Week Fifty-seven…Michel, Francis, Tasman and Kevin.

 Wow! This was a wild week. We met tons of people from tons of places, as they were here for the RootsTech conference, and here is what we learned…

Monday started off our whirlwind week on just the right note, or wrong note…you can decide. I went over to the Mission Devotional where I found our two new missionaries, Elder Evertsen and Elder Higgins, sitting by each other. So I sat with them and enjoyed the devotional. Mom went to the library to view the devotional via Zoom so that she could be there to go up to the 3rd floor right at 9am and exchange the RootsTech shirts that were too big for our sister missionaries…she wanted first dibs. After the devotional I walked with our missionaries over to the library and had planned on showing them where the onboarding meeting was, but as soon as I walked in the doors Debbie Gurtler saw me and waved me over to introduce me to four individuals from France. She asked me if I spoke French and I said un peu. So she turned them over to me and asked me to take them to the International floor. Luckily Mom was there…she had tried to take the shirts back to exchange them, but the staff person in charge of those wasn’t there yet. So I handed the missionaries off to her and took the French guests downstairs. I showed them to

computers and learned that the leader of the group, Francis, was the President of a large French genealogy society in France. (That’s him in this picture I found of him online at a conference in France.) So he knew what he was doing as far as research goes, but he wanted to learn more of, and show his colleagues, what FamilySearch could do. I learned that, because one of the ladies spoke pretty good English and was able to translate for me since my French stinks! Luckily just then Emilienne, our missionary from Paris, came into the library. I immediately waved her over and we began together to get them started. They all had FamilySearch accounts, but two of them couldn’t remember their passwords or usernames, so we had to call guest services down to help them recover those. As I went over to the steward desk to let them know what was happening with those guests

and to have them assign Emilienne to them, they asked if I could help another French speaking guest, Michel. So I said sure, even though we weren’t scheduled to come in to the library yet, our assigned shift was from 11-7. When I got over to Michel I learned that he was from the island of Reunion, just next to Mauritius. He was, like Francis, an avid genealogist and was wanting to know what resources we may have that he didn’t have access to. So I took him to the catalog and showed the books and records we have and on just about everyone of them he would say, “Qui, I have that one.” After showing him the Wiki page and the links we had there I decided to see if we had any staff that would know any more about those islands. I learned that we do not. We have one specialist who has a son-in-law from Mauritius, but he doesn’t really know anything about doing research there. So I went back to Michel and he said he was going to take a quick break to get something to eat

and would be back to go downstairs to look at a couple of books after that. Then I had a missionary ask about his registration for RootsTech so I went to find Mom and learned that she was ready to hand out the RootsTech badges that had just come in. We did that and by the time we were finished it was almost time to start our shift, so we just stayed. We were assigned to be floor leads all day and it was fun to juggle missionaries around. It really got busy in the library and that made it necessary to send people off to help guests that had other assignments, so we had to find others to step in for them. Mom spent most of the day getting RootsTech badges passed out and getting shirts that needed to be exchanged for a different size sorted out. By the end of the day we were getting pretty tired out, since we had been there since 8am and we didn’t close until 8pm, so the Deckers told us to go get dinner earlier and they would take over. When we got back we took care of a couple more things and headed home around 7:10. LONG DAY! As we walked into the apartments they were having FHE in the lobby. We just smiled and waved and went up to our apartment and got ready for bed. We were too tired for FHE.

Tuesday was Pday. Whew! Mom went shopping and I had to go to court. I was summoned again for the preliminary hearing of the woman that stole our car. So I walked down there and and waited outside, again with nobody approaching me or anything. At the time the hearings were supposed to start I went into the courtroom and I wished I hadn’t. There was a young man, 24 years of age, testifying about how when he was 14 he had subscribed to a now defunct app to find friends. He was “friended” by a man who came and picked him up at his school, took him to his home and molested him. He was then threatened by the man and dropped off back at school. He had been afraid to say

anything until just recently and was now coming forward. So sad! Anyway, they took a break on that case and decided to hear some others. Ours was the second one up. The prosecuting attorney stood and said that they motioned to dismiss the case without prejudice and the defense attorney, who was there with the woman who stole our car (or do I have to say “who allegedly stole our car”?) accepted the motion and the judge said she was free to go. Then the prosecuting attorney grabbed her phone and went out in the hall to make a phone call. So I followed her out and waited for her to get off the phone and went up and introduced myself. She didn’t even know I was there. She apologized and told me that she should have informed me of what their decision was and let me know that they were planning to move forward with other charges against the woman, I am assuming the charges of stealing mail, and asked if I was ok with the decision because if I wasn’t they could still proceed. I said that we were happy we had our car back and felt like they needed to do something to dissuade the woman

from doing this again, but we could move on. Another morning waisted. Although I did take a different route home and found this little plaza, Gallivan Plaza, where there are a bunch of cool statues.  

