Monday we had a good devotional. One of the newer elders spoke,
telling us his story. He was born with spina bifida. He had been told he would
never walk—he does with some difficulty and with a cane. He had always wanted
to serve a mission and had held out his hopes until his bishop told him it
wasn’t going to be possible. Then he received his patriarchal blessing and was
told he would serve a full-time mission and that confused him. As he began to
seek an answer to reconcile the two things, he heard about our mission and is
now serving. It was a very touching story. I believe many of the elders serving
here have been excused from missionary service for health reasons of one sort
or another and yet they serve because they really want to. It is an
inspiration.
In the afternoon I spend time with a missionary learning a method
of research she claims has 100% success. It is a form of descendancy research
and she has used it to help many people in her ward to find names and begin
doing family history. It was amazing to me to see it work. I found about 9
names in my own family lines. After dinner I did some more
searching on my family line and found about 20 more names. My ultimate goal is
to use this method to track where I’ve looked and where I’ve done work. That
has been part of the problem with other methods—knowing where I am and what I
have done. She uses a screen shot to remember where she is when she leaves the
process and it could just as easily be used to show which people have been
checked for spouses and/or children. I am excited about it.
Tuesday after devotional we had an enrichment class—the
first since the remodeling of the library. It was totally full and went well.
Wednesday I taught the Beginning IrfanView Enrichment class.
We had 26 students for 23 computers and we turned several away. I had a very
positive response to the handout I had prepared. It had much more detail than I
would have put for some subjects, but for this one I felt the students needed
to walk away with a basic manual of how to do things. In the afternoon I worked
on the Descendancy Research class I have been asked to teach and got it to the
point where I felt I could at least present the outline to the trainers.
Thursday I worked with another trainer at length to merge
our teaching handouts for the classes we both teach so there will be a standard
handout in the packet we give the missionaries. I updated the documents we
agreed to use to show the changes and sent to her for review. It took most of
the afternoon. Later I worked on some personal research for a while. I stayed way too late, but I found several new records I’d had trouble
finding before and have nearly finished documenting one family.
Friday I worked on updating the handouts again. I gave them to our leader to include in the handout package. I
thought I was done, but I discovered we were still missing a form for one of
the classes so I found that and sent it in.
I am feeling very overwhelmed right now. I need to get the
class handouts organized and saved in folders for both trainers and students (different formats). I
need to do the same for Capstone classes and for Enrichment classes. Besides
these administrative things, I am supposed to be developing a class on Descendancy
Research using the descendancy view in FamilySearch, even though I believe
there is a better way to do it. I also need to prepare to teach Research
Process 2 and 3 that I will be teaching in the next couple of weeks for the
first time. And above and beyond all this, I have reserved, through the new
method the missionary showed me, about 150 new people temple work and I need
to go into each one and add sources, verify no duplicates, and contact family
to do the work since it is too much for me to do. And the Swedish research is
calling to me. I need to add the names I have found and add sources to those
names. I am buried.
After the enrichment class ended Ted and I left to go to the
Ogden Temple. We walked to the Front Runner station to take the train to Ogden.
We enjoyed a very relaxing ride and a short walk to the temple and
downtown. We stopped in town to eat then went to see the movie “Saturday’s
Warrior”. It was a treat. The temple was only a very short walk from the
theater, but we were late for the next session so I stayed outside for a while.
The Ogden Temple was
just rededicated after a long period of total reconstruction and it is beautiful. We didn’t stay long after the session because I thought we
could catch the train quickly. When we got outside we realized we were not
going to make it to the station in the 2 minutes until the train left for Salt
Lake. As we got closer we saw two trains at the station and figured one was
going to Salt Lake. Assuming the train was late leaving we took our time
walking only to watch the Salt Lake train pull out just as we got to the
parking lot. It left about 15 minutes late. I’m sure the Lord was telling me to
put first things first and it would be OK. It was a fun trip. It was very smooth and relaxing. We were the only ones upstairs in the car we were on. It was nearly dark when we got back to Salt Lake but we had enjoyed a
good day. It felt so good to leave everything behind for a few hours.
Saturday afternoon I went to the library and did research
all afternoon. I feel like I accomplished something. I was able to find records
for most of a second family, finding birth and death records for the children.
The next step will be to follow the children’s families like I did for the
first family. This will be easier since some of the children did not marry and
one married one of the children in the first family so they are done. I really
need to attach the sources to all the children and that will be a huge task. In the evening we had a quiet dinner and watched a movie at
home. It was a nice relaxing evening.
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