This week seems to have flown by faster than any of the rest for me. I’m not sure why, but it just doesn’t seem possible that I would be writing this post already, but here goes.
Monday began with a quick trip to the gym and then a devotional . The new Presidency has been emphasizing staying on time. I think they really don’t like it when people get up before the closing hymn and prayer because they need to get to the library so they can be ready when it opens. Anyway, the HSS (Headquarters Support Services) Zone did a great job of keeping all of their presentations short and well thought out and within the time allotted. They set a great example for the rest of us. They even had a video they created of missionaries at welfare centers all around the world singing
Have I Done Any Good in the World Today. Very nice! We did have to take off
right after it was finished to get to the library for our
Practical DNA class that Raymon (one of our staff members) was teaching. But as we were walking we got a text from him and learned he was going to be late. So that made it less stressful getting there and setting up the
Teams video call for everyone joining online. He wasn’t too late and when he got there he did a great job showing us how to group and use our DNA results to find other family members. Pretty cool. I started looking at some of the matches on my mom’s side and hope to be able to use some of their attached trees to help me find ancestors. Then it was time to get out on the floor to help. I was flagged down by a guest who couldn’t figure out why the stepfather of one of the families in her line kept showing up and not the biological father. I couldn’t figure it out either, so I went and got another missionary who has been there longer than me. She was able to identify that the children of the first marriage had been added as step children in the second marriage, and for some reason that takes priority when you view your tree. So we had to remove all of the children as step children and voila, the tree looked like it was supposed to look. You learn something new every day. I was then asked to help a guest getting started in his family tree. But when I sat down with him I learned that
wasn’t actually what he needed. He already had a tree started, but was looking for an ancestor from Ireland, but he didn’t know how to find him. He had a place and a name and approximate year, so I just escalated him to one of the staff specialists who would know how to help him search. After lunch we had our zone council meeting and discussed what we wanted to do for the upcoming devotional that our zone will be in charge of at the end of September. They have decided on having me give an introduction of what our zone is all about and then have some zone members share some of their best
Elijah Moments…moments when they felt the help of those beyond the veil in our service to help people in the library find their ancestors. They gave me the names of about 4 or 5 people they thought would do well and also decided they want to sing
I Am a Child of God in about 12
different languages by people in our zone. Sister Selck is going to organize that. Sounds like a good plan to me. After getting back on the floor I was asked to help a French family that had come in. They had already started searching records that
FamilySearch has so I asked what they would like to do. They just wanted to learn more. So I asked if they knew about the
archives en ligne for each department. They did. So I asked if they knew about
Geneanet. They did not. So I showed them how to search on
there and they began finding trees that showed their family. We printed out a few of them and then I just let them explore on their own. They were very pleased when they left the library, thanking me a number of times. It is wonderful to see how doing something so simple can bring happiness to someone else. We then closed down the library and got some quick dinner before going to FHE led by President and Sister Howes. It was also the last FHE for the Engstroms, and the Ngs made a little “goodbye book” for them. They gave them a moment to say goodbye, which was emotional for both of them. They have been fun friends and we will miss them. The Howes
then went on with teaching their lesson, which was based on a paragraph he had put together of statements we could say about ourselves. He asked us to pick one line of the paragraph that we felt fit us best and then get with another person and explain why we picked our line. I picked the line that said, “I have hope.” I explained to my partner, Elder Hansen, that I picked that line because I have always enjoyed learning about the concept of hope and I believe I truly do have hope for an eternal future with my earthly family as well as my heavenly family. Elder Hansen didn’t pick one of the lines in the paragraph, instead he created his own line about striving to hear and follow the Spirit in his life. Anyway, it was fun to find out what someone else believes about themselves.
Tuesday I got up and removed and cleaned my crankset on my bike. I was determined to get rid of the clicking noise that I get when I pedal. Well it didn’t work. I did get in a 30 mile ride, but I had to listen to clicks the whole way. Ugh! Mom went walking. I don’t think she has to deal with clicking noises coming from her drivetrain while she walks. Lucky! Anyway, I decided to buy a new chain to see if that is it. I’ll be able to get it installed before I start my 500 miles in September for the
Great Cycle Challenge ride to benefit childhood cancer research. We went to the COB for lunch and then home to get ready for the Barneys to come over to play Mahjong. (I have spelled Mahjong many ways, according to what I have seen on the internet, but I have learned that apparently this is the way that my spell check here on my iPad seems to think it should be spelled, so I am going with that from now on). Anyway they came over to play and everyone won once except for Larry and we did have a
wall game where nobody won, kind of like a cats game in
tic-tac-toe. This was the first one that I have ever been involved with. We then had dinner with them. Mom made frittata and they brought fruit. It was a nice light dinner. I then had to head off to give platelets. That went well with no problems at all. I got my
Lorna Doones afterwards and was very happy.