We spent the rest of our day lounging around and then I went off to give platelets at 6:00. I was brought right in and interviewed and tested and hooked up pretty quick, and then I bled pretty quick as well, so quickly that I wasn’t able to finish the movie I started. It was called Race, and is about Jesse Owens and his four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics. Pretty good! I did find it when I got home and finished it. From the

movie I learned that he was coached by Larry Snyder who was supposed to go to the 1924 Olympics with Jackson Scholz and Charley Paddock to compete in the 100 meter dash, but he was learning to fly planes and had a crash just before the Olympics and got hurt too badly to compete. Sadness. If he hadn’t had the injury I would have seen him portrayed in one of my favorite movies, Chariots of Fire. I love how in the movie when Eric Liddell decides not to compete in the 100 meter race because it was being held on Sunday and is offered a spot to compete in the 400 meter race instead, just before he races Jackson Scholz handed him a note that said, “it says in the old book, ‘he that honors me I will honor.” Great movie!

Wednesday I went to the COB to workout. After my workout I went to get my stuff from my locker and there was a girl in the way, so I wandered over to look out the window at the temple construction. As I looked I noticed behind the temple a line of people on the sidewalk on West Temple. I realized they were waiting to get into the library. I later learned there were almost 100 people in that line. Wow! We went into the library around 10:30 and found it packed with people. There were only a

few empty computers of our over 100 computers that we have on our floor, so Mom and I, along with quite a few other missionaries, went into the computer lab to find a spot to sit. We weren’t in there very long when we were told that the room was going to be needed to host a VIP tour group, actually 3 of them back to back. So we all had to clear out of there and find somewhere else to study and wait for an assignment. It was busy all day long and I learned at the end of the day that between our zone and the US/Canada zone we served over 400 people who asked for help, and there were probably that many or more that didn’t ask for help. Towards the end of he day a young man,

Tasman from Australia, came into the library. I was up at the front when he came and and made eye contact, so I asked if we could help him. He said he had been doing quite a bit of research, but needed some help with a couple of his family lines, one of which was Swedish. I got him on a computer and signed him up to get help and told him I might be the guy to come help. But when I went back to the steward desk they needed some help in some other areas, so they assigned another missionary. Later I saw her and another missionary who does Swedish research gathered around his computer. So I went over and learned that they had found a document on one of his ancestors and were trying to read it. I was able to decipher a few things, but not everything and I noticed our Swedish staff specialist wasn’t helping anyone right then, so I went over and asked if he had time to come take a look at the document. He did have time and came over and was able to decipher the rest of what was in it which led us to look up some military records because I had been right that the one word I had recognized was that he was a sailor. The four of us had a great half hour or so watching Tasman search archives and look through records and find more and more information on his ancestor. So much fun!

Mom headed home a bit early because Kenny (Uncle Stinkerpot) was at our place. He came for RootsTech and had arrived around 6:30. I stayed almost until closing and then headed home. I found Mom and Kenny chatting on the couch, although most of the time during the three days that he was with us he spent at the desk on his computer working on DNA studies. He has learned how to use DNA to identify relatives, especially for those who have been adopted and he is working on a couple of cases. What a guy! Mom decided since we didn’t need to be in until 11am the next day that she would go over and attend some classes with him. He was pretty tired from his drive and we were tired from our day in the library so we all went to bed pretty early. I am learning that his older body of mine gets tired more easily. Yikes! But even though I was tired I wasn’t ready to sleep, so I went to bed with my iPad and watched a couple episodes of Alone.

Thursday morning Mom went over to the Salt Palace with Kenny and I decided to go ride the stationary bike in the gym. I got finished faster than I thought I would so I went over to join Mom and Kenny in a class. They saved me a seat and it turned out to be a pretty good class. It was about doing genealogical research using newspapers. The presenter started off explaining and showing examples of tons of different types of  information you can find in newspapers and then he showed where you can access lots of newspapers. It was pretty cool. Afterwards I asked Kenny if he knew everything the guy had talked about, and he said mostly, there were a couple of things he learned. I learned a couple of things too.

