October 6 - 12 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday Oct 6

We enjoyed attending the morning session of General Conference including Music and the Spoken Word. We had good seats in the Plaza 1 section  

We met Derek Steele from Tempe just after the morning session. He is here with some friends from his Single Adult Ward in the Tempe Stake.  He helped me a lot when I was Stake Executive Secretary.

Elder Tolman and Derek Steele

Sister Tolman was talking to woman who was with them since Derek said she was a Ward Temple and Family History Consultant.  Sister Tolman showed her some of her Memories on FamilySearch including our daughter Kim.  She asked if Kim taught at Westwood and it turns out that she was one of Kim’s students and really learned a lot from Kim.  Her name is Brianna Dycus. Brianna also knows Neil Saravan.  Here is a picture of them.

Sister Tolman and Brianna Dycus

We decided to go to the JSMB Legacy theater to watch the afternoon session and just before we left the apartment, Sister Tolman got a call from her brother David who was on his way from Utah Valley and had an extra ticket for the afternoon session.  Sister Tolman went with him and I went to the Legacy Theater.  

David Senior and Sister Lynne Senior Tolman at the Sunday afternoon General Conference session

We both enjoyed conference and after the traffic had cleared we went to mom and dad Seniors for dinner and visiting. 

Monday Oct 7

We attended the Mission Devotional at 7:30am.  One sister who spoke was Sister Andersen (her husband was a medical doctor) from North Logan.  After the meeting, I asked her if she knew Glenn and Martha Mortensen.  She said that they are in her ward and that their children were the same age and were friends.  It is a small world.

We went to breakfast with Bishop Bruce and Robin Goldthorpe (our neighbors in Tempe) and had a very enjoyable visit with them from about 9am to 11:30am.  Here are pictures.  

Elder & Sister Tolman, Robin Goldthorpe, Bishop Bruce Goldthorpe

We walked to the City Creek Mall where Sister Tolman went to Kneaders to purchase some gift cards for grandchildren and I went to the credit union to deposit the monthly rent check from Arizona and withdraw cash for the month.

I worked for several hours to get ready for the 3pm branch leadership meeting.  We made good progress at the meeting and have all the Priesthood and Relief Society lessons assigned for the next six months.  We started on Sacrament meeting subjects and completed November and most of December.  We will continue working on this at our next meeting.

We went to dinner at Chuck-A-Rama for our MTC monthly activity.  Four of us participated, Sister Tolman and I plus Sister Stephens and Sister Seve. We had a good dinner and visit from about 6pm to 8pm.

Tuesday Oct 8

We attended Mission conference from 7:30am to 9:15 with Elder Randy and Sister Andrea Funk. Elder Funk is a General Authority Seventy over our mission. Those who spoke to us were President and Sister Fenn, two missionaries and Elder and Sister Funk.

Sister Fenn talked about five fathers and a mother martyred for sharing the scriptures in English with their children in early England.  Around the same time William Tyndale translated the Bible into English and was killed for his efforts.  At that time the common people were forbidden from reading the Bible.

A missionary sister shared her conversion story.  She wanted to be married forever and had asked her minister to marry her and her husband for eternity but he said that he could not and that marriages were not meant for the next life.  She found a church that taught Eternal Marriage and wanted to be baptized.  When she joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a young mother her mother disowned her.  This was difficult for her and she prayed to know what to do.  She read the verse Matthew 10:37 and this scripture gave her the strength to make the difficult decision to be baptized., 

Elder Funk talked about the callings of Seventies, Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency as outlined in Doctrine & Covenants 107.  We enjoyed hearing from all the speakers.  I know that we are serving where we are supposed to be serving.

Sister Tolman talked with Sister Funk after the meeting.  She and her husband were leaders in the Asia Area.  They knew David and Shelly Senior as they served in Thailand as mission president and also Fred and Shauna Mortensen from our home stake who served as mission president in India just completing their assignment the end of June 2019. 

Sister Tolman and I helped with a VIP experience at the library for the wives of the brethren who work for Temporal Affairs department for the church under the direction of the Presiding Bishopric.  Sister Tolman helped Sister Carol Waddell wife of the second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, Bishop Christopher Waddell.  She helped her with scanning her scrapbook of when they were mission presidents in Peru.   

I helped Veronica de Almeida who with her husband are assigned in Argentina.  I helped her with the Discovery experience on the main floor.  I then helped her add memories including uploading an audio recording that her daughter sent her.  She indicated that she was going to the temple for a sealing session on Friday and I noticed that some close ancestors needed temple work completed so we printed two temple cards. Here is a picture of us on the Discovery floor in the library.

Elder Tolman and Sister Almeida

We enjoyed dinner with Ira and Lynn Gentry at their home in Centerville.  We had salad and shepherd’s pie followed by chocolate pie for dessert.  We had a good visit with them.  They enjoy playing card games so we brought Five Crowns and had time to play one game.  Sister Tolman had the lowest score by far.

