November 3 - 9 - Sunday to Saturday

Sunday Nov 3

We attended Music and the Spoken Word.  We sat close to the front which we haven’t done before.  We got a different perspective and sound being closer to the front of the tabernacle. 

We talked to a couple who sat by us and who are just starting their mission and will be introduced at the Monday morning devotional.  We talked to them after the Monday devotional and also saw and talked to them at least one more time during the week.

Of course we attended our meetings from 1 to 3pm. Before the meeting, I talked briefly with Mary Anne and Marlowe Ashton.  Mary Anne mentioned that a man who walked by us after the meeting is over 100 years old and then Marlowe mentioned that he was my second mission president’s (Ralph J Richards) brother-in-law.  I introduced myself and we visited for a few minutes.   Here is a picture of President Richards and his family taken in 1969.

Sister Richards, daughter, President Ralph Richards

two adopted sons in front

This is the first month and the last month that I will be conducting Sacrament meeting as my first counselor will conduct in December and we will have a new Branch President in January.

Sister Tolman fixed a delicious Mexican Bubble casserole to take to the Seniors for dinner.  Mom and dad both had second helpings.  See the recipe below. 

After dinner we watched last year’s Christmas program by the Tabernacle Choir.  We just purchased the DVD last week and this is the first time we watched it.    

Monday Nov 4

We attended the devotional and met the new missionaries and some missionaries who are leaving including Elder Seamons (a Young Elder).  Sister Tolman has a soft spot in her heart for Elder Seamons and visited with him after the meeting.

We took the car to be washed.  We had the deluxe cleaning done with the car washed inside and out and detailed along with waxing.  This is a first for our Chevy Impala.  It hasn’t been so clean since we bought the car over seven years ago.

We stopped at Walmart to check on a possible cartop carrier and ended up buying some plastic bags that will help get more clothes into a suitcase. We then went to lunch at Burger King.  I attended the Branch Leadership meeting at 3pm. 

At 6pm we met at the Tabernacle by door 2 for our monthly MTC group activity arranged by Elder Turner.  He had arranged for us to take a guided tour and be able to see the basement area where the choir has their offices, dressing rooms, music storage and other areas.  The tour was led by Ron Jarrett who is the choir president and was in the same ward as Sister Tolman growing up.  She was good friends with his younger brother. The first area as we went down the stairs was a corridor with some pictures of different choir events. 

Sister Tolman and Ron Jarrett, the choir president

President John F Kennedy in the tabernacle

We went into the dressing room for the women where they keep the different dresses that they wear. You can count the number of outfits.  

We saw the area where they keep all the music and distribute it each Sunday morning.  We then went into a large room where they can rehearse if necessary.  In this same room they keep an electronic organ that they take on tours as the electronic organ is able to mimic the sound of the tabernacle organ.

Elder and Sister Tolman in front of the panel showing the choir's 90 year anniversary 

The electronic organ used when the choir goes on tour

After going through the basement area, we went to the choir loft.  It was fun to sit where the choir sits on Sunday morning and look out over the tabernacle.  

Elder and Sister Tolman in the choir loft in the Tabernacle

The group that went on the tour.  We had more than our MTC group

Front row far left - Sister Stephens and far right Sister Ashcroft with 3 guests in between

Middle row - l to r, Sister Seve, Sister Montgomery, Sister Phillips and her husband, 

Sister and Elder Turner

Back row - Elder and Sister Tolman in the middle.  

Those on the left and right work with Elder Turner in the security zone

Tuesday Nov 5

We attended our prayer meeting at 7:30am.  I was the first one on the list to help and I was assigned to help Johnny Swanson from Texas.  He is a truck driver and had to stay a day in Salt Lake City due to restrictions on travel and length of time driving so he came to the library.  He couldn’t use the computer very well but used his phone better.  He had done some research and knew a lot about his family.  Many of them were already on the tree and we connected his parents to those already on the tree.  I concentrated on helping him understand how to use the mobile FamilyTree app as that will be what he will use the most when he is on the road.  He wanted to find some military records for an ancestor who served in the civil war on the Confederate side but we were not able to find any.  We got creative with a newspaper article about the death of his great-grandfather.  His cousin texted a copy of the article which we downloaded to this phone and then uploaded the image and used it to build the documentation for his death date.   I had done all that I could do to help him so I took him down to the second floor to see if they could help.  I saw him later as we were coming back from lunch and he thanked me again for helping him.

