So it was the week of our birthdays. We pretty much celebrated by not really celebrating, but we did go get some food here and there different than we normally do. Here’s our week…
Monday morning I went to workout and then made sure we were into the library on time so that I could meet David Gragun. He is a friend to Jim Butler and I learned a pretty big whig in his field of procurement. He was very nice and professional and wanted to know all about the library and also to learn about how
to search for a possible ancestor who may have owned a castle and a hotel in Ireland…The Gragun Hotel. So I turned him over to Kori, one of our staff British Isles specialists and I went off to a meeting. When I got back I learned that he had gone home, but was able to find out that there were lots of Graguns living in a certain area of Ireland and it was impossible, due to lack of records for that time period, for them to find out which family owned the castle. Bummer. We went to lunch and then after we came back had our zone council meeting. When we were finally back on the floor I was asked to help a French couple. Their English wasn’t fantastic, but just good enough with my terrible French to communicate. I learned that his father was an orphan and he was hoping to find the names of his parents. His father was born in 1949, so I knew it was going to be difficult because they just don’t release recent records, birth records especially, within the last 100 years. But we went to look. I was hoping to find his death record which the French government has released up to 2022, but no luck. So we looked for him in Geneanet. No luck. Then the lady told me that they had a “maybe” surname of his father’s mother. So we put that in Geneanet and there it was, a Juliette who had died in childbirth and her husband who had died in 1951, leaving their son an orphan at the age of 2. He was overcome with emotion. He just sat weeping and staring at the screen. His wife kept saying, “Incroyable!” What a cool moment for him to learn who his grandparents were. Those are some of the best moments in the library, connecting families. We closed our floor at 6pm and then went home to view the
Elijah Choir patriotic concert at home, rather than in the COB auditorium.
Tuesday was Pday and Mom made an appointment for us to do an endowment session at the new Taylorsville Utah Temple. We took Sister Beeseley with us. Mom especially liked heir stained glass and commented how she would love to have maybe a stained glass transom window over the front door in our
new home. I think we might be able to make that happen. Then when we came out of the temple this lady came walking towards me with a big smile on her face. Suddenly I realized it was Jen Rytting, wife of Danny Rytting who is the coordinator at the Modesto Institute. So then I saw Danny and his kids as well. It was fun to catch up a bit with them and find out the news from my old area (region now). He told me he is just one of 5 guys who were there when I was the area director. All the rest are new since Dave Grimsman has had that assignment. Wow, things have really changed. And we are really getting old. We stopped at Costco on the way home and then
I watched Olympics for a bit while I ate lunch. Then I needed to get a ride in so I went out in the hot afternoon sun and rode 37 miles. Not too bad and the heat made me sweat more and I weighed in under 220 for the first time in awhile. Wahoo! I rested the rest of the afternoon and hen went to give platelets. I finished
The Long Game movie about some Hispanic boys who won the state championship in high school golf down in Texas back in the 50’s when they were discriminated against and not allowed to play at the local courses unless they were on the school team. Pretty decent movie. I think I started another movie, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. I am sure it would have been something based on real life, because I have learned that Netflix has that category that you can choose a movie from. If I remember later I’ll put it in here. Anyway, I got some
Lorna Doone cookies and apple juice and did my 15 minutes waiting time and then headed home to watch more Olympic highlights before bed.
Wednesday morning we were scheduled to go in at noon and stay until 8pm because one of our couples is on vacation so we needed to cover their shift, but we also had to do our orientation presentation for the new missionaries that started this week. So we went in about 10am for our presentation and then just stayed there the rest of the day. The Stapps, who are part of this new missionary group came down to our floor and we started chatting with them. We found out they were from Rancho Cordova (they currently live in St. George) but Elder Stapp left and came home with Uncle Keith on their mission to Argentina. And then Sister Stapp mentioned her brother was a bishop in Elk Grove Stake and his last name was Jensen. I hen told her that I was in the musical
Hello Dolly that her mom directed in the Sacramento Cordova Stake back in 1981, right after I got home from my mission. She then said that she played one of the girls from the hat shop in that musical. Small world. She even mentioned that she knew uncle Keith and went on a date skiing with him. Suddenly I had the memory that I was pretty sure it was actually me who took her skiing many moons ago. Wow. Anyway, they both speak Spanish and we told them we were hoping they would be assigned to our zone.