Wednesday Oct 9

At our Zone prayer meeting our Zone leaders were changed from the Robinsons to the Stenbergs. The Stenbergs will be excellent Zone Leaders.  After the meeting I talked with Sister Hansen.  She is a CSM (Church Service Missionary) who works two days a week and has chosen to meet with our City Creek Branch as she knows those who attend our branch better than any of the members of her ward.  I am glad that I took the time to get to know her better and understand her situation.

During the morning, one of our guests was having trouble with one of the printers.  I helped her and then ended up helping her with a lot of other questions that she had.  She is experienced at researching her ancestors but I was able to help her print out a country fan chart showing in color what countries her ancestors came from.  I then helped her with uploading photos.  We were not able to get the Memories app downloaded to her phone as she couldn’t get past her IPhone Security.  I had her text me a photo of her grandson which I uploaded to my google photos and then downloaded to the library computer she was using and then she uploaded the photo to her gallery and tagged her grandson and made the photo his portrait.  There is always a way to get things done and sometimes we have to be creative.  Here is a picture of her grandson in front of paintings that she painted.  

I received a text from my Sister Gerri asking us if we wanted to meet them at the Nauvoo Café for lunch before going coming to the library for help with scanning.  We met just before noon.  I had their turkey pot pie which was really good and Sister Tolman had a French Dip sandwich.

On the way back to the library, a man using a walker asked us for help.  He was fairly heavy and needed help getting to bus stop so he could be back to Ogden.  He assured us that he was not looking for a handout.  I ended up pushing him in his walker which is much more difficult that pushing a wheelchair.  I pushed him from near Main and South Temple to 2nd West and North Temple.  He was very grateful for the help and I completed my good turn for the day.

While returning to the apartment to get a warm coat, I picked up a chestnut pod.  Here are a couple of pictures of the pod and the chestnut inside.  It turned out to be one large on instead of two halves.  We always had fun in our younger years in Salt Lake City picking horse chestnuts.  See the picture below.

After I returned to the library, I helped Gerri scan pictures and Sister Tolman helped my sister Glenna scan some pictures as well.  Glenna scanned and uploaded to FamilySearch some pictures of her and her deceased husband Larry.  She has some really special pictures.  I helped Gerri scan some vacation pictures and pictures of her wedding and pages from her wedding book.  Here we are at the library.  

Elder and Sister Tolman, Glenna Neilson, Gerri Coombs

Here is a picture that Glenna uploaded of her and her husband Larry.

It was about 3:30pm and I volunteered to help Jim and Sharon from Wisconsin.  They were about Sister Tolman’s age.  They were here with other family members.  I first tried to find Jim’s parents and was able to find them on the 1940 Census but was not able to trace his father back any farther.   I printed the 1940 census for him and also found his father’s picture in a yearbook.  I printed the yearbook picture.

He contacted a relative who gave him some hints on his grandparents and we were able to find information about his grandfather but not his grandmother. The challenge in researching this family was that his grandparents were married after 1910 and died in the 1918 flu epidemic so they were never together on a US Census. I spent about two hours helping them and was able to trace ancestors on his father’s line back to 1820 in Germany.  We found the 1900 census which was a key to making the link as this census showed his grandfather with his mother and grandparents (three generations on one census). With some clues from marriage records and other individuals found on FamilyTree we made some excellent headway.  Jim couldn’t believe how much progress we were able to make.  I printed out a country fan chart with colors for them which showed both of their family lines.  We added their daughters to FamilyTree so they could print the large fan chart on the first floor.  I ended up staying until about 5:30pm or so and Sister Tolman went home about 5pm.  Once I am helping someone and completing some relatively difficult research, I hate to stop in the middle.

The weather turned cold during the middle of the day with temperatures in the 30’s. I stayed cold for the rest of the week with a little warming on Saturday afternoon.

Thursday Oct 10

We enjoyed a Family History Library appreciation breakfast which started at 8am in the Conference Center Lobby followed by a program.  The breakfast was tasty and filling with egg and potato casserole, bacon, sausage, fruit, sweet roll (we both had apple fritters), and juice.  The library leadership shared some of the upcoming changes.  Events happened all day with treats given away at different time during the day.  We went back and for to the library several times.  The first treat was candy or nuts, then we received a refillable water bottle and then ice cream.   There was also fruit and chips and salsa available.

We attended a sealing session at the Salt Lake Temple at about 11:00am.  We completed the sealing for one family with husband and wife plus seven children and sealings for two other children who were part of a family that we completed last week.  Sister Tolman and I were witnesses together as well as completing the one couple sealing and 9 children to parents sealings.   We enjoy attending the temple and will miss the Salt Lake Temple when it closes the end of December.

