January 5 - 11 - Sunday to Saturday

Here is a picture of the Salt Lake Temple with only the angel Moroni in the sunlight taken by Sister Tolman on the way back from our Monday morning devotional.

Sunday Jan 5

We attended Music and the Spoken Word at the Conference Center.  With all the renovation startup happening on Temple Square, the broadcast will stay there for at least January.  The Conference Center is now the focus point for those wanting to visit Temple Square.   We tried sitting a lot closer to the front than we normally do.

The branch presidency was changed in our Sacrament meeting today.  My second counselor Elder Olsen is staying as a counselor which is good.  The three of us were recognized with a vote of thanks and the new presidency was welcomed.  The incoming and outgoing were asked to bear testimonies.  I was asked to go first and thanked those who have served with me.  It has been a wonderful experience to serve in the branch presidency for most of the mission time.  Sister Tolman also bore her testimony.  We are so grateful to have served as missionaries.   I will enjoy sitting by Sister Tolman for the last two Sacrament meetings of our mission.

We enjoyed dinner with our MTC group in the social room in the West Temple Apartments. Sister Tolman fixed shepherd’s pie.  All attended. This was our last social as all but two leave for home this month.  We have enjoyed our time with these missionaries.  Here is a picture of our group when we first started in August 2018.

Monday Jan 6

We attended the mission devotional.  We enjoyed hearing from President Fenn at the end.  We turned in our apartment inventory form to the housing coordinator, Sister Silvers.  While we were in the office, Elder Stenburg handed me an envelope that contained our travel reimbursement for our return trip home.

We continued work in our apartment getting ready for our departure.  I did some vacuuming and also some thorough cleaning in the front room.  We are working so that we don't have to do all the cleaning and packing preparation the last two days before we leave on Jan 22.

We attended our zone Christmas social at 6pm at the stake center.  The food was excellent with barbequed pork, baked beans, green beans, rolls and various side dishes.  Sister Tolman fixed oatmeal crispy cookies and pumpkin cake. 

Table with the main course.  The desserts covered two tables as well 

Two church service missionaries, Jay Crandall and Sister Isaacson.  

They were married on Tuesday Jan 7

Tuesday Jan 7

At the library first thing in the morning I was greeted by name by a guest.  It turns out that I helped her and her friend last January.  They are Paula from Seattle and Betty from Florida. I helped Betty make a lot of corrections on her tree.  Here is a picture of the three of us.

Paula, Elder Tolman, Betty

I helped a former missionary, Sister Terry who was in our MTC Group, with some document scanning.  I also helped another missionary, Sister Dimaggio who works in Library Services, get started on passing the requirements for her purple pin.

I scanned my missionary journal from my Tahiti mission – June 1967 to December 1969.  I made three copies, one was in color and shows the blue ink that I used.  The other was in black and white except for the pictures, and a third was the last six month of my mission which was the best part.  These journals are visible at this link.

We went to dinner with Sister Tolman’s family at her sister Marn’s home in Layton.  We picked up mom and dad Senior.  We took some of our extra cooking supplies and left them with Marn.  We had an enjoyable dinner and visit which included us, Rowland and Lois, Marn and Mike, Jayne and Greg, and David.  Each family member shared a written note about our time together during our mission.  We really enjoyed reading these letters and will keep them with our mission memories.  This was our last get together with Sister Tolman's family. We will miss seeing our extended families when we return to Arizona in two weeks.

Glen, Dave, Lynne, Marn, Mike, Lois, Rowland, Jayne, Greg

Glen and Lynne with picture of the Salt Lake Temple (gift from the Senior Family)

Wednesday Jan 8

I helped Betty and Paula several times during the day with some merges and corrections needed on FamilySearch. 

I scanned the Garden Park Ward 25th anniversary booklet.  Here is the cover page plus a picture of our ward bishopric in 1961.  You can download the PDF version at this link.  It is a large file of about 100 meg.

I helped Natalie Johnson discover her family.  She is a college student at San Diego State University and is visiting with a friend.  One of the young Elders had helped her get started and build her family tree.  I didn’t think that he had spent enough time with her to show her some of the exciting things about FamilySearch.  I showed her the fan chart view of her ancestors.  I showed her how to find when her ancestors first came to this country.   We found some memories on the tree and these ended up being for some pioneer ancestors who came to Utah in the 1850’s.  She was amazed when she found out that this pioneer family had some challenges getting to Utah as the father passed away in England but the mother managed to get her and all her children to Utah from England.  With what she had on her tree I knew she would have an enjoyable discovery experience on the first floor so I escorted her there and introduced her to a missionary to help her.

I helped Sister Godfrey and explained what I had done to help Natalie Johnson discover her family.  I always enjoy helping other missionaries learn different ways to help our guests.  