The rest of the day was pretty busy and we were filling in here and there. At 6pm we had a group from an ESL class from the U of U hat was coming in. Their teacher actually got there a little early, but he rest of the class was late. They all spoke Spanish, except one girl who spoke Japanese, so we had three of our Spanish speaking missionaries and Sister Hirama meet with them in our computer lab. I spoke with their teacher and she had mentioned that they had come the previous month and Jason, our VIP host, had shown them an orientation video and she thought that would be a great way to start. So I found the video and showed it to them, and hen stayed with he group and chatted with the teacher while the missionaries helped the students start accounts and search for ancestors. I learned that the teacher was not a member of the Church but she had some fun questions about why we serve and what the library was all about. Then one of the students asked if there was any way he could find an ancestor who was born in Trinidad y Tobago to a white plantation girl who had relations with a black slave? So I told him I wasn’t sure but we could see what was available. We went into the
records and found hat there were “Indentured Servant” records in Trinidad y Tobago, but we weren’t sure if they covered the time period he was looking for. He knew the mother’s surname so I helped show him how to search the records and sorted through them looking for her family name and hopefully the “servant’s” name. No luck. But there were some other similar records listed as well and he said he would look through them another time. They then announced that they were heading to
Hatch Family Chocolates to get ice cream. I asked about it and they said they have wonderful chocolates, President Holland’s favorites, and also really good ice cream. I decided that is where I needed to take Mom on Friday for her birthday.
Thursday morning we went in and almost immediately Mom was asked to help with a group from the Netherlands. We’re pretty sure they were KLM crew members. Mom was successful in helping her find family members using
OpenArchives and she was very excited find information about her great grandparents. That put us a little late for leaving to the COB for lunch and we ended up missing John. Bummer. We ate lunch with Barbara Bell, who is one of our volunteers who is originally from Germany. On our way back to the library I got a call from Brian Cragun, one of our remote missionaries. He was in town for a work thingy and wondered if he could come into the library to meet me. So he got there about 15 minutes later and we had a nice chat until I was interrupted to go help a family from the Netherlands. I told him sorry, but our guests are our number one priority and he understood. Luckily
Mom was free to be able to talk with him a little more. My Netherlands family was a member of the Church with her nephew and his wife and two boys from the Netherlands. We were able to set up an account for both of them and while they were getting started I showed the two young boys how to search. They had fun trying to find grandparents. Once the nephew got to his grandfather his tree basically filled in for him because of all the work by his aunt. So I helped his wife. She was able to do her grandfather’s side and it filled right in all the way back to the early 1400’s on one line, but she couldn’t remember grandma’s maiden name. Suddenly (Elijah moment) it came to her. She put it in and sure enough someone had started working on that line already and it matched up and went way back as well. She was very excited. I showed her what her fan chart now looked like and told her she could get a poster sized one printed upstairs. They needed to leave to meet a cousin for lunch, but said they would definitely be back for that chart. We love success stories.
So then we went to the temple. Two times this week! It was another new one for us, the Layton temple. I took this shot with just Mom and I but we actually had our three sister missionaries with us as well, but that picture didn’t show much of the temple. After an endowment session there we took everyone shopping at Walmart. Sister Docherty was the big shopper with a. Watermelon and a bunch of other veggies and fruits and things. Mom just got stuff to make a Greek salad for our break-the-fast on Sunday. When we got home we hadn’t eaten dinner yet so we got some of the leftovers from the COB lunches and watched some more Olympics. I usually just watch the highlights segment that NBC creates so sometimes I miss some of the best parts or exciting lead ups to the event, but for the most part they have been pretty good. Every once in awhile they cut away before the end of the event or letting us know the final outcome, which is pretty frustrating, so I have to go onto the internet or ESPN to find out what happened, but that is just every once in awhile.
Friday was Mom’s birthday. We had to go in early and do the prayer meeting because the couple we were covering for on Thursday was still gone on Friday and we needed to cover for them then. Also we had to attend the
Go Forth meeting at 10am because we had learned Thursday afternoon that we were getting the Stapps as missionaries in our zone. Wahooo! So with Sister Grant, who kind of came in the back door, we had three new missionaries. But when we got to the meeting we learned that the Stelters from Germany, who we had been told about by one of our service missionaries, had not been assigned yet because they had been sick and couldn’t meet with the presidency the day before. Well, we get them too! Double wahoo! Five new missionaries in our zone. Two that speak Spanish and two that speak German, and one who does England and knows some French. They will be perfect to replace the Kopps, and Sister Beesley and Sister Docherty who we will be losing the next two months.
So we brought all five missionaries to the library and introduced them around and then we started orientation with them. We had them all on a computer and went through all the information about our zone.
