October 13 - 19 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday Oct 13

We attended Music and the Spoken Word and sat in the center section on the main floor for the first time since the choir moved to the Tabernacle the second week of September.  Here is a picture taken from the main floor. 

We needed to be a little early to church as we took the bread for the Sacrament.  I had also arranged to meet Marlowe and Mary Anne Ashton to give them the flash drive with the Tahiti movies made by David Price.  They finish their church meetings at 12:30pm.   Later I received a text from Mary Anne about the Tahitian videos “We have it playing on Marlowe’s large screen computer and it’s just filling our little apartment with happy sounds and beautiful pictures.  Thank you so very much for doing this for us.  And for even thinking of doing this for us!”

We attended our branch meetings.  The subject for our sacrament meeting talks was ministering.  The talks were excellent.  Our subject for Priesthood and Relief Society was Elder Christofferson’s talk from April 2019 conference.

We had six young Elders for dinner.  All six serve on our floor in the library: Elders Spears, Agren, Gorman, Green, Finney and Thompson.  Sister Tolman fixed breakfast for dinner.  We had an egg casserole, hash brown potatoes made from scratch, small sausages, French toast and fruit.  We had ice cream bars for dessert but only two ate one as they were too full from the delicious meal.  We forgot to take a picture but took one later in the week.  Here are our young Elders.

Elders Green, Spears, Thompson, Agren, Finney and Gorman

We went to Seniors later and watched Secondhand Lions.  We really enjoy this movie and have seen it many times.  It is also a Senior's favorite.

Monday Oct 14

We attended the mission devotional at 7:30am and then got the parking pass for JoAnne and Craig when they come to visit us on Oct 30 and 31.

We were trying to decide where to go for our fall foliage trip even though a lot of the leaves have mostly already changed.  We decided to go up Big Cottonwood Canyon and go over Guardsman Pass and down into Park City.  The views were spectacular but the road was narrow in spots with steep drop-offs.  We stopped several times going up the canyon and at the top of the pass.  Sister Tolman said she kept looking straight ahead so she didn’t look over the edge at the steep spots.  

Fall color near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon

Leaves changing taken at Brighton at the top of the canyon

The mountains at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon

Elder and Sister Tolman at Guardsman Pass

On the way home we stopped at Barnes and Noble as I had a coupon for a book and I purchased a travel book for London, England as we plan to visit England next year.

We then stopped at Discount Tire.  We need new tires and new wheels.  I priced these items and then set up an appointment for Thursday afternoon.

We then continued to Seagull Book where Sister Tolman purchased some books, the "Other Side of Heaven 2" DVD and several misc. items.  Here is an apron that Sister Tolman purchased.  I like the saying "Many people have eaten in this kitchen and gone on to live normal, healthy lives."

I conducted our Branch leadership meeting and then went to Deseret Book to pick up “Into the Flames” by Gerald Lund.  This was an unusual day as I went to three book stores.

Sister Tolman fixed a wonderful dinner of trout and leftover hash browns and fruit salad from Sunday.

We attended the Book of Mormon Study class from 6-7:30pm led by President Fenn.  We studied 3 Nephi 27.  We really enjoy participating in these classes as our testimony of the Book of Mormon is always strengthened. 

Tuesday Oct 15

After prayer meeting and arriving on the floor, I noticed two women working together and it looked like they needed help so I asked them.  They indicated that they needed help printing and it turned out they need more help than that.  I was able to help them download the images rather than printing them.  They did end up needed to do a little printing so I helped them.  I checked back with them several times and they were doing fine.

We attended training as part of a Study Group from 10 to 11am.  The training was on using the Catalog.  With the library being not as busy, the zone leaders have set up study groups with the research specialist to help us learn more about searching for information.

The Zone held a luncheon starting at 11:15am to say goodbye to some of our missionaries including Elder and Sister Robinson whe have been the Zone Leaders.

