Week of February 12, 2017

Sunday was a typical Sunday. Ted and I went to the choir broadcast. It was a repeat of several selections from the Thursday night program. Dallin Bayles was soloing in a song and came on tightening his tie and singing before he got to the microphone. He had obviously been late for his cue, and the orchestra was playing well into the song before he ran on stage. Funny. In the evening I reviewed for my classes for the week. I needed to put together a Power Point for the class on Monday because I have lost several files I thought I had. It was not easy to reproduce and it is not nearly as good as the original.

Monday I taught the Memories class. My Power Point went OK. It was a good class and I think we all enjoyed it. I completed the lesson on Catalog so I’m ready to certify on Wednesday. I also worked on the “How to” guide we’ve been asked to do and got the content finished. We need to get a couple of people to test it and we should be able to turn it in. Ted got me roses. Very sweet!

Valentine Roses!

In the evening we went to a friend’s house for dinner. We knew the wife when we lived in California and our kids played together. We had a wonderful meal and a good visit. I showed them the FamilySearch Memories app and they caught fire. I’m sure they will be using it often.

Tuesday we started our Capstone 2 class. Ted did a good job with Temple Submissions. I spent the evening reviewing again the lesson for Wednesday—it is such an important lesson and it really needs to be taught with the Spirit. I also reviewed for my certification testing Wednesday afternoon.

Wednesday went well. I felt the class was with me. We teach the students how to do Find, Take, Teach by using their own family tree so they can prepare to help others. We did not find someone that was ready for temple work for everyone, but we found someone they could each use to create a lesson plan.

My certification went well. I learned later that the man who certified me is one of two that it’s better not to try than to have him as the certifier. I thought he was great. There were a couple of questions where the wording confused me, and the computer misbehaved in the middle or was super slow and I got impatient, but he said I passed with flying colors and did a great job. It made me feel good. Even then, it took nearly the entire hour to do the three units I did. He said most don’t finish in the allotted time.

Wendy Watson Nelson spoke at the Mission Conference in the afternoon. It was really good. She talked about us finding and fulfilling the commitments we made in the pre-mortal life. She had us recite a couple of quotes by Elder Jeffrey Holland. One of the quotes was a statement he made at the new mission president’s conference when he bore testimony of the Savior. The summary of that statement is that the thing that energizes the doctrine of Christ, the thing that informs the doctrine of Christ, is the Life of Christ. We should love everything He did, everywhere He went, everything He said, and everything He is. It was truly an amazing experience.

Thursday I taught the class on creating the lesson plan from the worksheet we did Wednesday. We had really positive results from the class. They did the role play well and were able to do OK with it. We had a couple of students demonstrate teaching the lesson plan and they did a great job.

In the afternoon I went to the library to do some research, hoping to find more information on a couple of Ted’s ancestors. As I walked into the International floor, the missionary at the desk called me over. She had been in our classes in December then they decided to extend their mission. She had just had her first Find, Take, Teach experience the previous weekend and was really excited about it. She was so grateful for the class and the opportunity to share with others. She went on and on about how excited she was. It really made my day.

After I had looked at things for a few minutes I asked a missionary to look at what I’d found to see if I had the correct person. He didn’t say I was wrong, but I needed to connect the birth record with the marriage record. He suggested a couple of things. I had already looked through the earliest parish household record for the wife twice because she was previously married. He suggested I look there and in another parish. There was also a large gap between when the couple married and the first child I had found so he thought there might be some missing children.

I got about half way through the parish records and found the wife. The record indicated she was married in 1787 to a man who died the same year they were married. I found his death record. They had a son born in 1788 who also died in 1788, but I couldn’t find either birth or death records for him. However, on the same page was the record for the second marriage, an indication they married, and three more children for them, two born before the first one I had. All three of these children died as infants. That was a bonanza. I still was not able to find any earlier records for either the husband or the wife, but I had the family and her previous marriage. I’ll keep looking but the records where they were living did not begin any earlier, so they must have been in another parish and I have no idea where she came from.

Friday we had a class on Memories and the missionaries got really excited about the mobile app. It is nice to be able to take pictures or record audio and have them go immediately into the gallery on FamilySearch. After a quick lunch I went to the library to meet someone for what I thought was an appointment. He didn’t show--he did not think it was an appointment so he was getting his car serviced. I did some personal research and found a couple of church records of fees the couple had paid. I still have no additional clues as to where to look for more information.

Saturday I did something that was of significance. I started to type the personal histories I’d written years ago, before Heather was born. Just as I started typing the thought came to me that maybe I could scan the histories and do OCR on them. I tried this a few years ago, but there were so many errors that it took more time than it was saving so I put the project away. As I turned the printer on and prepared to scan I noticed one of the options was to read the document using OCR, so I decided to give it a shot. I scanned one and looked at it on the computer. There were very few errors. I was elated. I hurriedly scanned the other documents and started doing the corrections. I was able to get through all three boys’ histories in just a very few minutes and part of the time was spent adding things I’d left out previously. Some had more errors than others, but it is going to work very well and save me tons of typing.