I helped my sister Gerri Coombs scan journals using the book scanner.  I hadn’t used the book scanner very much and took advantage of learning more as we asked another missionary to help us.  She was able to scan two journals.

Here is a picture of the scanner (the person at the scanner is not my sister Gerri).  The book is placed on the V-shaped stand and the pages are scanned a page at a time.  All you need to do is turn the pages and wait a short time for the each page to be scanned.  When complete the scanned image for the book is copied in PDF format to a flash drive.

Helped two friends who are here for a convention.  They said they didn’t need help and just needed a computer as they had been in the library yesterday.  I stopped by and sure enough they both needed a little help.  One went to the International Floor when I found out she had the birth city and country of an ancestor.  Helped the other learn about the different views of her ancestors.  I also helped her resolve some duplicates.

Helped Sandra from Big Bear Lake, California.  She had some family members who needed correcting with the common last name of Adams.  There had been a lot of merging done and I helped her get her direct ancestors straightened out.  I took over an hour but we were able to get this problem resolved.  I also showed her how to use Ordinances Ready.  We found an endowment that needed to be done and showed her that she could verify information before reserving the ordinance.  She hadn’t heard about this option and was happy to learn more.

In the evening back at our apartment, I received a phone call from Elder Devin Hales.  President McKnight had asked him to work with me on getting a website location for our City Creek Branch.  We were able to get that set up.  It will make it easier for the zone leaders to see their assignments for Sacrament and Priesthood meetings and indicate who will be filling the assignments.

Wednesday Nov 6

Attended prayer meeting with Sister Tolman leading the music.  Sister Tolman’s sister Marn came to the library to get help and she helped her from about 9am until noon,

Here is what Sister Tolman wrote. “Marn and Jayne wanted to come to the library and do some family history while we are still here so on Wednesday.  Jayne had a cold and wasn’t able to come.  However Marn showed up and we had a great couple of hours.  We worked a little on her temple list and showed her how to get temple names through Ordinances Ready.  This will be a great help to her when she goes to the temple.

We also looked at Mike’s dad’s page.  Her son Kyle had already addoneed the death date so we were able to see something.  She added the burial date and place.  Then she showed me what she has been doing with family history.  Last year she gave each of her kids a flash drive that had pictures going back I think to 2006 and she is now working on the rest of the pictures.

Many people think that this isn’t family history but they are wrong. This is a big part of family history.  I showed her my person page and then we started adding things to her memories.  We were able to upload and tag one picture and then she did another one on her own.  She said she wants to come back and learn how to do more.  I gave her an assignment for next week. I want her to find a picture that has a story connected to it and next week she can write the story and then connect the picture.  I guess I better get busy and be ready to add a story with pictures of my own.  It was fun to see what she has done and how she has grasped the true idea of memories.  Now to expanding her understanding.”

I worked with two Zone Leaders, Elder Stenberg and Elder Watson, to test the changes to the mission website for our branch and the changes are working properly.  I had a longer visit with Elder Stenberg and it was interesting to hear his experience as a technology specialist for this stake in Preston, Idaho.  I could appreciate his challenges with my experience working with the Tempe Stake assisting with technology but not being the technical person.

I helped Judith from Maine who is here for the week with the American Ancestors group.  She was wanting to update FamilySearch with what she had researched on Ancestry.com.  I showed her how to best do this by finding ancestors already on FamilySearch and connecting to them.  Once we went through this process several times and needed to merge some duplicate records, she got the hang of what to do and felt comfortable continuing on her own. 

