Week Fifty-nine…Super Tired All the Time!

I know nine and time don’t rhyme perfectly, but it close enough for me. Here’s what we learned this week.

I start this week with a digression. I learned on Monday that the brother who was sitting in front of me in Elders quorum last Sunday, that made some comments about the political nature of Daylight Saving Time is Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah. The governor’s mansion is just a couple blocks away from our building, so his family is in our ward. In fact his wife is a new gospel doctrine class teacher. They are not frequent attenders, as his responsibilities take him away often, but learning that explained the big black, tinted-windowed Cadillac Escalade that I saw pulling into the Church parking lot a few weeks ago. 

Now on with the week. We headed in at 8:30 for our shift on Monday morning. It was a bit breezy and cool, but not too bad weather wise. The floor was pretty normal as far as visitors go. We went up around 9:15 to greet our new missionaries, the Carpenters, and make sure they made it to the Onboarding class. Then it was zone leaders stuff most of the morning, including our zone council meeting, which I made it to on time this week. Most of the rest of the day was working on zone leader things and hoping to pass off intermediate French if a staff member came in, but that didn’t happen. What did happen was that two business men came into the library, one from Poland and one from the Netherlands. So I was asked to go help them. I was able to explain the resources available and how they could search for records. The man from the Netherlands started asking about where all of these resources come from, so I took the opportunity to explain a little about the Church and why we feel so strongly about families, and he told me about an

experience he had when he was a young adult. He came to America with a backpack ready to site see everywhere he could. He came up from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City and here met a couple who let him stay with them. They told him about the Church and gave him a Book of Mormon. Then he was off to see Yellowstone. Awhile later he called his parents in the Netherlands to check in with them and they asked him why he sent two Mormon boys to their house with a Dutch 

“Mormon Bible”. He was confused. He told them he didn’t do that. Later he realized that when the couple he had stayed with had asked for his home address and that they would send him a Dutch version of the Book of Mormon he didn’t know it would be delivered so quickly and by missionaries. He was fun to speak with, and his Polish colleague spent most of his time looking through records and filling in his family tree. Pretty cool. When he left he thanked me for all of the help and said I needed to come visit the Netherlands soon. I told him I would love to, but wasn’t sure when that would happen. I think Mom and I need to start a list of all the places we need to visit and make some plans. 

We closed the library at 6pm and then headed over to the COB auditorium for the Elijah Choir (mission choir) Easter concert. They did a great job and it was a good way to get started with the Easter season. Mom and I have talked about it and we think we want to try to make the Easter season more like the Christmas season. We’re not sure what exactly we plan to do to do that, but we are open to suggestions. We don’t want to just mimic Christmas with decorations and music and presents and food, but we do want to make it more special than we have in the past and have it last more than just two days…Saturday’s egg hunt and Sunday’s Church program. Give us your ideas!

Tuesday we had Pday, but we got up and dressed in library attire and went in because it was Sister Pete’s last day in the library and there is a tradition to give missionaries who are completing their mission a certificate and an Elijah Moments book, which has a bunch of stories from missionaries sharing their great moments when they were able to help someone in the library with their family history and they received help from the other side of the veil to get it done. An

Elijah Moment (see Malachi 4:5-6). Mom felt that it was important for us as zone leaders to be there for each of these missionaries and she was right. I am learning she is usually right! I know, I know…why has it taken me so long to realize that? 

We ran off to do Costco shopping and back home to do our Dutch paleography class and then hurried over to the COB for lunch with John. After lunch we just came back to relax for a bit. We are learning that our bodies need to relax more often. It seems we are constantly tired, probably because we are constantly busy and stressed and working, but we do get times to relax and those times are more and more important. I finished the night going to give platelets. I watched another Netflix movie, Operation Mincemeat. It is based on a true story from WWII. Unfortunately I accidentally moved the input cord with my legs and stopped the movie for about 20 minutes before I finally got someone’s attention to hand me the remote
so I could restart it. So I didn’t get to finish it and since we don’t have a Netflix account I’ll have to wait for two weeks when I go back in again to watch the end of the movie.

Wednesday Mom got up earlier than me and was ready to head to the gym when I came out. It was snowing outside. I guess winter isn’t ready to quit yet. So I sent her off thinking I would follow her shortly. But there were too many emails and texts to answer and forward, so by the time I was ready to go I figured I wouldn’t have enough time to do my normal workout, so I just stayed home and did some pushups. I planned to do more, but was kind of tired…probably from the platelet donation the night before…so I quit early and headed to the shower. When we got into the library I decided to create a new missionary photo collage for our coat room bulletin board where we