Wednesday I slept in. I think maybe the platelets donation tired me out a bit. Anyway, I got up in time to get to the library when we were supposed to be there. I worked on some zl paperwork stuff and then was asked to do a tour for a couple from France. I learned that they are here touring National Parks and just were curious about Temple Square sites. So I showed them the library and they were quietly impressed. Sometimes I think people are quiet when they are in awe, and that is what I felt from this couple. In the afternoon I was asked to help four Kenyan ladies. They were just curious if there was anything that the library would have on their family. We searched records and
found nothing. I explained that there just weren’t a lot of records from Kenya, but we did have some oral genealogies that our members have been collecting form many countries in Africa, including Kenya, and they might have some of this family’s names in them. So we looked them up and sure enough, their family name showed up in a couple different oral genealogies. They didn’t have enough time to actually open them up and search them, but they took pictures of how to find them again and left with the promise that they would look them up later. Hopefully they will and will be able to find ancestors. I then spent
most of the rest of the day working on my own Swedish line in my family tree. I was successful and able to go two more generations back on one line. Wahoo! We finished our day and then it was home for dinner and relaxing. Mom decided to start watching all of the
Harry Potter movies again. So I sat down and watched with her, or maybe I should say for her because she couldn’t just sit there and got up and started working on a bunch of other things while I watched. It was fun watching it again.
Thursday I was supposed to ride, but didn’t. I woke up with an ache in the bottom part of my right calf. Where that came from I have no idea…old age? So we went into the library and I worked on getting our zone picture up to date for use in the upcoming devotional. Then it was off to lunch at the COB where I decided to get a panini. It was really good, but also came with tots. I have always loved tater tots, but have learned that the COB cafeteria makes them exceeding well. I’m not sure if they air fry them or what, but they are so crispy and not greasy at all. Super yum! I was only planning on eating half my panini and half the tots and save the rest for dinner, but they were both so good and I was hungrier than I thought so they both disappeared. After lunch I didn’t get asked to help anybody, so I worked on my
Swedish line again and was able to find Eric Olsson’s parents. Wahoo. We then loaded up our sister missionaries and were off to the temple. It was the Bountiful Temple this time and we did both initiatories and an endowment session. I learned something new as I was in the endowment, but since it has something to do with the actual endowment I will have to keep that to myself until we can be together in the Celestial Room again. Remember to ask me what I learned next time we’re there. After the temple it was Yoriko’s turn to choose what we did and she chose Costco. So we did a quick shopping trip there since it was already almost 8pm and they closed at 8:30. Everyone got everything they needed before closing and it was off to home. Great day.
Friday we had to be in at 8:30 and I forgot until after I got up, leaving me not enough time to go to the gym. We learned that we usually need to be in a bit earlier on Friday on the days they have
Go Forth meetings, so we changed our schedule to just go in an hour earlier which I forgot. So in we went and it was quiet at first. Then it started getting a little busier and I was asked to help a lady with Norway research. She was looking for an ancestor from the Oslo area and I couldn’t figure out how to find the parish in that bigger city. So I escalated it and Tanner, one of the research specialists, came over and basically said we
had done everything we could, now we just had to search all of the neighboring parishes to see if we could find a birth record. So the guest went to work and wahoo, she found her birth record. That led us to look for the ancestor’s sister’s record and we were able to find that as well. Then it came to her brother. He was trickier to find, but we had a couple of ideas come to us and we searched in a different place and found him as well. Success! Mom got to help some folks with Italy research and was able to have some
success as well. It always feels good when you are successful. We then got to leave early since it was our T/R day so we got home and changed and went downstairs to help new missionaries move in. We learned Wednesday that they were moving in this afternoon. Both of them were very frugal in what they brought and it went rather quickly. Mom brought our wagon and we also used the shopping carts here at the apartments. One of the couples moved into the apartment next door to us. It used to be occupied by non-missionary folks and we learned that the mission completely furnished it with all new furniture and kitchen tools and dishes. Wow, it looked great. They got a crock pot and small mixer and lots of fun things
that we had to go out and get on our own. I guess they are learning what they can do to make it easier for new missionaries and so they don’t have to bring as much stuff. We got home just in time to welcome the Stapps to our place to play games and have dinner. They taught us a couple of dice games and then we taught them Mahjong. Caryn won the first game doing a run combination which is pretty hard. Wow, beginner’s luck. Mom also won a game doing the same combo and then I won the last two games, keeping my winning streak intact. We had sliders and salad for dinner and they brought some pastries from Harmons which we shared like we usually share when Mom goes to bakeries. After they left I watched the next episode of
Alone, which turned out to be two episodes to end the season. I was surprised that the guy I thought was going to win tapped out, saying he didn’t need the money after all and had learned what he wanted to learn from the experience. There are always surprises out there.