I helped Sister Corinne Jensen who is the Relief Society leader in our branch and works on the Discovery Floor in the library.  I helped her use the copy machine to make copies of some histories of her ancestors and put these on a flash drive as separate PDF documents.  She was really grateful for the help and continued on her own after I helped her.  She was excited to be able to get this done and shared with other missionaries working on the first floor what she was able to get done.

I helped a mother with a new baby get started with scanning pictures from her husband’s mission to South America.  She was able to continue on by herself and when we came back from our lunch she had left the library so she must have finished successfully.

Jeffery Candelaria visited the library and I helped him add his siblings and step-mother to the tree.  It was good to see him again.  He always wants me to help him when he visits the library.

Helped Janice Pouliot learn some short cuts working with FamilySearch and visited with her for a while. I tried to encourage her to keep going despite life’s challenges.  It will be hard for her once the Salt Lake Temple closes and she won’t be serving regularly in the temple.  She has submitted paperwork to serve as a church service missionary so hopefully that will help fill the gap.

At the last minute Sister Tolman discovered that we could go see the movie “The Christmas Jar”.  We thought it was only on Monday night.  We are glad that we went.  Here is a link with an interview about the movie on YouTube   The movie will be released on DVD on December 3.  Sister Tolman will definitely purchase this movie when it becomes available.  It is a new favorite Christmas movie for her and that is saying something.

Thursday Nov 7

We talked to our daughter Laura first thing in the morning and had a good visit with her.  She has another trip to Sweden coming up in December.  We talked to her about possible timing for a visit to Austin to see them the last week of March.

We attended the 8am Endowment session followed by a sealing session.  We completed two Endowment ordinances, three couple sealings and three children to parent sealings.   Before the endowment session, I thought I recognized a woman and it turns out she was a classmate at East High.  After the 50 year reunion in 2015 I had helped her with her family history.  Her name is Mary Alldredge Griffiths.  Her Sister is Carole Stephens who was a counselor in the General Relief Society Presidency in 2015.  Sister Stephens was there with Mary and their spouses as they were completing temple work for their deceased brother.

I picked one of Sister Tolman's male endowments to complete and it turned out that I picked the right one as we sealed him to his wife and his daughter to them.  See the three temple cards below showing all three ordinances completed on November 7.

We spent several hours working on organizing our temple names to see what we need to get done over the next two months before the Salt Lake Temple closes.

It is my brother Byron’s birthday today so I called and talked to him.  We are looking forward to visiting them in Jensen for Thanksgiving.

We went to the Red Lobster for a late lunch or early dinner.  We had a gift certificate that we received from a couple in our ward which very generous of them.  We had a delicious four course meal of soup (Clam Chowder), salad (house and Caesar), entrée (Shrimp Alfredo and Salmon) and dessert.  We spent all the funds on the gift card ($50).  A 20% tip would have left $2 on the card so we increased the tip to use up all the funds.   

We were at the library from 6 to 9pm.  For the first while, I worked on some branch business and sent out a letter to the Zone Leaders explaining how they can now update the Sacrament meeting and priesthood meeting information on our Branch website that the mission set up for us.  This way is much easier than what we did before.

Just before 7pm, I started helping Carol Worthington from Salt Lake City.  She lives close to the library and was having some difficulty accessing her account.  She was able to access her account from the FamilySearch phone app but didn't know her password.  I was able to sign on to her account as a helper and was able to get a lot of things done that she needed.  She is a year or two older than I am and due to tremors has a difficult time typing so I did the typing for her.  She had recently added family members based on some christening records.  She had the printed sources but hadn’t attached them to the people.  I looked at the printed sources and then found them on FamilyTree and attached them.  She wanted to know where two parishes were in Wales.  I was able to find them on the 1851 English Jurisdictions map on FamilySearch and showed her where they were.  I uploaded the map to her account and then printed it out as well.   She was extremely grateful for the help.

Sister Tolman has gone back and forth today trying to get our enrollment straight for our Capstone One training for next week.  Somehow the person in charge kept getting mixed up about what we needed.  Finally after three or four emails back and forth, we are now set for next week for Tuesday through Thursday from 12:30pm to 4pm.