Sister Peterson had been helping an older man who was a church member but hadn’t used FamilySearch.  I checked to see how things had gone and he had learned a lot but wanted to find more family names to take to the temple.  I sat down for a minute and helped him use Ordinances Ready and he was able to find some more names.  I complemented Sister Peterson on all she had learned as a missionary.  She and Sister Tolman are the farthest along of all the missionaries on our floor with the various training modules. Sister Peterson thanked me for reminding her about "Ordinances Ready" and showing her guest how to use this feature.

We enjoyed dinner with Ira and Lynn Gentry at our apartment.  Thanks to Sister Tolman for fixing a tasty meal of enchiladas and quesadillas.  After dinner we enjoyed a game of Five Crowns.  Sister Tolman won and I was second.  Ira plans to visit the library next week so we can visit one more time before returning to Arizona.  We will continue to stay in touch.

Thursday Jan 9

We attended the 8:20am Endowment session in the Jordan River Temple and talked to our daughter Laura before we left and during the drive to the temple.  She has a new place for us to visit with them when we go to visit the end of March.  I think that we lowered the average age of those in attendance at the Endowment session.  There were a few individuals younger than we are but most were older.  We were asked to be the witness couple which I believe is only the second or third time to have this opportunity since attending the temple on our mission.  

Jordan River Temple - taken at about 8:00am 

View of the mountains taken from in front of the Jordan River Temple

We continued to work on the apartment and did some reading.  Sister Tolman is working on several books documenting our mission and the various experiences we have had.  We can get the books printed here much cheaper that at home.

Sister Tolman’s sister Jayne stopped by at 7pm and she stayed for two hours to get help from her expert sister.  It was good to see her.

I was at the desk most of the evening but ending up answering several questions.  I showed a woman who was very familiar with FamilySearch but didn’t know the newer features such as the different views on the fan chart, looking at individual time-lines, using the built in copy function to copy and paste individual ID numbers.  

Three friends were working together and two raised their hands for help.  I showed one of them how to use the Temple "Ordinances Ready" function to get names for the temple and we printed one Endowment and four Initiatory ordinances for her.  I showed them how to check the individuals and look for additional family members to add to the tree or others needing ordinances completed.

Friday Jan 10

In two weeks we will be at home in Tempe.  It is hard to believe that our time here has passed so quickly.

As we arrived at the library we saw and said hello to Cyndi Howells whom we met a year ago.  She is the author of the genealogy website Cyndi's List.  I had a picture taken with her a year ago.  She and others including Betty and Paula are here for SLIG (Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy) annual convention from Jan 12-17.  Here is last year’s picture.  

Sister Leinonen who works in Library Services on our floor stopped me and said “You are one man that I will really miss and I don’t say that to many people”. That was a real compliment to me.  She and her husband provide the bread for our Sacrament service each Sunday.  Here is a picture. 

Elder and Sister Leinonen

Brent McOmber stopped by the library.  He is my age and was a friend who grew up with us in the Garden Park Ward. His twin brother Bruce stops by the library most weeks.  Brent often attends the monthly Thursday luncheons.  We visited for a while and then I helped him recover his church account.  He had been a ward clerk but hadn’t accessed the church websites recently and he also wanted to access familysearch.org.  He doesn’t have a cell phone and he didn’t have an email address.  I helped him set up a Gmail account and then contacted the help line to help him get access to his accounts.  The person helping us found his username and then set up a temporary password which we updated and now he has access.  

Elder Tolman and Brent McOmber

I helped a missionary from our MTC Group, Sister Marcie Seve.  She needed help adding some external sources from ancestry.com.  She had found an individual to add to the tree through her assignment in the mission and needing help adding sources and stories.  She finishes her mission the same time that we do.

I also helped Sister Tippetts who is our neighbor in the West Temple Apartments.  She had finished scanning some pictures and documents and needed help making sure these were copied to her flash drive.  She and her husband work on the British floor and are from Arizona.

Saturday Jan 11

We took several loads of our things to the swap meet sheds to share with other missionaries.  We will have one more load next Saturday with things that we need to keep until we leave such as dish drainer.  We also have some clothes that we will take to Deseret Industries.  We received an email scheduling our exit interview with President Fenn on Tuesday.  We signed some going away cards for the missionaries leaving this month.  However, we didn’t sign the two cards with our names on them.

I was assigned to help Jane who is an older member sister who needed help reserving and sharing temple names.  She had a hard time using the computer and had also forgotten her reading glasses so I was the one doing the data entry.  We managed to get everything done that she needed but it was slow going.

I helped Betty and Paula again with some questions and FamilySearch updates that they needed help with.  I will probably see them next Friday as they will be in SLIG next week during the day.

One of the young Elders had helped a couple from Boston and had got them started on their tree.  I showed them the Fan Chart view.  She hadn’t found her grandmother’s maiden name, so we started searching.  We found the findagrave.com site for her using her married name and found that her maiden name was listed as well.  As soon as she saw the maiden name for her grandmother, she remembered that what she saw was correct.  With the maiden name, we found a possible christening record for her with her parents names listed.  I helped them add this image to FamilySearch.  They can review the document at home to determine if this is her grandmother.