Week of March 19, 2017

Sunday we had two young elders and a single sister over for dinner. Single sisters need to have either a couple with them or two other single sisters in order to have the young elders for dinner, so we invited a sister to join us so she could participate. When we opened the door the elders flashed their reminder notice and said they’d brought their ticket for dinner. Cute.

Monday evening we had our Hail and Farewell Dinner. This time we were the ones standing up to say goodbye. It is incredible how quickly the time has gone. It seems like just a few months ago we were the new missionaries. We have about five more weeks before we go home so it seems funny to me to say goodbye. It is sort of sad to think of not being here much longer, but I am ready to go home when the time is here.

Tuesday I taught an inservice class on Descendancy Research using Landscape View. It was well received and I think several people really liked it. Afterward we went to Anthony’s Antiques for a tour for our zone. It was close enough that several of us walked over. We really enjoyed it—again. The art presented was different than last time. It was outstanding again. We had another class in the afternoon and I did more work at the library before evening.

Wednesday we had an inservice class on Ancestry tips that a trainer had picked up at Rootstech. It was really good. We then had an engineer from FamilySearch talk to us about what it takes to get memories into the system. We had staff meeting to discuss upcoming classes. It will be interesting to see how the new schedule plays out.

Thursday we worked on some revisions for the Capstone 2 book. At noon I met a missionary who had asked for help untangling an issue with an ancestor who kept changing her age. The records used two names interchangeably, so it was a little tricky, but we put everything together and it appeared that she wanted to be younger than she was because her husband was several (17) years younger than she was. Her birth certificate and the early censuses indicated she was five years older than the later records, including her death records, showed.

I had an interesting experience in the afternoon. I was teaching a class on searching records and I’d put up Isaac Brockbank’s record on the screen to illustrate some point. The missionary in charge of housing walked into the room a little late. I noticed her standing there looking somewhat confused. I asked what was up. She said, “That’s my great-grandfather!” I said, “That’s my great-grandfather!” The class went well and I felt really connected to the students. After class we visited about our common great-grandfather. She is descended from the youngest child of Elizabeth Mainwaring, the first wife; I am descended from the youngest child of Sarah Brown, the second wife. She told me there was more to the story of the family than what I knew. I’m sure there is much about our ancestors’ lives, good and bad, that we have no idea of.

Cousins

After class we got our picture taken together—cousins. Her husband was having a problem with an indexing batch that wouldn’t submit. He normally arbitrates so he hasn’t done any indexing for a while. I looked at it for him and the issue was that he hadn’t indexed the image headers. When he did that, everything went in immediately. From there I walked by the zone leader’s desk and he had a question about something and I helped him as well. I was feeling pretty good about things. The assistant zone leaders had moved to new desks. One of the computers had ArkivDigital on it so I moved to that computer. That meant I could do some of my Swedish research at my desk instead of the library. That will be nice to be able to use it during down time.

Friday we went to the Provo City Centre Temple with the Training Zone. I really enjoyed the session. We got there early enough that I was able to read some in the Book of Mormon before the session and that was nice. After the temple we took pictures then went to lunch together. It was a good experience. After we got home I went to the library to do a little more research.

Saturday we planned to meet the two new couples that have been called to the Swap Meet committee. It was raining fairly hard so it was tricky doing anything inside the sheds. Ted and I got there early and moved some of the stuff from the one shed to the other so we’d have room to at least get inside to work. The ladies went into the shed and I talked with them about what we do, then we worked at getting things more orderly for the coming week. The men had nowhere to go so they were outside in the rain until Ted decided they needed to go inside to wait for us. The new couples will be good and I think they’ll enjoy it.

At home I worked on my lesson for Relief Society and finally got it to where I think it will be ready for Sunday. In the evening I attended the General Women’s Meeting for Conference It was amazing and tied directly to the topics of my lesson for Sunday—consecration and love. I was especially touched during the first choir number, “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus”. They sang a variation to the melody on the third verse and it really touched me. When they sang “He knows I will honor Him, give all my life to Him” it really struck me that this was exactly what consecration is—our lives are lived in such a way that the Lord knows we are on His side and He can count on us. I was very touched.