Week sixty-four started off pretty normal, but then we increased activity and busyness and visits as the week went on, and here’s what happened….
Our Monday started with a mission devotional. Our friend, Lila Watts, sang this great rendition of
Lord, I Would Follow Thee as an opening hymn.
Then we heard from some people who will be going home soon. One of them was Sister Jennifer Smith, who was in the MTC with us. She had a great saying she shared with us…”The temple is a temporary cure for my celestial homesickness.” The last speaker was Elder Larry Barney who is a friend and fellow Mah Jongg player who lives in our apartment building with his wife Sandra. He did a great job as usual talking about the things that he has learned being a missionary here in this mission. We then headed to
the library where I immediately went to help with the microfilm relocation project, filling in for one of our sick missionaries. We started up on the second floor pulling films from their cabinets and loading them on carts. Then we pushed the carts down to the storage area on our floor where we stacked all of the films into boxes on pallets. From there they will be loaded into trailers and hauled off to a facility that will dispose of them “environmentally safely” somehow. I finished that just in time to get to my training committee meeting, which ran a little long so I was late getting to my zone council meeting. After that I filled in packing films for another missionary who
was helping a guest. After lunch I was just sitting down to finally get some emails answered when Jalyse, a staff intern, came over to me and asked if I could help with some French guests. So I went over where they were and learned they were 6 French students who were currently on a study abroad program at UCLA. One of their group had a birthday on Saturday and they had decided for her birthday to take a road trip. How they decided to come to Salt Lake City I didn’t know, but wish I had asked. Anyway, I sat down between three of them and learned that they all wanted to start a tree. So I helped
them all create an account and then get started on their trees. They all got to a point where they didn’t know something…a maiden name or a birthplace or something like that…so they all got on their phones and called home. It was fun hearing them talk to parents, even though it was after 11 o’clock in France, to get information to fill out their trees. The young lady whose birthday they were celebrating, suddenly linked her tree to an existing tree and one line went back to the mid 1600’s. Everyone gathered around her tree and they all thought it was super cool! I then showed them how to do record searches and the Wiki page for France, and explained how marriage records were great to find because they had so much information on them. The one young man mentioned that this was a lot like detective work and I agreed. Well they then needed to leave, but were excited to learn that they could keep working on this from home. We then had to run off to another meeting and when I got back I was asked to
help Kevin from near Chicago whose family is from China. We didn’t have any of our Chinese researchers there so I got to help. I was able to show him our
FamilySearch home page in Chinese as well as all of the records that we have in our catalog and showed him how to use the Wiki page about China. He was very excited to see all of the resources and even more excited when he learned that he could use all those resources from home. We then closed down our floor at 6pm and headed home for a quick snack and then off to FHE, which was hosted by the Barneys. They did a little game of
Would You Rather. They asked questions like, “Would you rather have been with Abinadi before King Noah, or in the lion’s den with Daniel?” Mine was, “Would you rather have been at the Lord’s visitation in America or at the Day of Pentecost?” I said the Day of Pentecost because it is a bit of a mystery of what actually was happening there and I would have loved to have seen that first hand.
Tuesday was Pday, but we had to switch our DNA class day to Tuesday, so I got to go in early to set all of that up. Suzi wasn’t available so Raymon, another staff member came in to answer questions. When that was finished we did our paleography class and then headed to the COB for lunch with John and Vaea. After lunch we came home to relax for awhile and I fell asleep sitting on the couch watching tv. I had planned to go out and do a bike ride, but wimped out and just sat with Mom and watched the new
American Idol episode where they whittled them down to the top 14. There are a ton of talented people this year.
Wednesday we did our new missionary orientation for a group of about 28 missionaries. Then we headed to our floor. All week we have had a couple of different genealogical societies visiting the library. DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) from California and Ancestry Seekers. They bring their own specialists with them, but also use our missionaries and specialists as well. I was steward first thing and suddenly it seemed like they all wanted help at the same time. I felt kind of like a symphony conductor, sending my ushers off to help people because they had skills on the needed countries and
then asking others to fill in for them, while also sending staff off to help some folks who needed escalated help. It was kind of fun making sure we could help everyone. We then had a meeting to get our tours put on the
Get Help system and an iPad added to the Discovery Zone floor, which turned out well, then off to the NOB for our monthly FSL zone leaders meeting. As we went in I saw a picture of us on the presentation that they have playing in the foyer of the mission office. It is a nice presentation that they have about the purpose of the mission and what we do. Here’s the picture. The meeting ended a little early, but because we have been putting in extra time at the library we decided to go home instead of back to the library for 45 minutes.
