Week Sixty-seven…Four Luncheons in Succession

I know, I know, succession doesn’t rhyme very well with seven, but I have used up all of the words that rhyme perfectly, except for a couple of boys names that don’t fit what I’m writing about, so it’ll have to do. Here is what we learned this week…

Monday started with learning that Sister Orchard, who had missed the previous two onboarding meetings due to illness, showed up and was wondering where she was supposed to go for the meeting. So I was able to take her and Sister Tiliaferro to the room where they hold the meeting and also learned that they show a video in that meeting of all of the zone leaders and they still have Elder and Sister Decker in that video and they want to replace it with us. So we need to sit down one day in the near future with one

of the staff and do a short little introductory video of us and our zone. I then found out there was a couple from Texas that wanted a library tour. So I did that and finished just in time to get to my Group Hosting Committee meeting, where I learned that they are doing filming for our new library virtual tour in late June. That was an idea that I had suggested when I first joined this committee, but they didn’t think it would ever happen. Wahoo. I got back to our floor just in time to be assigned to help a couple with some French research. The bummer was that after using all of the FamilySearch resources and other sites that we usually check out, I went to the department online site. Each department (county) in France has its own website where they have archived records that are searchable. The only problem is that they all have different designs and search functions and it is difficult to figure them all out. Well what made this one even more difficult was that it wasn’t working. I would put in a search and then a link would come up. When I clicked on the link a little window

would come up saying that the records were there, but there was no link to go to the actual records. Very frustrating. Well the guests needed to leave, but I showed them how to do more research and how they could get an online consultation before they left. Then I played with the site some more and was showing Charliece, one of the other missionaries who does French research, and I accidentally clicked on the picture next to the link and voila! the records opened up. What?! The picture was the link, not the link? Inconcevable!! (btw I didn’t misspell that, that is how it is spelled in French) Well then I ran (walked really fast) to the COB to meet up with Mom for lunch. We ate quick and headed back for our 1pm meeting with the library management. There we learned that the film relocation project is moving along quite nicely and they are ahead of schedule, so they are scaling us back to just 4 shifts a day and only every other day actually working. After that meeting we had our zone council meeting. We changed it to a new time so that we didn’t leave our floor so depleted at 11am when we were all gone, as well a bunch of people on

lunch. Whew, lots of meetings. I finished the night helping a couple of Chinese ladies look for their family in the records. They came in right before we were closing and we didn’t have anyone that spoke Chinese still there. They spoke enough English that I was able to show them different things that were available as well as answer a bunch of their questions. They were so inquisitive and sweet and kept responding with amazement when I would tell them about how and why and who we were doing all of this for. So we closed down our floor and headed to the COB auditorium where we had a mission fireside with Georges Bonnet, who is the director of the temple square renovation project. We couldn’t take any pictures or make any recordings of the things he was telling us, but it was super cool! We learned that they have done some amazing things to create a more stable foundation for the temple and all of the expansions and three floors of rooms below ground that will add more than 300,000 sqft of

temple space. Also he showed us that in the underground space between the two new visitor’s centers they will have a kind of mock-up of the interior of the temple…a baptistry, instruction room, celestial room and sealing room…where they can do a “temple tour” like they do now at open houses. Also, the Christus statue has been installed in the one visitor’s center. He showed us pictures of them lowering it through the roof with a crane. We walked by there later in the week to see that it is indeed there, but they have put a crate around it,…we are assuming for protection…while the work is still being done on the building. He didn’t give a new proposed completion date, but we were excited to learn that there is work being done inside as well as outside. 