Mom and I then went into the library and found it not as busy as the day before. We thought that would be the case, since many of the people would be at RootsTech. We found a place to sit and since we only had to be floor leads twice to give others a chance to go eat, I decided to work on what I am calling “my Swedish problem”. I have an ancestor, Catharina Jansdotter, who was married to Nils Matsson. I can find tons of records showing them and their children living in the little village of Palahojden but I was hoping to find a birth record for her to identify her parents. The household record states she was born in Ljusnarsberg on January 17, 1754. But when I go to the birth records for Ljusnarsberg there is nobody listed born on that date. So I looked for a marriage record in 1780, since the household record said they were married that year, and found nothing in her town, but found a marriage record for Nils Matsson from Palahojden and a Catharina Nilsdotter (not Jansdotter), but it states that her father is Jan Nilsson and they are from a village named Kyrkviken. So

when I go to their household records it all seems to be correct, but it states that Catharina was born in Gangerdet. Looking here I found a birth record, but it was a different month and day in 1754. Ugh! Is it her? Did the priest mess up her surname in the marriage record? Why are the birthdates not matching up? Such a problem. I showed it to Elder Norm Baker, who is really good with Swedish records and Sister Kim Nielsen and they both agreed…it is a problem and I can’t quite verify that her parents are Jan Nilsson and Kiersten Nilsdotter without more verified sources. Ugh!

Mom got to help someone with a fairly easy Italy question, but we didn’t do too much more than some printer helps and family tree fixes. I think at the end of the night the WaitWhile system stated that we had helped over 260 people. Still pretty busy, since our normal numbers are around 65 people per night.

Friday morning we went into RootsTech with Kenny to attend an 8am class that was hopefully going to announce that FamilySearch is going to offer an option to create a family tree that is only yours, like Ancestry does which is not collaborative. I have heard rumors for a while now that they are working on that. We learned that the class was not to announce that, but to announce that they are working on making it easier to merge and unmerge and hopefully keep people from messing with verified trees and information. A step in the right direction, but not yet an individual tree option. The class was packed, BTW, and there were a ton of questions and

suggestions from the audience. We then left Kenny and headed back home to rest a bit before going in at noon. We found the library a little busier than the day before, but not nearly as busy as it was on Wednesday. We again just filled in a couple of hours as floor leads and were able to be helpers or work on our own projects. Mom worked on her Advanced Italian training and I worked on “my Swedish problem” a bit, except I kept getting interrupted to help people. One of mine was for a person doing research in the Netherlands. They had a grandfather’s name, but their search for records wasn’t showing them grandma. So I showed them Open Archives and

we were able to find a marriage record to find grandma. It also showed both of grandpa and grandma’s parents and they were super excited to find that. So I left them to continue searching and finding more people on their tree. It was cool that I was able to use what I had learned to to help them learn to do the research. Later in the day I got to use something else I had learned in my training for Norway research to help another couple. They had found a record, but it was only an index and it said that the image was not available to view. So I went into Digital Arkivet and looked for records during that time. Unfortunately it seems that all the records for the time period they were looking for were unavailable, except for a chronological list. I had learned about these in my advanced Norway training. The priest would keep a chronological record of what he did each year. He would go through he year and just write a date when he performed a priestly duty, like a baptism or burial or communion, and then list the individual

involved. In this case the priest did it by week. We found the week of the marriage they were looking for, but unfortunately it only listed the names of the people he married and the date. The guests were hoping it would name the parents as well. Sadness. But it was fun to use what I had learned to find the record.

We spent the rest of the night helping where we could and closed the place down at 8pm. Just before we closed we took this picture of our steward computer showing that we had completed helping 245 people and were currently serving more guests and had more that we needed to assign. We learned that at the end of the night we had served just over 300 guests. Another busy day!

Saturday Kenny got up and headed into RootsTech. We were casually getting ready when Mom looked at her schedule and suddenly shouted, “We’re supposed to do prayer meeting today!” She was more ready to go than I was, so she took off for the library and I hurriedly got dressed and shaved and grabbed my water bottle and headed into the library. I got there just as prayer meeting had ended. Ugh. At least Mom made it to conduct the meeting. We were scheduled to be floor leads all day until 4pm. I helped a lady behind me a couple of times with some family tree problems she was having, but mostly worked on getting all of the transfer and extension missionary profiles up to date and sending out emails to missionaries who had received extension approvals. Somewhere in the midst of all of that I ran into Sister Dalebout, who also does Swedish research. So I told

her a brief summary of “my Swedish problem” and she said to give her the PID of Catharina and she would see what she could find. So I went off to help someone with Iran, because Mom assigned me to them, and it turned out to be pretty cool. I was able to show them what resources are available out there, even though there are not any records, and as we were talking she remembered that her dad had gone to Iran and had taken a 4 generation pedigree chart with him that he was supposed to get filled out by family there. She wasn’t sure where it was, but thought maybe her sister has it. Sometimes, I am learning, people are lead to this library not to get help from us, but to be in a place that is close to the Spirit to help them to be inspired what they need to do. Mom and I then went