A couple came to the library, the Stearns, from Washington State.  He told the missionaries at the desk that he was computer illiterate.  One of the sister missionaries helped his wife and another helped him get his account setup.  I helped him start adding to his tree.  While he was adding his father to the tree which took a while, I searched and found his grandparents already on FamilyTree which helped immensely so that all we needed to do was to connect them to his his father.  We added his mother and they had an unusual spelling for her last name.  When I heard them pronounce the name, I knew we didn’t have the correct spelling.  I did some searching on ancestry.com and FamilySearch and we found the correct spelling for the name which enabled us to add some ancestors on his mother’s side.  They were happy with what we were able to find for them and plan to continue working at home.  I believe that the wife will be able to help her husband.

I talked to the Elder Gomez (Zone Leader for Library Services) and helped get the information he needed to let his missionaries know the subjects for November Sacrament meeting.  We assign our Sacrament Meeting talks and prayers by zone and the Zone leaders have the assignment to determine those who will participate each month.  I contact the Zone Leaders the month before to remind them of their assignments.

I helped Sister Nelson complete two sections of her missionary training, the sections on Escalation Procedure and the section on Temple Ordinances.  She has some physical handicaps and it is hard for her to use the computer mouse.  Fortunately our computers have touch screens and even that is difficult for her.

We talked to the Dimaggio’s who are from Tempe, Arizona.  We found out they live in the same ward as my first cousin Carolyn Clark and her husband Larry.  Sister Dimaggio was good friends with Carolyn.  It continues to be a small world.

We had dinner with Roger and Jackie Campbell and Michael and Phyllis Lantz at the Lion House pantry.  It was great to catch up with them.  We used to share rides to church with the Lantz’s and their children are about the same age as ours.  Roger, Michael and I participated in the church sports program together in Michigan and had some success.  Michael also helped me with basketball officiating at the stake and multi-stake level.  We have some interesting memories. Anyone who has worked in church sports can relate to some of the experiences that we remember.  The Lantz’s live in American Fork and the Campbell's live in Mapleton (both are in Utah Valley).

Jackie Campbell, Elder Tolman, Michael Lantz, Phyllis Lantz, Sister Tolman, Roger Campbell

Wednesday Oct 16

I found out yesterday that I won’t be leading the Wednesday morning prayer meeting.  I have the Friday 12:30pm prayer meeting and the Saturday morning prayer meeting when we attend starting in the morning.

I helped a lot of different people, both missionaries and guests today.  First thing, I helped Sister Homer scan and upload some photos to a flash drive and then organized the photos to use for a zone project.  She is used to using a MAC so I showed her the “drag and drop” method of moving and copying files to her flash drive and then uploading these to FamilySearch.  I helped Sister Nelson recover her ancestry.com account and then get started with the lesson on comparing trees on FamilySearch and ancestry.com.  She will have a hard time passing the test for this one.

I helped a guest try to find some naturalization and immigration records for an ancestor but was not successful so I took her down to the second floor to see if someone could help.  I helped a woman organize what she knew about her end of line ancestor so she could get help from one of our research specialists to see if she could find the parents. 

As we were leaving for lunch one of the young elders said there was left over food from a luncheon in our break room so we ate lunch there instead of going back to the apartment.  We still had some time left of our hour lunch break so we decided to go for a walk around Temple Square.  On the way back, a man stopped us and asked us where he could find the Family History Library.  We told him we were headed that way so he followed us.  He wanted to find out more about his family so we took him to the third floor of the library and Sister Tolman helped him set up a FamilySearch account and find some of his ancestors.  He didn’t know a lot of details about his family but Sister Tolman was able to find a little information on his mother’s side as he knew a little more information there.  What complicated the search was that his father’s last name was Brown and his mother’s last name was Jones.  It was amazing that she was able to find as much as she did.  On Friday a couple visited the library and this man suggested that they visit as he had such a good experience.

