer them to FamilyTree.  I told her most of them were probably there already.  As I helped her, we found most were on FamilyTree but we did have to add a few people to connect to her ancestors.  She wanted to be able to verify some of the information so I showed her how to review the sources already attached to her ancestors and how to attach more.   We found some photos already on FamilyTree for several ancestors.  She wanted to research some military records so I showed her how to access Fold3.com and where to get free access at a library nearby her home in Santa Barbara.  We finished with uploading a document she found on Fold3 to her ancestor as a memory for him.  We then added a picture that I took of her to her Memories section as she had already installed the FamilyTree app and was able to upload the picture that I took of her.  She was excited to learn so much more about her family. 

At 3:30pm we had an interview with President and Sister McKnight.  They meet with all the missionaries about four months before they leave to make sure things are going all right.  We also met with them last November.  The mission presidency meets at least twice with all the full-time missionaries to check up on how things are going.

Thursday September 12

We talked to Laura as we do most Thursday mornings.  We went to the Salt Lake Temple and attended the 9am Endowment session followed by a sealing session.

We attended two classes at the library at 1:00pm (US Immigration records) and then at 2:30pm (US Naturalization records).  Both classes helped us learn more in these areas.

Helped at the library from 6 to 9pm.  An older couple came into the library.  They wanted to attend the choir practice so didn’t have too much time.  The wife was interested in what we could find about her family.  She already knew a great deal about her family but it was documented on paper at home.  We found her family on some census records and found one more generation back that she didn’t know about.  I printed out a marriage record and a couple of census records.  I was able to find one ancestor on FamilyTree.  I showed her where to get help when she gets home in Massachusetts and gave her the ID of her ancestor on FamilyTree.  Once they left, I did some checking on this ancestor.  With the common last name of McCarthy, there were a lot of duplicate records.  I spent most of the rest of the evening cleaning up records and attaching sources so she will be able to find her grandfather on FamilyTree connected to family members and with a lot of source records attached.

Just before quitting time, I helped Leanne Wiltse whom I helped last week.  She had about 70 images of a military record that she needed to put together.  She had downloaded all the pages.  The best solution we could come up with was to print all the pages and then scan them into a document.  I helped her copy the 70 images to her flash drive.  Elder Park watched.  I had her bring up two windows, select all 70 images and then drag and drop the images to a folder on her flash drive (just a simple application of Windows file management).

Friday September 13

We completed our weekly cleaning in the apartment and then went shopping at Dollar Tree and Lucky’s.  We ate a light lunch just before leaving for the library.  We ate our main meal from 3 to 4pm.

I helped Linda Gaz who lives in Ogden.  She was here with her husband John and another couple.   Linda had a lot of questions about FamilySearch and I helped her navigate around the tree. John set up his FamilySearch member account and was able to print a full 9-generation fan chart which was really exciting for him as this was the first time he had accessed FamilySearch.  We printed a seven-generation fan chart showing the countries where her ancestors were born.  I showed her how to get some temple names using Ordinances Ready and we found one ordinance on her temple list that was about ready to expire and we made a change so she could keep it.  We printed out three Initiatory, one endowment and one sealing for her to complete.  We discussed what important things that she could do going forward and that is to document memories on FamilySearch, photos, stories, document and audio recordings.  She is excited to get started.

After our dinner from 3 to 4pm,  I was the floor supervisor from 4 to 6:30pm.  We had all the missionaries occupied and Mike from Texas came to the floor and had a few questions about how he could find out about his family.  He didn’t have much time, so we looked at information from my FamilySearch account and from ancestry.com.  His father was on the tree but his mother was not so we added her.  I showed him where he could get help when he gets home (he may be able to visit the library in the morning).  I wrote down the information for him on a research assessment form so he has the ID’s for his parents so he can connect to them once he gets an account.  After he left, I spent about an hour working to straighten out his mother’s ancestors.  There were a lot of duplicates for these ancestors but I managed to connect her back two more generations for all lines and some went back a long way.  He should be excited with what he finds when he gets connected to his parents.

Saturday September 14

Today was our early day at the library starting at 7:45am and finishing our shift at 5:00pm.  The first two hours were slow so I worked on the agenda for our Monday branch leadership meeting and helped some missionaries with the Training Pyramid.  Sister Tolman worked on the Training Pyramid for the second part of the Tier 2 training.  I haven’t started that yet.  Elder Dahlin has been out sick for the last several days so my completed training hasn’t been turned in yet. 

We both spent a lot of time at the desk.  I was there for about 3 hours and Sister Tolman for 4 hours.  When we help at the desk we normally end up answering a lot of short questions from guests and from missionaries.  Sister Tolman ended up helping 14 people and only one was a specific assignment to help. 

I helped four couples today.  One in the morning and three in the afternoon.  In the morning I helped Janell from Idaho.  She was here with friends for the Do TERRE (essential oils) convention that has been going on all week.  Her friend and husband were church members and they brought her to the library.  We found a lot of information about her family including her grandparents already on FamilyTree.  She was quick to learn and anxious to continue when she gets home.  We installed the mobile apps and we added a photo that she already had on her phone of her with her two friends who brought her to the library.

In the afternoon, I helped Ruth and Ralph from Tucson, Eddie and Kara Farr from South Carolina and James Perkins and his wife from Virginia.  The Farr’s didn’t have a lot of time to spend but we connected to some ancestors and got her tree started.  We installed the mobile apps, took a picture of them both and uploaded and tagged the photo on FamilySearch.   I helped one other man whose wife was doing a lot of work on her tree he looked a little bored.   I asked him a few questions and we found a birth record for his grandfather and a lot of other records.  What was unusual was that the grandfather’s first name was Beverly and that he named his son Beverly.  He was grateful that he didn’t inherit that name.    This was a good way to end the week keeping busy helping guests who visit the library.  

Saturday Input from Sister Tolman

It was a busy and kind of crazy day at the library.  I helped people find books and helped people with information about the scanners and the book scanners.  I showed people fan charts and they wanted to print them on the 1st floor.  I helped someone open a new account but they only had 15 minutes to spend so they didn't get much else done.  They were excited and said they would do more later. 

About an hour before lunch Elder Tolman assigned me to help a couple.  Her name was Cathy Miller.  She was with her husband Dennis he didn’t want an account.  The only thing he wanted was to watch.  She had been in the day before and opened up an account but the person that helped her had not let her do the work.  So she didn’t know what to do.  I showed them all of things and when we were doing one of the searches she did it for her husband’s father.  We were able to find him and his parents and where he was born and where they were born.  He was very excited about this and later opened his own account.  They stayed for about six hours and they were really loving it.  It is so wonderful to see how the idea of family grabs people and they want to find out more about their ancestors.

We talked to missionaries on the first floor and they said they had about 140 people in that afternoon so they also had a very busy day.  Even our young elders were excited about being able to help more.