Saturday I was going to put on my new chain and go for a ride, but when I woke up I just didn’t think I could get everything done quick enough and get in a decent ride, so I bailed. Fail! We got in to the library around 10am and I went to work getting the agenda together for our Monday meeting. Brandon, one of the staff specialists, came over to chat and we talked about chickens and gardens and hunting and a bunch of stuff for about a half hour. It was fun getting to know him better. He also told us he grew up on a 10 acre property in Arizona, and his grandfather had a small ranch, just 10 sections big. I asked how big a section was and learned that it is one square mile, 640 acres. I told him that I didn’t think that was a small ranch, but he said that compared to the other ranches around that area it was small. I think we will stick to our 1 acre big ranch. After lunch I was asked to help a couple from the Netherlands. They said they just wanted to see what we had, but they
didn’t think we would have anything about their family, here in Utah. Well I had her put her father’s name in the search box and immediately got a hit. It was a death record. She was amazed. Then I showed them that the record came form the
Open Archives site and that they could put the name in there and find more records. She did that and found her grandfather and grandmother’s
befolkingregistere which is like a census record and it showed her father and all of his siblings, including an older brother who passed away at just five days old. We then learned that the first death record we had found was for this sibling. Pretty cool. We kept finding records and each time she would pull out her camera to take a picture of the record on the computer screen. I told them that I could give them a flash drive and we could download the records on it, but she was happy taking photos. They then asked if they could wander around and see things and I told them of course. As they were leaving I asked if she got enough pictures and also if she was shooting with a Canon or Nikon. She said Nikon and I playfully
scoffed and teased that she wouldn’t get any good pictures with that. I then went to work looking for another ancestor’s parents, Karin Jansdotter. I was able to find her in a ton of household records and always next to her name it said she was born in 1756, but no month or day. All of her siblings and husband and parents had months and days with their names, but only a year for her. In the FamilySearch entry for her, someone had previously entered that she was born on 12 September 1756 and I had found from her marriage record that she was born in a small village, Sätna, in Lysvik Parish. But when I went to the birth records there I found a Karin born on that date, but to completely different parents in a different village. I am baffled. I went and got one of the other missionaries who does Swedish research and showed her what I found and she was baffled as well. We wondered out loud if maybe she was adopted when the original parents died, but there were no death records for that time period and I found
the parents and her in another household record 5 years after she was born. So puzzling. I really just want to say it is her and the parents I found her with are hers, but I have learned that you really need to completely verify a person before doing that, especially in Sweden where so many people have the same names. Ugh.
Is a puzzlement! (Quick, name that musical) Well we headed home at the end of the night in time to watch BYU play Southern Illinois…the Salukis. They won fairly easily, but I’m not sure how
well Ratzlaff, their quarterback, is going to do this year. He wasn’t super sharp, even though he had a huge game passing yardage wise. I ended the night by watching the movie
Freakonomics, based on the book. It was interesting. My favorite segment was on incentives. They tried to bribe 9th graders with money to get good grades. Didn’t work for a majority of them. I remember Anthony Celaya from my S&I days always condemning extrinsic motivators. They don’t work. True motivation has to come from within. A change of mind or understanding that causes someone to want to change. God knows about that and always tries to offer us that kind of light.
Today is Sunday, and it is a fast Sunday and I am hungry. We walked to church and it was a bit cooler than it has been. I taught
Gospel Doctrine class again. This time I used a quote from Elder Richard G. Scott to begin the class.
“Principles are concentrated truth, packaged for application to a wide variety of circumstances. A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and compelling circumstances. It is worth great effort to organize the truth we gather to simple statements of principle” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1993, 117; or Ensign, Nov. 1993, 86) I then had them find principles they had learned from their reading. There were some good ones. I shared the principle I got from Helaman 3:35, “Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God.” My principle is,
“We can become sanctified if we yield our will to God’s.” And I found this great quote to go with it,
“When the will, passions, and feelings of a person are perfectly submissive to God and His requirements, that person is sanctified. It is for my will to be swallowed up in the will of God, that will lead me into all good, and crown me ultimately with immortality and eternal lives” (Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 2:123). Sometimes a hard thing to do if we can’t see the reason behind doing something, but will always lead to more faith and joy and understanding in the end if we just do it. We came home and I started on this blog post until it was time to go down and get set up for our Break-the-Fast dinner. It was a little less crowded this month, probably because the holiday weekend had some people visiting family, so we fit just fine and still had plenty of food. We were just finishing cleaning up when Mom got a messenger call from Wynne and Johnathan. Baby Augustine is here! Wahoo! He was alert and eyes open and quiet and just snuggling on Wynne. What a cutie. Congrats Wynne and Johnathan and Leo. Mom will head there on Tuesday to help with Leo and Augustine and anything Wynne and Johnathan need her to do. We are excited for a new grandson. Well that has been our week. What a great way to end it with the arrival of a new family member. We love you all and hope you had, and will have, a magnificent week.
BE GOOD!
Love Sister Grammie and Elder Paka
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