Tuesday was Pday, but it began with me trying to track down what happened to our registration tags for our van. Shaunna phoned me about someone using the van, but the new registration wasn’t there. I remembered going online and paying for the new registration and even sending a message to have the tags forwarded to us in Washington, since it is registered in our LLC name in Montana. Well after doing some calling around I learned that the tags had been mailed to an LLC address in Montana and they were returned to the registration office and just sitting there in their files. So they offered to mail them to our address in Washington and all will be well once they

arrive. In the middle of all of those phone calls I also got a call from my cousin Roy. He and his wife, Karen, recently returned form serving a humanitarian mission to Kurdistan. They were in charge of lots of things happening with the Church for Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, etc…He had received a phone call saying that a group of humanitarian and charities leaders from Iraq was coming to visit Salt Lake City and the Church was asking them to lead them on a tour of Temple Square, the Church History Museum and the FamilySearch Library, so he was calling me about arranging that tour. I told him that we have a VIP hosting committee that usually does those tours and so I called Jason, the leader of that group to see if he had heard about this group. He had not, but was assuming he would by Friday when a list usually comes out about upcoming group visits. So I called Roy back and basically said I would await Jason’s update, but would be happy to meet them when they come and add a little personal touch to their visit. 

Then we headed into the library for our first of four consecutive days of zone social luncheons. Mom decided with her committee to do a different country theme each day. Tuesday was Italy. We had Costco pizza, with some add-ons available…pesto sauce, Parmesan cheese, etc…along with garlic bread and salads and a bunch of desserts. One of the desserts was pavlova. It is a New Zealand creation, brought in by Sister Atkinson from our zone, and is basically meringue with whipped cream and fruit on top. It was actually quite yummy. Everyone seemed to enjoy everything that was brought, but we didn’t have quite the turnout that we thought we were going to have and Mom began second guessing as to whether we should continue to have these luncheons. The rest of the day was a windy/rainy day, so I decided not to go for a ride and we just lounged around until Sam came

over to make cookies with Mom and I headed off to give platelets. This week’s movie was Unfrosted, a Jerry Seinfeld movie about the rivalry between Kellogg and Post cereal companies and especially about their trying to outdo each other with bringing Pop Tarts to the market. It was a silly, almost farcical type of depiction of the two companies and what they were willing to do to beat out each other in the kid’s cereal and breakfast food war. One thing I did learn was right at the end of the movie. They said that Marjorie Post had built the Mar-a Lago club resort in Palm Beach, Florida…really, not a spoof. So I looked it up and it is true. The best part of my platelets visit though happened when I went to the snacks area. They were out of Nutter Butter and Oreo cookies, and had replaced them with Lorna Doones. Wahoo!!! Yum. Happy day! I got home in time to take Sam home and go to the store for Mom for a couple of things we needed for the luncheon the next day. As I turned to go to the store I learned I was right by a Nielsen’s Frozen Custard store so I went there after shopping and got a chocolate coconut concrete. Extra yum with my Lorna Doone cookies.

Wednesday was Mexican Day for our luncheon. We got in at 10am and just set up for lunch. Then I had to go down and do floor lead while Mom got the luncheon going. It was a hit. She had sweet pork and Jimboy’s style tacos as well as fixings to make a taco salad, and lots of people brought dessert items. The best part of these socials is that we have invited all of the library staff from our zone as well as Guest Services and the management to come eat with us, and they do. This picture has four of our staff members and one missionary couple sitting together and eating and talking. It is lots of fun to get to know them all better and enjoy some just social time

together. After lunches we went back downstairs and got to work. I was asked to help Franck, a guest from France. I learned that he was here in the U.S. because his wife runs a tour company and arranges tours…I think in France, but it could be she arranges them for French tourists here…anyway they were staying in Park City and she had meetings all day so he came into the library to see what is it is that we do. I was able to help him start a tree and he told me that his dad had begun creating a genealogy of their family back in France, but on paper. Well we began searching and found a ton of records and information. He first built out his mom’s mom side of the tree back five generations. I then told him that now that he knew how to do it, he could move forward himself on the other lines and we could come back to help if he got stuck. So I had spent just a little under an hour with him and taught him about how to do this research for himself. Very cool. A little later one of our missionaries came up to me to see if I could help her read a French document. I was able to figure out most of it, but there were a couple of words we couldn’t quite understand. So I suggested maybe we could get Franck to help. He was happy to help and deciphered that the word we were trying to figure out probably meant mixed race and the record was a birth record for a freeborn, illegitimate child who was mixed race. Way to go Franck. I then stopped by his computer station to thank him and to see how things were going and helped him fix a couple that he had entered in the wrong place, but he was doing extremely well. I think he stayed for over three hours working on his family tree. Way to go Franck. The rest of the day was pretty much normal things and we got home a little after 6pm and vegged the rest of the night.