I helped Jill from the Millcreek area who had some questions about temple ordinances for several of her ancestors.  For one of the ancestors, we were able to find information about the parents which made them eligible for temple ordinances and we found census records which showed two more children to add to the family providing more ordinances to complete.  For another ancestor we needed to combine some records and I helped her get more comfortable with merging records.  She was very happy with what we were able to accomplish and ended up with more temple ordinances than she had when she came to the library.

The last person I helped was trying to find more information about her father who was an orphan born in 1912.  I helped her upload the World War II draft registration card for him which she really liked.  She had obtained a delayed birth certificate for her father which listed his birth parents.  The information that was on the birth certificate did not make sense so we suspect that some of it was not true.  The discrepancy was that the parents listed lived in Connecticut and were born in Pennsylvania and had two children at the time of her father’s birth which took place in San Francisco.  Why someone living on one side of the country traveled to California to have the baby doesn’t seem logical.   We found some possible records which matched names but nothing else.

Thursday Oct 17

Today is our once a month Thursday where we don’t have our evening shift at the library.  We talked to Laura this morning.  We attended the 8am Endowment session followed by a sealing session where we completed three couple sealings and three sons to parents sealings.  We again were able to be in the beautiful sealing room with natural light that we get to from the Celestial Room.  We were able to be witnesses at the same time.  Our session included two men and five women.

Sister Tolman went to lunch at Kneaders in the City Creek Mall with her Sisters Jayne and Marne.  I went to lunch with the Garden Park group.  Several mentioned how unique it is that this group has stayed close over the years.  We all lived in the Garden Park Ward and were in the Aaronic Priesthood quorums together. For the last two lunches I have talked to Scott Iverson who played on the baseball team with Byron and me and Glenn Mortensen.  Scott was our other pitcher. 

After lunch I look the Impala to get new wheels and tires as I had made an appointment on Monday for Thursday at 2:15pm.  While I was waiting, I completed the updates needed for our lesson and Sacrament meeting subjects.  Sister Tolman went back to the temple to complete three Initiatory as she needs more women for Endowment work.  Here is our Impala with the new wheels and tires.  With these new wheels we don’t need hubcaps.

We went to the Dairy Queen in Bountiful for a Blizzard treat and then went food shopping at Lucky’s on the way home.  It started raining and it is colder today and in fact we now see snow on the tops of the mountains.

I noticed that Relative Race on BYUtv has started a new season so we watched the first episode.  There have been four episodes so far and we also watched the second episode on Friday night.   We can stream it on our laptops without any commercial interruptions.

Friday Oct 18

We completed our normal weekly cleaning and laundry in the morning.

We started our work at the library with a prayer meeting at 12:30pm.  I have responsibility to conduct this prayer meeting each week.  We now hold combined prayer meetings among the missionaries on both the second and third floors and meeting in a room on the second floor.  Soon after we started, the person in charge of assigning guests to missionaries on the second floor kept interrupting and asking for help for library guests.  I didn’t mind as that is our main responsibility.  

At the end of the prayer meeting and before I had a chance to go up to the third floor for our normal assignments, I was asked to help on the second floor.  Soon after I started helping, an alarm sounded and we were instructed to evacuate the building.  We all evacuated the building and it turned out that someone had left a meal in a microwave oven in an office area for too long and it caught on fire and set off the alarm.  It ended up being a good experience as we tested the emergency procedures we have been trained on.  Sister Tolman was a key person making sure that the third floor was evacuated according to procedures.

After going to the third floor to start my normal assignment, I was asked to help a woman build her tree on FamilySearch using her sister’s Ancestry.com tree.  Her name is Janice and she and her husband are visiting from Indiana.  I used my normal method to find ancestors from her Ancestry.com Tree already on Family Tree and then connect her to them.   Janice was really worried that what we were doing would somehow affect her sister’s ancestry tree.  I assured her that what we did on FamilySearch did not affect what her sister has on ancestry.com.  We found ancestors already on FamilyTree and connected her to them.  As we looked at the details on some ancestors in the 1800’s, we found that there was likely a mistake on her sister’s ancestry.com tree.  The information we found on FamilyTree was based on census records and other sources and did not match what her sister had documented.   So Janice gets to communicate with her sister and have her sister check FamilySearch to see possible corrections that she needs to make. 