keep them for the missionaries to look at when they need to learn the faces of their fellow missionaries. Elder Decker had created a new one just before he left, but now we have more new missionaries to add, so I decided to bring it up to date. Well the excel sheet he left me with a bunch of macros that he had added wasn’t working correctly. It kept adding the new missionaries at the end instead of putting them in alphabetical order. I have learned that if I can’t figure out how to make a program work there are others who I can go to that can help. So I tried Sister Pruner and Elder Decker and they couldn’t figure it out. So I spent most of the morning manually adding the pictures and the names under them. I was so happy when that was finally finished. Ugh. I went and sat down near the English’s and started chatting with

them. We were talking about how these bodies we have now seem to get tired pretty quickly these days and I mentioned that the next model wasn’t supposed to have that problem. Elder English said he was looking forward to dark curly hair again. I then said I wasn’t so sure we were going to get a young resurrected body. Think about it. How do you picture Heavenly Father? We probably will look like a grandpa or grandma with white hair. They then said, “Yeah, we’ll probably all have celestial hair.” I learned that is what they call super white hair color. I asked them if celestial hair is a sign of a celestial nature. They both quickly said, “Nope!” They know too any celestial hair people that are far from celestial in nature. It made me smile. I asked how close I am to celestial hair and they said, “Pretty close!” I then admitted that I am still a ways away from the celestial nature, so maybe that is why mine isn’t quite yet celestial hair. The rest of the day seemed to whiz by and by the time we headed home at 6pm we learned that the weather had changed again and all the snow had melted away. We are hoping for Spring soon. I want to start riding again…outside.

Thursday I did go for a ride, but it was inside in the gym on a stationary bike. I got in just under 25 miles and my bum let me know that it has been awhile since I have been on a bike seat. We went in at 10am and had a couple of meetings, one being called the Just Us meeting. It is for the zone leaders of the zones of the library and doesn’t include any staff or mission leaders. It is just for us to discuss anything we think we ought to be working on or changing in the library. The scanning zone ZLs were saying how sometimes it is difficult to keep their missionaries awake. They seem to be so tired they drift off in the middle of a scanning project. I told them about this image that Sister Kopp shared with me when she was looking through some digital images on a microfilm. Funny! She must have been pretty tired. I did learn from Sister Kopp that the next image was the correct page, so at least she did get it digitized and where it was supposed to be.

We then headed over to the COB for lunch with our Thursday lunch crew…Sister Harper, Elder Carter and Sister Baker. We actually had lunch scheduled for 1pm, but our friends were hoping that we could come with them. So Mom arranged with some other AZLs to cover for us and we went with them at noon. It was a good thing we had decided to go with them then because we ran into two people that knew us. The first was Sandy, a lady that served as a missionary with my sister Linda in the Georgia Atlanta Mission many moons ago. She walked up and said, “You’re Linda’s brother and sister right?” She still keeps in touch with Linda and had learned from her that we were serving in the FamilySearch Library. She had just started working there in the COB cafeteria a few days before. It was fun to see someone who knew who we were. We visited with her for a bit and were just getting back to eating lunch when another lady walked up and just stood next to Mom. Mom looked up and

recognized her right away…Rachel Smith…who used to live in our ward in Elk Grove. She now lives in Wisconsin. Mom jumped up and gave her a hug. We learned that she was just in town visiting and had come to the COB cafeteria with a local friend when she saw us. She knew we were serving in the library and hoped to be able to see us at some point, but was happily surprised to run into us in the cafeteria. Good thing we went at noon! 

Oh and it was π day on Thursday so I had to get a piece of pie. Here is the one I got. We went to the Bountiful Temple at the end of our shift and it was super windy. As Sister Docherty was walking up to the doors the wind blew her glasses right off. So after our session I ran out and got the car and picked them up at the door so that wouldn’t happen again. We stopped at Costco for Mom do get some items for an Easter service project some missionaries in the library are donating to and Sister Docherty and Sister Pruner did some shopping as well. I got home just in time to watch the end of BYU getting throttled by Texas Tech. To smooth my sorrows I made some pudding. I did it the way I learned to do it when we were first married…milk and pudding mix in a Tupperware container and shake it until it starts to solidify. Then in the fridge for about 10 minutes and ate it with some graham crackers. My own little “pie”. Yummm!

Friday we got into the library and it started out as all zone leader stuff. But then I noticed one of our missionaries helping a lady with some Swedish research and she needed to go off to a meeting, so I stepped in and took over. I learned from the guest that she was trying to find out if the man they had found in one record was the same as in another record. In one record he had a patronymic surname…Persson I believe…and in the other record his surname was Glad, which we learned means “Happy”. Well we went searching through birth records and household records and marriage records and kept coming up empty. As we were looking through the whole book of one household examination record the missionary returned and asked how we were doing. I explained that we were still searching and hadn’t found anything conclusive an hour later. Ugh, another “Swedish problem!”. 