Thursday was another luncheon day, but Mom got up and went for a walk first. I worked on some paperwork stuff and then we headed in a bit early because we had a Just Us meeting with the other library zone leaders. We didn’t have to worry about any of the actual lunch items because the Asian committee was providing all of the main dishes for this one, and we just needed to show up. I however had to do floor lead again at 11am so I went down and did that and had to juggle around some schedules so that everyone could get a chance to make it to the lunch. By the time I got there I learned that there was pretty much just fired rice left, which was very good, but the other items that I missed out on had looked good as well. I did get some of that fruit you see on the table and there were tons of cookies for dessert. I may have eaten more cookies than regular food. Oops. We then finished our shift and took our 3 single sisters with us to the temple. After the temple was a quick Costco run and then home. We were pretty tired.

Friday morning began with me getting up and making about 90 Swedish pancakes (crepes). I should call them crepes because I used less sugar and made them thinner. I didn’t quite have all of them finished by the time we needed to go, so Mom grabbed the wagon and took everything else in for our French theme day lunch. I got ready and carried the cupcakes Mom had made to the library. She made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Yum! We showed lots of people the way you kids taught us how to eat cupcakes…rip them in half and put the bottom on top to make a cupcake sandwich. I can’t remember which one of you first showed us that, but it really works well with cupcakes that have a lot of frosting on the

top. Mom made a super tasty filling for the crepes…creamy lemon garlic chicken with asparagus that everyone loved. I think she had half the people ask her for the recipe. This picture is a stock photo. Mom cut her chicken up so it was easy to put into the crepes. We also had chili taco beef filling as another savory option, and fruit and Nutella and caramel and other sauces if they wanted to make a dessert option. I wasn’t the only one that made crepes so we had a bunch left over, but it was definitely a hit. French theme day might just be something we look at doing as a repeat in the future. We then cleaned everything up and hauled everything home in our wagon. We didn’t have anything on our work schedule because it was our T/R day (temple and research). Mom learned that apparently I said when we first started our mission that we didn’t need the once/month full T/R day which they give to all of the full time missionaries. So we have just been taking half days each week, but this week we took a full day, although we spent more than half the day working on the luncheon. Oh well.

We came home and cleaned up here as well then I went in pursuit of Mom’s access badge. Mom learned that it was missing after our temple visit Thursday night, but we really didn’t have time to search for it until Friday. So I checked the lost and found at the temple and Mom checked at the library. I went through all of our bags and searched the car and the parking lot and came up empty. So Mom called to see about getting the access turned off and replacing the card. With that finished Sam came by for me to give her a blessing before she starts her new semester at school. We chatted for awhile then I drove her home and when I got back I decided to watch a movie instead of going to workout. I really should have gone to workout, but my motivation was lacking. I watched a movie called The Lost King. It was a BBC movie about this woman who gets obsessed with finding out what happened to King Richard III, and trying to clear his evil reputation as portrayed in the Shakespeare play by that title. It is based on the true story of this woman who had no formal training in archeology or history, but was able to convince a whole bunch of people to help her find the burial place of King Richard III. And she did it. Amazing.