We worked at the library from 6 to 9pm.  Sister Adams came to the library today.  She is a local church member and hasn’t been to the library for months.  She said that she had been playing the Cello in a local orchestra and that had kept her busy but she now will start using the library again. We also saw Brother and Sister Scheier who served as missionaries in our mission and left soon after we arrived over a year ago.  Sister Mar June Scheier is Carolyn Butler (Allen Butler’s wife) and Karl Payne’s sister. Karl and Kathie Payne are long time member of our home ward and their daughter Nancy and our daughter Christina were good friends in high school.  Here is a picture of them in the library.

Friday Oct 11

We cleaned the house and went food shopping at both Lucky’s and Smiths.  I bought a University of Utah cap.

I led the prayer meeting starting at 12:30pm.  We packed a lot into the two hours between 1 and 3.  I helped woman from Scotland but I never could quite figure out what she wanted to accomplish.  We helped Mark and Ilene Ethington.  Mark is Sister Tolman’s uncle and they are both classmates from the East High class of 1965.  I helped Ilene and Sister Tolman helped Mark.

Our friends Marlowe and Mary Anne Ashton came at about the same time for some help.  Sister Ashton served with us at the Mesa FamilySearch Library and her husband Marlow served as a missionary in Tahiti a few years before I did.  They are Arizona snowbirds and spend the summer in Salt Lake and the winter in the Mesa area.  I showed them part of the movie that David Price recently gave me of his and his wife Jacqui’s recent trip to Tahiti.  The Ashtons wanted a copy of the Tahitian movie.  Here is a picture of Marlowe and me.

I worked as Floor Supervisor between 4 and 6pm.  Ralph from Pennsylvania asked me some questions about the church.  He is an avid reader and recently found a Book of Mormon at home.  He doesn’t remember where he got it.  I explained what it was and compared it to the New Testament. I shared the website comeuntochrist.org and showed him the website on my laptop.  A few minutes later his wife joined him sitting in the waiting area for two others who were with them.  They talked about how much they enjoyed listening to the Tabernacle Choir CD’s and how their son had memorized the words and music to Handel’s Messiah.  At one point in a school class in Elementary school, the teacher started playing the CD and their son started singing along with them.  The teacher was amazed.  I gave them a FamilySearch.org business card with the comeuntochrist website and the website for the Tabernacle Choir websites written on the back.

I helped several others with various tasks such as using virtual pedigree to more easily search for ancestors.

Saturday Oct 12

Today is our early week as we start at 7:45am with Elder Tolman conducting the Prayer Meeting.  As per normal, we didn’t have many guests the first two hours so we both worked on our own.

Sister Tolman and I worked with Marvin and Belinta Birzer from Wyoming.  Sister Tolman worked with Belinta who was experienced with research but couldn’t remember her FamilySearch password.  They worked for about 45 minutes trying to get access to her account.  She had the password saved on her home computer but didn’t know what it was.  The current process for recovering accounts is very difficult when it doesn’t work the way it is supposed to and required help on the phone. 

While all this was happening, I helped Marvin and we worked from my account initially as the plan was to let Marvin use his wife’s account and they would share.  We found his family on both his mother and father’s sides.  There was a lot of information on FamilySearch for them.  I left him after a while to learn more about his ancestors by looking through the tree under my helper account.  Finally we decided to set up his own account which we did and got his family connected to him.  After we had made a lot of progress, his wife was able to access her account and share the information about her family so Marvin could see both his and his wife’s family.  He is excited to start adding memories when he gets home.

After lunch, I was assigned to work with a family consisting of Grandma, two daughters and a grandson.  The grandson is attending the University of Arizona.  Grandma and one daughter live in New Jersey and the other daughter lives in Palo Alto, California.  They had started before I returned from lunch and had created some duplicate records as they were all working on the same ancestors.  I was able to get them working together and sharing what they found and what was already on the tree.  

I helped the grandson first and got him set up so he could do more research.  Next I helped the daughter from New Jersey do a little work on the tree with her mother helping.  The last person I helped was the daughter from Palo Alto.  We started working on her grandfather and found some duplicates and errors that needed to be corrected.  We found census records and then were able to resolve some duplicates.  There were four children in the family for grandma’s father.  As we merged duplicate records, we found a fifth child.  When we looked at the record, grandma was sure that this was an additional child she hadn’t heard about.   The child was born 10 years before grandma’s father and probably died as an infant.  Grandma indicated that she wanted to find out more about this aunt and find a death record.    

I checked with a man who had been helped briefly by one of the Young Elders.  He still needed help so I helped him navigate FamilySearch.  I showed him how to make corrections and merge some records.  He thought that he had an ancestor who came on the Mayflower.  We looked back on his fan chart and that ancestor was born in 1680 in Holland and then came to the Colonies.  I showed him how to install the mobile apps.  We had an interesting discussion on the 12 tribes of Israel based on what his church teaches.  He will be in the area tomorrow morning so I invited him to attend Music and the Spoken Word.