Long title, but that’s what happens when you can’t find words to rhyme with seven that you haven’t already used and you have almost gone crazy trying to find the birth record for, and parents of, Stina Jansdotter. So here’s what else happened this week…
Monday was our zone devotional. We were a bit nervous because we hadn’t had time to practice our song, but we ran through it about three times before we began and then got ready for our presentation. Everyone stayed within their 4.5 minute time allotment except for Teresa Docherty, she went almost 8 minutes, but I had built in some extra time so we stayed within our 35 total minutes allotment. Wahoo. And our song went well I believe. It actually got a polite applause from the audience. Unfortunately the
microphone did not pick up our singing well enough and I haven’t found anyone who made a recording of it, sadness, but here is the pic of all of us who sang. We sang
I Am A Child of God in twelve different languages, a couple of people doing just one line in each language. Our day in the library went well. We were pretty quiet in the morning and I didn’t get to help anyone. After lunch it started to pick up. I was asked to help a couple from France who didn’t have much information about their family. I looked on
Geneanet and found a small tree that gave us some clues to where to search next. So I showed them how to used the
archives en ligne and away they went searching on their own. They quickly found a census record with their grandfather in his family. Fun times. Mom then came to me and
said that she thought she had found a possible duplicate in my Swedish line. So I looked for some records and found one that stated she had a different surname, Kullin, and it had a little word by her name and a number, 10004. The word I deciphered as “foster child” and then I assumed the number was for a record in some book about her. So I found Savannah, our specialist with Sweden, and asked if there was a record book where I could possibly find this number? She got excited and came and showed me that there were records for hospitals that had these young women come to to give birth to a child and then give them to the orphanage. This record number matched a number in the hospital record books that gave me the mother’s name and her birthdate and birthplace. Pretty cool. You learn new things all the time here in the library. Then I was asked to help a couple from Belgium who were French speaking. Again, I showed them how to search our records and how to use
Geneanet and
MyHeritage and then I just sat back and watched them go. They got so excited as they
found different trees and names and family members. I then got back to trying to attach all of the records I had found for Ingeborg Kullin and was able to get the last one in just before all of the computers shutdown. Whew! We had FHE where we said goodbye to the Barneys and the Reeders did the lesson about conference and prophets. It was also her birthday so she brought cake. We closed the night by watching a couple episodes of
Claim to Fame. We like this show. It is fun to try to figure out who their famous relative is and watch so many of the young participants who don’t know about any of the older famous people. They are pretty clueless. One guy in particular wasn’t very bright, but seemed to make it through because they couldn’t figure out his famous relative and get him off the show. Oh, and Mom turned our Christmas lights back on. She says since it is after the Autumnal
Equinox it is ok now. We left the garland up there this whole time, but sometime back in January or February Mom decided we needed to turn off the lights or they just wouldn’t be special for Christmas time. So they have been off since then and tonight they were plugged back in. Wahoo! I like the ambiance that these kinds of lights bring. Nice soft lighting. It make the room feel more “soft” as well.
Tuesday I had an appointment for my two month checkup for my mountain bike down in Pleasant Grove. So I got up and got my rack on the car and charged up the bike and we got dressed for the temple. We planned to drop off she bike and then go to the Orem Temple to do initiatories and an endowment session. So we got my bike loaded and headed off to
Ari bikes (previously
Fezzari). We got past the point of the mountain and suddenly the traffic stopped. We looked on our map app and learned there was an accident ahead. Ugh. That made us late to
Ari, but we made it in time to drop off the bike and still get to the temple in time for our appointment there.
The Orem Temple is very similar to the Taylorsville Temple. Same layout, same traffic flow (which I dislike) but different stained glass and color schemes and furnishings. I actually got to my initiatory appointment early and they were not super busy so they got me right in. I was able to do 5 ordinances and when I came back to the desk I asked if I could complete the last four that I had? They said sure, so I went back in and did three more individual’s ordinances…I thought I had four names, but there were actually only three. Then I went and met Mom for the endowment session. After that we came out to go back and get my bike. We wanted to wash the car and as I was driving to
Ari I saw a do-it-yourself car
wash, so I stopped in there. It was great, except their foam brush was really foamy and got some soap on my suit pants. Ugh. We then got my bike and headed for
Super Chix, a fast food place that Savannah had told me about that has really good fries. She was right. We got a burger to split and a large fry and a frozen custard mint Oreo shake. Check out the size of those fries! The cool thing about the fries was that they have a rosemary pepper seasoning on them. Yum!!! We ate a little less than half of them and took the rest home to eat later. We stopped at Costco on the way home to get gas in the car and Mom ran in for a couple of things. After getting home and putting my bike away, along with the bike rack. Mom went for a walk and I rested for a bit and then got on the road to go give platelets. There were two people there ahead of me and this was the first time I have had to wait to get interviewed and started. After finally getting in the chair the young girl, who seemed pretty new, missed my vein on my right arm. She had to get another girl over there to get it right, but she did.