When we walked into the lobby of the apartment building we learned that Leatherbys was setting up to give away free ice cream to the residents. So we went upstairs and dropped off our stuff and headed back down for ice cream. Of course I forgot to take a picture, but it looked much like this. We each got a waffle bowl full of ice cream with yummy caramel sauce and nuts. Yum! I even grabbed some extra caramel sauce so that I could have some of our vanilla ice cream from our freezer later on as a late night snack, which I did. Double yum!
Thursday I got up and went to the gym. I decided since I had missed working out and biking so far this week to do both. So I did my normal upper body workout and then got on the exercise bike to ride for an hour or so. As I was riding, one of my former S&I colleagues, Devin Toma who used to be an Area Director out on the East Coast, came walking by. We had a great chat and I learned that he had just been asked to come to the central office to take over as the Director of Strategic and Audience Support. All his kids moved to Utah, so they are excited to be near grandkids. I learned that his mom was born in Hilo. She is a Nakano. I know Nakanos in Hilo. Very cool. I then headed home to shower and go into the library. But as I checked my calendar I noticed that we had just missed our monthly
Just Us meeting
. They
had changed it from the week before, but I didn’t notice
that they changed the time to 9am. Oops. So when we got in we found Elder Haymond to apologize and find out what we missed. Then we went down to our floor where I seemed to become the technology specialist. I got asked to help people with the copy machine and the scan pro machine and the Czur book scanner. I’m glad I have learned how to use those different machines so that I can teach others how to do it. I spent most of the rest of the day working on French advanced training, transcribing birth records, except I learned that I did it wrong. I did a translation of the
record and what they were asking for was an exact transcription of what was written, in the original French with all of the spelling exactly as seen, so I gave up on that and decided to work on some of my FamilyTree stuff until it was time to head to the temple. We took Sister Docherty and Sister Pruner with us and Sister Hirama met us there. We did a sealing session and when the sealer heard that Sister Hirama had 4 ancestors who were brothers he told her to wait a minute. He went out and recruited 4 brethren
to be the proxies and Mom and I were the parents and they all got sealed together at the same time. Very nice! We then did some shopping at Smith’s and learned that they had Sun Chips and Chili Cheese Fritos on sale, so we bought 5 bags. Mom asked the clerk where a good place to eat was, and she recommended a place called
Oh Mai. We went there and learned that it was a Vietnamese sandwich shop and the clerk was right, it was very good. We had a ribeye banh mi sandwich which was super tasty!
Friday Tori flew in so we went to pick her up at the airport. We brought her home and got her settled. That picture of Mom is her telling me I can’t post the picture I took of her backside just before this shot. I am complying so I won’t be dying. Our schedules showed that we were supposed to be at a meeting all morning because it was
Go Forth day and Sister Lemon put it that way in case we got new missionaries, but since we didn’t get any missionaries I just went in to the library to help out wherever I could. I was asked to go downstairs to help a lady with Norway research. She was trying to identify the parents of an ancestor back in the 1700’s. She had some old pedigree and fan charts, showing the ancestor’s name and the place he was allegedly born so I went to work showing her how to search Norwegian records. Mom and Tori then came to the library and we went to lunch at the COB. We then came home and I got a nap. A real nap on my bed.
Not sure how long it was, but it was very nice. We chatted and talked with Tori, and Mom got started on chicken tikka masala for dinner. Aaron, Zoë and Franklin got here just before 8pm and we got to have dinner with them. Mom made Nan bread to go with the chicken tikka masala and it was all very yummy. As we were eating, Tori turned to Franklin and said, “Hey Franklin, what color is your shirt?”. He said “Yellow!”. I didn’t even notice what it said on his shirt, I was just impressed that he knows his colors. Then Zoë said something about something that I can’t even remember, but we figured out that she was saying that she was pregnant, then I noticed Franklin’s shirt. Wahoo! Grandkid number 17 coming in November. Zoë then called a bunch of you who hadn’t heard yet and that was fun to see and hear reactions from all of you. We really think it is great how much you all love and support each other. Thanks for being such great kids and grandkids.
