This week we learned about tons of things that needed to be fixed, and thankfully we were able to do just that for most things. The first thing that needed fixing Monday morning was our access badges. We got a text from the Atkins, who are asst. zone leaders, saying that their access badges were not working. They sneaked into the library following a construction worker whose access worked. By the time we got to the building we had received several more texts from other missionaries telling us the same thing. We got into the building because Debbie Gurtler got there and her badge worked and she propped the back door open with a chair. I learned this after talking with Debbie inside the library. Apparently since it was a holiday someone in the Church Security Office turned off access to most people’s badges, except for top management and construction personnel. So we had to prop a bunch of doors that usually you have to badge  through until finally they turned us all back on. Luckily...

I can’t believe I’m already writing another blog post. This week flew by so fast, but we did learn a few things.  Monday started off with a mission devotional, and one of our apartment floor mates, Gerald Roberts, spoke. He told a great story about how when he and his wife served a mission a few years ago scanning documents in Indiana, he was assigned to scan old yearbooks. He didn’t see much value in that, but then one day ran across a two-page tribute to a teacher that he thought was quite remarkable. He was impressed to copy the entry and then went and looked up this person, Wladyslaw Sokolowski from Poland, in FamilySearch. He found him and attached this tribute in his memories section. Four years later he was contacted by a relative of Wladyslaw’s, Marek Bierkenmajer, who thanked him for attaching this memory and then asked more about using FamilySearch and why we do this work. He explained about connecting families and added some information about temple work and sealing fami...

This was a busy week! Here’s what we did and learned. Sunday night I got a call from Scott telling me he was coming the next morning to attend a funeral for his aunt up in Heber on Tuesday, and wondering if he could stay with us. I said “Of course” (which now I am wondering where that saying came from, so of course  I looked it up. Here is what I found…   Adverbial phrase  of course  "by consequence, in regular or natural order" is attested from 1540s, literally "of the ordinary course;" earlier in the same sense was  bi cours  (c. 1300).  Matter of course   “ something to be expected" is by 1739.) Anyway, Scott flew in Monday morning and we gave him the codes to get into our apartment as we were already at work. It was kind of a bummer, because Monday is a long day for us. We did meet him for lunch at the COB cafeteria, but then it was back for meetings. This particular Monday started at 8am going into the library, working and doing meetings unti...

This week was filled with busy-ness. Here’s what we learned along the way. I don’t know if you remember, but last week our devotional was so crowded that they had all of the zone leaders sit up on the stand. Well, I guess a lot of people saw that and decided that this week they would just watch online because there was plenty of room in the auditorium this week. Lots of empty seats. People learn by experience. After the devotional we went in and spent our day FL’ing and ZL’ing and meetinging and helping. Lots of ings.  We had 3 different meetings we had to attend, which actually were all pretty productive and then Mom spent some time helping our new missionary, Sister LeFevre (Marie) get set up for training. The floor itself kept pretty busy and right before we closed I was asked to help a guest who I had helped before doing research in Sweden. He was trying to determine if a second husband to one of his ancestors was really a second husband. We searched a bunch of records and veri...