Week of January 29, 2017

Sunday we attended the homecoming talk for my niece’s son who recently returned from the Philadelphia PA mission, Spanish speaking. He started by playing the piano and singing “How Great Thou Art”—I was impressed. He apparently developed his piano skills on his mission. He gave a great talk, sharing his experiences and his testimony.

Monday we had a couple of classes. I taught FamilySearch Partners. We had nearly a totally full classroom, so that makes the teaching so much more fun. We have had a really hard time recently keeping a classroom for our lessons because we have low priority. The schedule needs to be revised nearly daily. We’ll be moving to the Joseph Smith lab starting in March so we shouldn’t have too many problems, but for now we need to make a sweep of all our classrooms before every class to make sure we don’t have students that are lost. Very frustrating.

Tuesday Ted taught Navigating FamilySearch.org. He did a really good job. Our attendance has been down quite a bit so it makes some classes easier to teach, but it also seems very sad to me that missionaries can’t take advantage of the classes offered.

Wednesday we had a staff meeting to start the day. We have one new elder that transferred from the other half of the Training Zone because of their changes. The major thing we did was revise the March schedule. Our Assistant Zone Leader thought we should offer our beginning classes twice in a month, but I pointed out that our attendance in those has been quite low so it may not be worth the effort. We decided instead to offer a couple of Family Tree Workshops where students can come and just get specific help on what they are struggling with. We will also offer a workshop on Irfanview so anyone can get help with just the parts they have questions about. I think this will be a good opportunity to help missionaries with their weaknesses instead of shot gunning the teaching. After our afternoon class we attended the temple and enjoyed it.

Thursday I taught Correcting Relationships in the afternoon. The computers had been down in the morning so I went to the office and worked on the assignment we’re assigned. I got it mostly completed down to the practice exercises which need to be cleaned up. In my class we worked in beta.familysearch.org and it didn’t function the way it was supposed to on replacing relationships, but I think the students got the idea. We went over several examples and had them try several things to give them practice.

Friday was our T&R day. I went to the library shortly after 8 am and worked on trying to clean up some of my research notes. Another missionary came over a couple of times to ask about things, and I had two appointments to pass off units of the certification program. (The procedure I’m writing is for students who don’t pass certification, so I thought it would be good to do the classes.) At the first appointment I sat outside the cubicle and listened to the lady ahead of me. The certifier was very generous in helping her remember the thrust of the lessons. In mine I was given the same support for which I was grateful. I have learned a few things, but mostly I’m learning that I need to think differently than I do and not over-think the questions. I was able to clean up a few things in the research I was doing, but there are so many loose ends that I need to fix before we are done here.

Saturday was the day of our monthly Swap Meet. Rain has been forecast all week, so I’ve been praying to have it clear just from 9:30 to 1 so we could move ahead. It rained during the night but had cleared up. When we started setting things up a few drops started to fall. I told them to leave paper and clothing in the sheds for a while and get everything else out. Soon the skies cleared and we were abundantly blessed with a beautiful day. I had some hand warmers for the workers, but the weather was so warm we had no use for them. I was thankful for the Lord’s answer to our prayers and for the beautiful day. We had a great turnout and got rid of a lot of stuff. One couple that just started working with us was called to be assistant zone leaders and will be working most Saturdays so we need to find someone else. They were scheduled to take Saturday, so one of the other elders said they could do it. We work with a wonderful bunch of people.