We ended the night with Mah Jongg. I let them all play because I am just nice like that. Actually I have learned to enjoy playing Mah Jongg but it is still not my favorite game so I let them enjoy a few games while I read and surfed the streaming channels for what is new. I think the outcome of Mah Jongg was that they each won one game, except Zoë. Sadness.
Saturday morning we had to go in early because we swapped with the Ngs who were doing a family photo shoot in the morning. So we went in and went to work. Mom was in her happy place as steward for four hours. I just ran the floor lead thing and tried watching a French training lesson, but kept getting interrupted. Right before lunch I was asked to help a lady with Netherlands research. She remembered me that I had helped her before. She was trying to find the death record for a grandfather from the Netherlands, but he died in 1991 and that is just too recent, they haven’t released those records yet. I did look in 3 different places to make sure I was right and found that I was. Then she mentioned she had
Swedish ancestors as well, so I asked if she knew about how the Swedish records work. She didn’t, so we picked an ancestor she was trying to get some better info on and we dove in. I found his birth record and then a couple of household records. The last one said that he was moving to Danmark. That was news to her. But when we looked at his immigration record to the United States, sure enough it showed he was coming from Denmark. What we discovered though was that it showed him and his wife and three children, but we could only find the two boys with them when they immigrated in 1873, but not the sister. One brother ended up in Utah and the other in Denver Colorado. So after showing her how to navigate the records I said you now have a mystery to solve. Where did that sister go? She said challenge accepted, but she had to leave to go to a wedding, but
she said, “I’ll be back!”. After lunch I got another request for the Netherlands. This time it was for a couple who are going on vacation to the Netherlands and wondering how they could see all their ancestor’s cities on a map so they could plan a driving tour. I knew on the phone app that you can see that hitting the drop-down item
Map My Ancestors, but I wasn’t sure if there was an equivalent on the
FamilySearch site. Well I went in and learned that they do have it, it is titled
Where Am I From? It is pretty cool. It will show all of the cities where your ancestors were born or died and plot them for you on the map. This is mine for my Swedish ancestors. Most of them lived in the Ōrebro area. After we finished at the library we came home and changed and met part of the
Montgomery clan out in front of our apartments. They
came up with Katherine and Josh and their son Tyler and also Alex and we just hung out on the grass across the street from our apartments and ate some snacks and chatted. Then Scott ran off to get pizzas and so we had dinner too. It was fun to see them and catch up on the latest doings. They were there because they had a baby shower for Kiersten and Cameron’s baby and then they were going to head down to southern Cal to visit Hannah and Rhett and their kids and go to Disneyland with them.
Today we went to church and learned that President Oaks decided to visit our ward along with Sister Oaks. He spoke at the end of sacrament meeting and said how he likes to get out to the “real Church” and see people. I think that’s because usually he is always at a stake or regional conference and it’s just not the same as a regular sacrament meeting. As I was heading to our Sunday School class after the sacrament meeting I came around a corner to see Sister Oaks laying on the floor in the hall. Two other brethren were hurrying to help her up. She had fallen coming down the ramp from the cultural hall (it is actually quite a steep and treacherous little ramp). Anyway, when I got there she was saying that she was fine and that she is actually quite good at falling. She said hat she has learned how to fall without getting hurt. As we walked to the class I jokingly asked her if she was going to add that to her list of things she is good at…falling down without getting hurt? She laughed and said, “Maybe I should”.
After Sunday School we walked home and had some lunch and I started on this blog post. Everyone else played a game while Franklin took a rest. After they finished Franklin was getting restless so everyone else decided to go for a walk. They went over to the Conference Center and let him play in the fountains, so he came back wet.
After they came back we went down to Zoë and Aaron’s friend Brylee’s house for a BBQ with a bunch of their friends from school. I spent most of the time pushing Franklin on the swing. He would swing for awhile, then want out and would go jump on the tramp for about 1 minute then right back to swing again. We hung around for awhile then drove back home. Their house was down in Highland, so it was a bit of a drive to get there. We took Tori and Sami and Jorge were here so they came too. Now I am back here trying to get this finished and posted so I can go to bed.
We are having fun with Aaron and Zoë and Franklin and Tori visiting. They are here until Wednesday, wahoo.
We hope all is well with you and wish you could all be here too. Love you all.
BE GOOD!
Mom and Dad
Comments
Post a Comment