Well it was then time for us to go home (it was our T/R day where we get a half day to work on our own research or go to the temple, but since we had gone to the temple the night before we were planning to go home and rest) so I turned her back over to the other missionary, along with another sister who is very good at Swedish research, and I started heading out the door when the steward asked if I was leaving. I asked why, and he said he had someone from the Netherlands and my name was the only one popping up. So I said I’d take it. The guest was upstairs on the Discovery floor, and when I got there I learned that the Discovery floor missionary had already shown her a little about the different records that were available and she had quite a few windows open. So I asked her what she would like to do, and she showed me the tree she had begun with her and her children and her mother and father and she had just put in her grandfather, on her father’s side, but only knew his surname. So I noticed one

of the windows that she had open was on the Open Archives site, which is a site that is from the Netherlands and has many many Dutch records. So I had her show me that record and learned it was her father’s death record. I then showed her that if she went back to her search for her father’s name, which was pretty unique, she was sure to find a record that mentioned his parents. Sure enough we found a marriage record, which not only showed his parent’s names, but his wife’s maiden name and her parents as well. She was very excited. Mom came up about the time I was explaining about Open Archives and watched as we were able to open the actual record and then save it as a source and then use the information we had found to fill out more of her tree. She was a quick learner so I had her find another record and attach that as a source and then I asked if she knew where she should go from there. She did! So I quickly showed her the Wiki and the other records site, WieWasWie, and turned her loose. When I went back downstairs to let them know I was finished I learned that the guest with the “Swedish problem” still had not solved it. Sadness. Well at least I got to leave the library knowing that I had helped one person be successful. 

Mom and I then rewarded ourselves for a short, but productive day by watching The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, six hours of rest and relaxation. We have to admit that we each fell asleep during different parts of the movies. Just too tired! 

Saturday we got up and went for a walk up City Creek Canyon.

It is at a little higher elevation than where we are so some of the snow has hung around. But it was a pretty nice day and we had a good walk. Mom took this picture of the waterfall and I took the picture of Mom taking the picture of the waterfall. Heehee. We got in about 3.5 miles and were able to get back in time to get ready to go into the library. You may have surmised that we have been going in around 10am every day (except Monday). We changed our schedule that way so that we can be there in the evenings to help out after most of the missionaries go home at 4pm. 

When got into the library we found it VERY quiet. I went to the steward and learned that we had only helped 1 guest so far that first hour. Wow, new record I think for fewest guests helped in an hour. It did start to pick up a bit towards lunchtime, but it never  got busy all day long. I worked on the agenda for our Monday meeting, and getting people set up to request mission extensions…which I have learned is pretty fun. I get to ask missionaries about their experience so far in the library and their desires for the future. Most of them tell me of some of the great experiences they have had in the library and how much they want to stay there until they can’t physically come in anymore…either crippled or dead. They love it there. I then decided to work on my Swedish line, but not my “Swedish problem”. I went looking for a different parent that was missing and in the process discovered a child that had been missed. Stina was their first child and died when she was 6 years old. They named their third daughter Maja Stina, which is very common to use the name again if an earlier child dies. I was excited that I had found Stina. 

We closed the library and went home to relax and I watched a couple episodes of Alone. 

Today was Sunday and it was our Ward Conference. They asked me to attend a special Ward Council, since I am a counselor in the Sunday School presidency. Our bishop and the stake president spoke in sacrament meeting. The Bishop spoke about the voices of the world that are so strong these days and seem so good in their intentions, but slowly lead us away from God. The Stake President spoke about living beneath our privileges. Sister Oaks, who is in our stake, came as well. I think she might have some sort of advisory or committee role with the young women in the stake as I know she had a special fireside for all of the young women recently. It’s kind of fun to see their names in our stake directory. When you click on President Oaks’ name and look up his calling it says First Presidency. Kind of fun.  Then we had the 1st counselor in the stake presidency teach the elders quorum lesson. He showed this meme. This

was about a member of the seventies who gave a prayer in general conference and messed up what he was trying to say. President van den Dungen Bille (I learned that’s the counselor’s name) said that he had heard that Elder Bednar found this brother after the meeting and told him that he needed to give a talk about that. I wondered if he had, so I googled it and found that he did mention it in a talk at BYU, but he only mentioned it. His talk was about tenacity not faithening your strength. I thought about what I would talk about if that were my topic. I think I would talk about the many talents we have been blessed with and figure out how we can learn to see them as gifts and strengths from our Father in Heaven, and how seeing them that way and using them for what He would have us use them for can increase our faith and have us use them with more faithful power. That’s just an initial thought. I think I’ll ponder it more and see what I can learn.

Well the day is coming to a close. I peeked and found out that BYU will play in the East Region for March Madness. We were hoping they might be put in the West Region and Scott and I could watch them this week. He’s coming for the games Thursday and Saturday this week and I get to go with him. Fun times!

Love you mucho, baie, muito, marami. (Hope those are right.)

Mom and Dad