Right in the middle of that Elder Felsted came up to me and said, “Sorry for interrupting, but we have a Japanese guest and nobody knows how to help him. Could you come try?” So I told our new missionaries, “Our guests are our number one priority.” And off I went. Mom was doing something else so I signaled for her to go take over helping our new missionaries and I went to the guest. When I got to his computer I learned that he did not know very much English at all and they had some sister missionaries from Temple
Square there to translate. They were trying to show him how to search for the next level in his family tree, but didn’t know how. So I showed him how to do a catalog search for records in the city where his ancestor was from and he was amazed at the records that came up. I then got to show him our Wiki page on Japan and using he sisters as interpreters explained how he can use the helps on that page to do more research. He was genuinely impressed with all of the information and records that we had. Then I learned that there was another Japanese lady there on our floor as well, so I asked the Temple Square sisters if they could help translate there when they were finished helping this guest. They said of course and I was able to get back to our new missionaries just as Mom was finishing. We learned that the Stelters of course did. It bring a car with them from Germany, so we offered to let them borrow our car on Saturday to go shopping. Then we finally headed home. I then told Mom that I had a surprise for her birthday and asked when she wanted it. She said now, so we jumped in the car and I
drove over to
Hatch Family Chocolates and I told her she could buy as much as she wanted. They were expensive chocolates and she was way too conservative only buying 6 of them and then we also had some yummy ice cream. Happy Birthday! When we got home I told Mom we could watch whatever she wanted and she chose the new Disney+ series
The Acolyte. So we binge watched the whole series and then headed to bed.
Saturday we went in at our normal time, 10am, and got right to work. We were a bit short staffed with people out sick or on leave so I jumped in to be steward and then Mom took over when they asked me to help at usher. Then Shaunna and Burley and the kids showed up in the library. They are here to visit Chris’s sister and brother-in-law and their kids. We took them over to
Seven Brothers hamburger shop for lunch. It was fun to be with all of the grandkids and Taylor still really liked to hold my hand and sit next to me. Cuteness. We then walked home via temple square, the part that is open and showed them our apartment and gave them some cookies that Mom made for them. Then they had to leave and we had to get back tot the library. When we got back I was asked to help a guest with Croatia research. Yikes.
It turned out that the guest had done amazing research and had found tons of books and records, but the record he was looking at was a Roman Catholic record from Croatia written in Latin. So I was trying to translate the Latin and
thought that the birthdate was recorded as a feast day, but couldn’t figure out the feast day. So I went to see if we had anyone who knew Latin and found Brandon, one of our staff specialists. He came down and deciphered it. It said that the child had been born the day before at around 12 noon. No wonder I couldn’t figure out what the feast day was, it wasn’t a feast day I just didn’t know enough Latin. But when we started looking at some of his other records we found one that showed a cross on it next to the name. I have learned that that symbol usually means the person died, but it didn’t give a date. So now the guest needed to figure out if this was a child that died or his ancestor that actually did emigrate to Australia and was recorded as having died later in his life by the priest back in Croatia. Everything else he had found seemed to point to the fact that this was his ancestor, but that little symbol was messing causing a smidgen of doubt. We finished the night with not very many people left in the library and went home to a quiet dinner and Olympics.
Today we got up a bit later than usual and both looked over our lessons. I was teaching the Gospel Doctrine class and Mom her Primary class. We walked to church and it was already getting warm outside so I carried my suit coat instead of wearing it. Sacrament meeting went well and so did our classes. I had come up with about 4 different things that I thought I could do with the class, but I couldn’t figure out which one was the right one. Well when I stood in front of the class idea number 5 came. I told them about Mom teaching the 6 year olds these same chapters and that she was going to focus on just one theme or principle.
So then I asked them, if you were her which theme would you choose? That turned out well. 5ey brought up many different principles taught in Alma 36-38, including the one that Mom chose…
small and simple things. Mom made some bread for her kids, some with salt and some without and talked them which tasted better. They said both tasted the same. So Mom tried it and they did taste very similar. Apparently she didn’t put enough salt in the one that was supposed to have salt. But she had other examples and all went well. So did my lesson. We walked home and I got started on this blog post. But then Melissa called to wish me happy birthday and the it was time for the
break-the-fast dinner and then we played mah jongg with the Barneys. They were the big winners tonight, each winning two games and Mom and I nothing, then we played
Fruit Salad, a game played with Rook
cards and I was the big winner. Looks at that score…635 points. Well I would have been the big winner if we were trying to get the most points, but actually his game you are trying to get the least points, so I was actually the super duper all time biggest loser! Sadness. After they went home I called Wynne back and chatted with her and John and Leo. Then I tried calling Chris back but I guess he had already headed to bed. So then it was just getting this post finished. Here you go.
I’m tired and am not going to proofread it, so if there were a bunch of mistakes up to this point you is know why.
Good night.
Love you all. Thanks for the birthday wishes and pictures for both Mom and I.
BE GOOD!
Mom and Dad
Comments
Post a Comment