Unfortunately it still wasn’t good enough. About a half hour into the procedure the machine started beeping a warning signal and they came to look at my arms. They determined the right arm wasn’t working well enough and cancelled the procedure. Bummer. I had started watching a movie on Netflix called
23 Blast about a kid who played high school football and due to an infection went blind. So when I got home I went looking for it and found it and watched the rest of the movie. Not too bad. If you don’t want to know anything more about the movie stop reading now and skip to the next paragraph. What I thought was cool was that this was based on a true story and the football coach actually got the kid to come back and practice with the team and even put him in a game, not like they depicted in the movie, but he did actually play even though he was blind.
Wednesday we had to go in a bit earlier for an interview with President and Sister Brown. So three days in a row without a ride. We had our interview and then ran upstairs for our LPJ class. That went well, especially a couple of the comments about the Savior being a “one by one” person. Even in the midst of large crowds He still ministered to the “one”. After class I got working on trying to find Stina Jansdotter’s parents. I struck out when I went to look for a birth record on the date and in the place where someone
had indicated in FamilySearch, so I went looking for other records. I was able to find her marriage record to her first husband, Nils Andersson, and a household records with the two of them recorded, but still no birth record or mention of her parents. I then was asked to help a guest read a French birth record. Another guest overheard us reading the record and offered to assist. He was from France and read better than me, although I was pleased to learn how much of the record I had translated correctly already. He then gave us a little history lesson about the region where this record was from and the France 30 Year War, and then was off to work on his own research. I then helped her with a death record and she was super happy. Success! We left around 6pm and came home
with Sharon and Sami to have dinner dinner and play mahjong. We had grilled cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread. Very tasty. Both I and Mom won, but Sharon won twice! It was her first two wins and she was very happy. I then drove Sharon and Sami home and came back to unwind for the night. I watched an episode of
Agatha All Along, which I haven’t decided if I like or not yet, a little quirky,
and headed to bed.
Thursday morning I finally got up and went for a ride…30 miles. It felt good being back on the bike. We then went to the library and I was asked almost immediately to help a French guest. We had been told that many French people go on vacation in September and suddenly it seems to be true, we have a lot of French guests recently. After helping him we had our LPJ class and it was interesting that the same idea about Christ being focused on the “one” came up again. I mentioned a talk Elder Gong gave where he spoke about the feeding of the 5,000 and how that was also a focus on the “one”. Here is a link to that talk…
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/broadcasts/evening-with-ga-elder-gerrit-w-gong/2017/02/and-jesus-said-unto-them-i-am-the-bread-of-life?lang=engAfter class we said goodbye to Cynthia Strong. She has been called as a full time missionary in the mission office in Scotland. Cordell Atkins called her our “Swiss Army Knife” able to do just about anything. We will miss her. I tried doing a little more searching for Stina Jansdotter with no luck and then we headed to the temple. This week it was just with Sharon at the Taylorsville Temple. We did initiatories and sealings and then stopped at WinCo on the way home to shop. Mom actually ran back to buy ice cream, for herself! What?! I think I may have a convert. She got Rocky Road and Drumstick. Tillamook brand of course, since that is her favorite ice cream. After getting home and putting everything away I decompressed watching
Alone:Australia. It was actually a bit boring and I kept checking things on my phone…Facebook, email, ESPN. I think once they get to about 40 or 50 days it’s about who can last in starvation mode the longest and they don’t do much anymore. They just try to burn as few calories as possible. Anyway, the episode ended and I went to bed.