Friday Nov 8

We did the Friday cleaning and then went food shopping at Lucky’s and Smith’s.

Helped Janice Pouliot with adding a photo of her parents and a newspaper article about her father who was a baseball player in the 1940’s and played catcher for the New York Yankees for a short time.

Just as we were leaving for our early dinner at 3pm. A man stopped me and thanked me for helping his mother about a week ago.  He said he wanted to meet the person that had helped her.  That was a very nice thing for him to do.

Helped Leslie from Adrian, Michigan.  She is here with her husband and he worked on his tree with Elder Benton for several hours and then I asked her if she wanted to see what we could find out about her family.  We first looked at the 1930 census and the 1940 census and found both her parents there as they were born before 1930.   I checked on FamilyTree and found information about both sets of her grandparents.  I put together a lot of information so she would be able to get started at home. 

Her husband wasn’t ready to leave so she decided to go ahead and get started.  She set up her account and we built her tree.  She added her parents and connected to her grandparents and were also able to extend a line one more generation.  She was pleased with what she found about her family and went downstairs to the main floor and printed out a nine-generation fan chart.  

Saturday Nov 9

This is our Saturday to work the 8am to 5pm shift which is an hour longer than any of our other shifts during the week.  If we worked on Mondays, our shift would also be the same length of time.

I helped Don Attridge today.  It has been about a month since I have seen him and was worried about him.  His is feeling better as a medication that he was taking was changed and he is doing much better.  The person who normally brings him to the library once a week is unable to do so due to a broken arm (she drives a stick shift).  I helped him get five Initiatory cards printed from Ordinances Ready.  He gave us a new greeting card printed from one of his paintings.

I helped a guest who visits regularly from Park City.  She had a question about finding books by state and county.  I showed her the index book and then showed her how to use the FamilySearch Catalog so she will be able to handle similar questions in the future.

Barbara who lives locally needed help with scanning documents.  She had lots of documents and pictures to scan and had been working on these yesterday and today.  She was using the copy machine to copy these documents to a flash drive and then uploaded them to FamilySearch Memories.  The copy machine is fine for 8 ½ by 11 pictures and documents but not for the odd sizes.  She had some funeral programs and some other documents with information on the front and back.  I showed her how I had added my Aunt Helene’s funeral program and told her that I would see what I could do for a funeral program that she had.  I used the photo scanner and then an option on a software package we use called “Irfanview” and figured out how to show the front and back in one picture in a very presentable format.  I helped her do this for about ten or so documents and then helped her scan some obituaries cut out of the newspaper.  I also helped her scan a couple of pages from two books.  I spent several hours helping her and she very grateful for the help.

I helped Emily from Denver.  She is here in town waiting for her husband to meet her. Her mother encouraged her to visit the library and find out about her family so Emily wanted to focus on her mother’s side of the family.  She is in her early 30’s and her husband will be meeting her here.  Her mother’s maiden name is Young so that made things more difficult.   We first found most about her mother as she had an unusual last name.  We found a duplicate on the tree and once we resolved that we found several more generations.  We finally found out some more about her grandfather.  We found a possible census record for him with his parents.  Since her grandmother’s name was unusual it triggered a memory about her grandmother’s name and she knew the census record was her family.  She installed the FamilyTree app and this gave her the information on her phone.  She uploaded a picture of her and her husband and tagged them both.  She has a good start and will be able to continue finding more about her family.

We picked up Dad and Mom Senior to take them to an Eagle Scout Project in their stake that honored Veterans.  The program started at 6:30pm.  There were exhibits of various memorabilia from the veterans.  Dad Senior had some of his on display.  See some pictures below.

There was a really good video about the origin of the Star Spangled Banner.  Here is the video link.

Following the video, the veterans from each of the military divisions were honored as their individual military songs were sung (army, navy, coast guard, air force, and marines).  It was a very enjoyable evening and we were glad we were able to be there.