Saturday was finally a day of no luncheon so we were able to go in at a normal time and work a normal shift. I spent the morning working on an agenda for our zone council meeting, which we would be holding on Monday afternoon, although there was a whole fiasco of a day on Thursday of me trying to figure out where we could hold our meeting, because we had the room where we had moved to for the 2pm slot taken away for a staff meeting that needed to be there and they had moved us to a different room, the Fisherman Room, so called because it has this painting on the wall, but it did not have videoconferencing capability and we need that for some of our council that is not in the library on Mondays. So after my search I learned that there was no other room where there was videoconferencing capability available. We were in trouble. But then I spoke with Sister Redd from the US/Canada zone and learned that they were willing to swap rooms with us at the 2pm time slot, because they didn’t need videoconferencing for their meeting. Wahoo. So kind of them! Anyway, I got my agenda finished and then

was asked to help a few people in the library…a lady that needed to transfer sources from FamilySearch to  Ancestry, Ambika…who is working on indexing Zambian baptism records, and a missionary who was trying to find the overflow microfiche for her scavenger hunt training. Then I got a moment for myself so I decided to look for someone in my family tree that I needed to work on. I found Marit Persdotter who didn’t have her parents identified. It did have a birth date (1 July 1738) and place (Askersby) mentioned, so I went looking in Archiv Digital and found her birth record. But I was having a difficult time reading the old handwriting to verify it was

actually her, and then I had to go be steward. As I was looking at the record again, Geoff, our staff specialist for Sweden came over so I asked him to take a look to see if I had deciphered it correctly. I learned that I had, and he added one more little tidbit of information…the record was for twins! I had suspected that as there were two names underlined, but he showed me where it said 2er in the record, which is an abbreviation for twinners. Very cool. We

then had four French guests come in just before closing and all of our French speaking missionaries had gone home, so I got to go help. I explained the best that I could about what we do in the library and asked what they would like to do. One of the men spoke a little English and I used him to show them how to start a tree and search for an ancestor. Three of them were able to find death records from the French social security index for their fathers. They all got emotional and began to cry just looking at that simple indexed record. We then ran out of time and they thanked me profusely and left the building happy. I hope they want to keep looking for more when they return home to France. We came home and Mom informed me that we were going to go play Mah Jongg with the Engstroms. I grabbed a quick dinner and off we went. I think I am beginning to enjoy Mah

Jongg a little bit more…especially after winning all 4 games last night. Wahoo! I actually won two of the games with the same combination, the third one down on the top right of this card, and one of the other wins was with the run of 7 consecutive pairs of numbers…3rd from the bottom on the right side. Just call me Mah Jongg King!

Today we walked up to church and Mom got to teach her primary class. In Elders Quorum they talked about Elder Bednar’s talk from this last conference, Be Still, and Know That I Am God. I shared a quote that came to me as I was listening to Elder Bednar give this talk. It is one of my favorites from Joseph F.

Smith on his definition of rest… “To my mind, it means entering into the knowledge and love of God, having faith in his purpose and in his plan, to such an extent that we know we are right, and that we are not hunting for something else, we are not disturbed by every wind of doctrine, or by the cunning and craftiness of men who lie in wait to deceive. We know of the doctrine that it is of God, and we do not ask any questions of anybody about it; they are welcome to their opinions, to their ideas and to their vagaries. The man who has reached that degree of faith in God that all doubt and fear have been cast from him, he has entered into ‘God’s rest’” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith [1998], 56). I had an experience on my mission that helped me get closer to this kind of rest, or the ability to “be still, and know”. I know my Father in Heaven lives and loves me and I really only care what He thinks about me and I don’t worry so much about what others think. I know He is watching over

me and if I seek to do His will I will be ok. It is a level of  “rest” that I am glad to have in my life.

Mom made herself her Mother’s Day dinner, since she knew she could most likely make it better than me. She thought she was going to make stroganoff, then changed her mind to pot roast, so we got stew! She changed her mind one more time. It was very tasty. Mom is now chatting with Chris and has enjoyed pictures and texts all day long from all of you to wish her happy Mother’s Day and I have been trying to finish this blog post.

Looks like it is done for another week. 

Love you all.

BE GOOD! 

Love Mom and that guy she is married to.