On Fridays we have our meal break from 3 to 4pm and we then have a two-hour assignment as Floor Supervisors. We didn’t have enough helpers so I stayed alone at the desk as Floor Supervisor and Sister Tolman helped a guest.  Our limited resource ended up being enough as some missionaries returned just in time as others left.  Sister Tolman ended up helping a women and the assignment was inspired as she was able to help this guest and share her own experience with this woman who had recently lost her daughter.

When I finished my assignment at the desk, Elder Benton asked me to help Chris from Oregon.  She had questions about land records from around 1900 for her ancestor William Wilson.  I was able to find out how to help her get these records and put together the instructions for her on how to request these records.  Chris has her own ancestry.com account but has used it mostly looking in earlier generations.  I had her look for information about her parents and we found two documents that she had not seen before.  These were a marriage record for her parents and her father’s World War II draft registration card.  I helped her upload both of these documents as “Memories” for her parents.  I then showed her how to use the marriage record as a “Memory” source.  She was very happy to find these documents and learn how to attach them to FamilySearch.

Saturday Oct 19

I began the day at 6am and worked on my talk for Sacrament Meeting for Sunday afternoon.  I had more time off and on during the day to work on it as well.  We did a little work around the house.  I took down the garbage and recycling at the same time Sister Tolman took some items that we don’t need to be given away at the swap meet.  We talked to Julianna and had a good phone visit with her.  

We received our packet yesterday from the mission that shows what we need to complete in preparation for our return home in January.  We complete our work in the library on January 18 and after that we will be spending the next several days getting things cleaned up in our apartment and packing the car.

We started at the library at just before 1pm.  The library was not as busy as it has been but we both had a chance to help several people.  I did a little training with one of our missionary sisters as she wasn’t understanding some of our procedures of making sure that missionaries are given relatively equal chances to help.

I helped a member who last name is Wiltse.  She visits the library regularly and I have helped her several times before. Her mother used to be a missionary here.  She is an experienced researcher and I helped her with scanning some birth certificates.  She had scanned them as PDF documents and wanted to scan them in the JPEG format so I helped her get that done. 

One of the young Elders was assigned to help a couple.  A few minutes after he had finished helping them I sat down and asked them a few questions and found that they still needed some help.  The first thing we did was have some fun with Memories as that is a part that most people enjoy.  The couple was David and Julia Watzel from Los Altos in the Bay area.  I showed them the mobile apps and I took their picture and we uploaded and tagged the photo and added it to their person page on FamilySearch.  They have a lot of family photos on their computer at home and they will upload these later.  We did some checking on the information that they had added to FamilySearch and found a lot of duplicate records.  We worked to get them straightened out.  There were a lot of fairly complicated merges so I worked on them while they observed.  I also told them that I would continue to work on their tree to make more corrections after they left which I did.

I also helped a young woman who was here with her aunt.  I thought I recognized her and she was here before with her husband and young children.  I remembered that she lived in the Millcreek area.  She was impressed that I remembered helping her.  She had some questions off and on and I helped her and her aunt several times.

I asked Sister Tolman to help a man who was here with his wife trying to find a temple sealing record for his grandparents.  As she was helping him, he noticed her last name of Senior and indicated that their two children served missions in Thailand and had a mission president with the last name of Senior and that of course was David Senior.  It again is a small world.  Sister Tolman gave her brother a call and let him know.  There names are Ron and Nillawan Grover and their son and daughter are Rowland and Rina Grover.  

Sister Tolman, Nillawan and Ron Grover

A card that Nillawan made for Sister Tolman