off at 1pm to get lunch. It was supposed be Chick-Fil-A sandwiches, but they had run out of those and instead had salads. So we had a salad and sat with Sister Ali Pili. She has been helping Mom a lot with her Italy Training. She was fun to chat with. When we got back Sister Dalebout saw me and waved me over to her computer. She had looked up in Disbyt, a Swedish family tree database where people share their family tree results, and found three different family trees that claimed Catharina Nilsdotter in that marriage record was actually Catharina Jansdotter. So it still isn’t a primary source, an actual record, but it is a secondary source that seems to agree with what I am finding. Interesting. Oh, I forgot to mention that when we went over to get our lunch we learned that it had started snowing. That is wild because the day before it was 60° outside. Amazing how quickly the weather can change. We had quite a few missionaries ask to leave early to try to beat the heavy snowfall, and since we weren’t

super busy we told them to go. Anyway, we helped more people, me the lady behind me again who was trying to sort out how to attach some sources to an ancestor. As I reviewed the sources she was trying to attach we discovered that Wendelin Jr. was living with and working for his brother, and his son Louis was living with Wendelin Sr., his grandpa. It also showed (a census record) that Jr. was born when Sr. was 17 and didn’t indicate any mother. So I left her to try to sort that out and explained who the sources she had should be added to. Mom headed home while I was helping her and so I was going to go as well, but someone said that they had a ton of pizzas for dinner and nobody to eat them. So I figured since we really didn’t get lunch I would go over and get a slice of pizza. It was pretty good and so I brought a slice of the meat-lovers version Home for Mom. I left the floor in the good hands of the Atkins, after saying goodbye to the Deckers who were some of those early leavers. They have completed their mission and will be sorely missed. We got home in time for me to watch BYU come back from 17 points down and win. Wow.

Today was fast Sunday and also Kenny leaving day. He was trying to time the storm and leave when it wasn’t coming down too hard. I drove him over to his car, which he had to park a block away because the apartment staff said there was no guest parking spots available. When we got there it was covered with about 4 or 5 inches of snow. So I ran back to the apartment to get our broom and some gloves and went to help him clear his windows and hood. We finally got that done and off he went. He was hoping to make it home today, but we knew from news reports that I80 over the summit had

been closed the day before and may not be open by the time he got there. Mom and I then went off to church. We decided to walk, even though there was snow on the ground still. As we came to the Conference Center Mom noticed all of the trees covered with snow and said we should take a picture. She made the comment that it was so beautiful. I asked if she thought it was more beautiful than when they are filled with lights and she said yes, because it is natural beauty. We didn’t have to walk as far because it was stake conference and the stake center is just at the top of the hill. During conference the stake president referenced Doctrine & Covenants 46:13-14. It reminded me of a great quote I heard about these verses so I went and found it. 

“Do you remember the first time you knew there was a God and could feel His love? As a boy, I used to gaze into the starry sky and ponder and feel His presence. I thrilled to explore the magnificent beauties of God’s creations—from tiny insects to towering trees. As I recognized the beauty of this earth, I knew that Heavenly Father loved me. I knew that I was a literal spiritual offspring, that we are all sons and daughters of God.
How did I know this? you might ask. The scriptures teach, “To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and … to others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful.” Doctrine and Covenants 46:13–14. From my perspective, this does not mean that some people will forever be dependent upon the testimonies of others. My own testimony grew as I learned about Heavenly Father and the Savior from the teachings and testimony of my parents, teachers, the scriptures—which I read diligently—and especially the Holy Ghost. As I exercised faith and obeyed the commandments, the Holy Ghost testified that what I was learning was true. This is how I came to know for myself.” (Eternal Life—to Know Our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ  By Elder Robert D. Hales, October 2014) 

I have had the same experience of coming to know for myself that my Father lives and Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It has not come in one grand vision as some have had, but in small and simple moments of revelation and inspiration…line upon line until I can say I know. I am grateful for that knowledge which helps me to feel peace and stillness in this world of chaos.

After church I started this post and then we had our break-the-fast. I think we had about 41 people there. Big group! Of course I didn’t get any pictures, but I did get a picture of the peanut butter chocolate pie leftovers that one of the sisters gave me. Yum! Mom says she is going to take it into the library for the missionaries to eat, but I want it, although I will have to ration it out so that I don’t eat it all at once and make myself even fatter than I am. I really need to lose some poundage and that won’t help much. 

After we finished break-the-fast the Ganschows came over along with the Thompsons. Sister Ganschow was bringing me the second half of her book for me to proofread, looking especially for any doctrinal discrepancies or misquotes. We had a nice chat and then gave Lindsay a call for her birthday. Happy Birthday! Wahoo. 

Now it is time to post this and get ready for bed. 

Love you all. 

BE GOOD!

Mom and Dad

PS I gave the pie away.