Friday was another early in day…8:30am. We got things opened up at 9am and not long thereafter a guy and his girlfriend (I think) and his mom came in. Any guesses where they were from? Yup, France. They didn’t know much about their older ancestors and unfortunately
Geneanet did not have any information about the recent ancestor they were wanting to research. So I explained how to get records for more recent people and the guy showed me a paper with 4 other names on it that he wanted to look up. But the girls both started to get up and said, sorry no time. He was sad I could tell, but I hurried and got him a little information sheet that we give out that shows the websites to go to if you want to continue on your own at home. That made him happy. Then another French guest came in. I was able to help him find a marriage record and together we translated it and discovered
the parents, but there were a couple of words we couldn’t figure out. So I asked Celine, our new missionary form the Netherlands who speaks French, but she wasn’t able to decipher it. So I got Pat and she couldn’t either. Then suddenly I figured out what the word was and it all made sense. Wahoo. Then we moved on and found a birth record and again had a problem with a couple of words. I had Beatrice come look and she figured out one word, but said another word was something that I was pretty sure was not right. So then Brandon, a specialist, came walking by and I flagged him down and asked what he thought. He looked at it for a minute and said the word was an abbreviation for
sa femme (his wife).Wahoo! We were concerned that the couple may not have been married,
but this confirmed the opposite. I then sent the guest onto the next task of finding the marriage record for these parents. Mom had headed to lunch with John at 1pm in the COB cafeteria and so I gathered my things to go, but Celine stopped me to complain about not being able to get into the Tier 3 training site. So I tried getting her in and couldn’t do it. Brandon even came over and it wasn’t working for him. So I printed off some checklists and worksheets for her to get started on and took off. I phoned Mom and learned I was too late. They had finished lunch and was she was already home. So I walked home and passed Mom on her way back to the library to cleanup after
Fun Food Day which this month was
Fall Fruit…anything with fruit in it. I had gone up to the 3rd floor earlier and found a tub with cookies in it. I wondered what fruit they had put in the cookies so I tried one. It was a chocolate chip cookie, no fruit. Hmmmm, I wonder if there is someone in the library who considers chocolate a fruit? Anyway, I went home and ate the lunch Mom got me from the COB and then watched the last episode of
Alone:Australia. It was a bit of a surprise ending, I
must say. I won’t tell you about it but it was a little different from how other seasons of
Alone have ended. Mom then came home and we watched
Claim to Fame. I should have gone on a bike ride, but just didn’t feel like it. Mom then went off to go surprise Kim Reyne. She had previously chatted with a new mission who she had learned was from Lincoln, CA and had mentioned that her cousin Scott Reyne and his family had lived there. The missionary said that she and Kim were good friends and she was going to be visiting with her soon. So she told Mom to come surprise her. Well, it didn’t quite work out. Kim had to go to the airport so Mom just called her from the other sister’s apartments. She was still happy to chat for a moment. We spent the rest of the evening watching the last two episodes of
Claim to Fame and being totally dumbfounded as to how the winner could have actually won. Amazing.
Saturday I should have gotten up to go for a ride, but I snoozed through my alarm. We got into the library on time though and immediately I was asked to help three different groups of guests in a row…all from France! Wow. It was fun to try to speak a little French and to show them what they could do on our website as well as how to use other websites to do research. On lady said that she thought it was
incroyable (incredible) that she had to come all the way to America to learn how to do research in France. Fun times. I was then heading to lunch when they asked if I could help a guest with Norway. So I went downstairs to our B2 level and found Steve, apparently a regular who gets help all the time. He was an interesting critter. He actually switched to a Swedish name he wanted to find out about instead of a Norwegian one, which was nice for me since I know how to do Swedish research better than Norwegian. So we searched through some records to try to sort out a couple who he wasn’t sure were actually a couple. We were able to figure it out. It was mostly a case of people entering
in the wrong surnames, not using the correct patronymics, and getting a couple of people confused. We found a record to help straighten things out and he was happy, but I missed lunch. So I just took a late, quick lunch. Then the library quieted down and I went back to work on Stina Jansdotter. I think I found her actual birth record, but wanted to verify her family by finding them in the household records and following them forward until she leaves and is married to Nils Andersson. I found her, I am pretty sure, in two household records but need to find the one where she moves out and meets Nils and I ran out of time for that. Mom left with Sharon to go out to dinner at Benihana’s (see pic above) and then to the musical
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and I closed the library and went home to watch football. I got to watch the wild Georgia vs Alabama game and the BYU vs Baylor highlights during halftime. Then I watched Utah get beat by Arizona. Mom came home about the beginning of the 4th quarter and said the musical was really good. She was surprised I was still watching football, but Utah had the late game yesterday…and so the game didn’t finished until midnight.
Today we got up and
drove to church because Mom wanted to give away her soil and pots to someone in the ward. She was sure someone would want them and she was right. Fast and Testimony meeting was a lot about the change in our ward. It was announced last week that there was going to be a change. They have decided to combine two family wards and have all the children and youth in the stake meet together in just one ward…Ensign 20th Ward. All those who do not have children will be combined in the Ensign Ward and will meet at the stake center building. We have been asked to stay with the 20th Ward. Then they had a fifth Sunday gathering which turned into more of a goodbye and answer questions session and then they had a linger longer with donuts. So we had a donut and said goodbye to some folks and went to drop off the dirt and pots on the way home. Then it was working on this blog post and Mom getting ready to host the Barneys for one last mahjong night before they leave at the end of the week.
It was a great week. Again it seemed to have flown past. Hope yours was a bit slower than ours.
Love you all.
BE GOOD!
Mom and Dad
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