My first guests this morning were pretty awesome, a couple who had come to Salt Lake City for Antiques Roadshow. They were looking for information about the man's grandfather, who had immigrated from Germany to the United States.
I frankly was concerned that we would not find much--boy, was I wrong! In the United States we found eight records, if I counted correctly, giving them a firm birth date with two possible birth places, names of parents, immigration date, marriage record, death record, etc. The man was very touched to find out all this information about his grandfather. He asked about our reason to do this as a Church, so I got to share my testimony about our knowledge of our obligation to put families back together, which we do in the temple. But we also are committed to preserving the records, such as pictures they took of the various records.
When we had found all the United States records in Family Search, I suggested we look at Ancestry, thinking we might find a family tree there that would give us more avenues to pursue. Instead, what we found was an actual christening record! Unfortunately I could not figure out which of the several Evangelical parishes in Karlsruhe the Ancestry records came from, and there was no image available. However, it was still rather miraculous to find out so much information, including a confirmation of the location of birth in Germany. In my opinion, the grandfather definitely wanted to be found!
I mentioned to the couple that this story would get told in my blog, and I gave them the blog address--so I hope they will enjoy knowing how special their visit to the Library was for me.
The rest of the shift went pretty well. I was bumped off the Pager position to help another guest needing some help with German research, and later I was able to help translate a Polish death record.
A confirmation of the correctness of my impression last Sunday to concentrate on indexing German records came as a guest came needing help with translating four German documents. He had done a good bit of that work already, but was stumped by a few words or abbreviations. The words he needed help with were quite clear to me, and I also ran them by one of the missionaries who is from Germany, and she concurred with my understanding.
I had some time to finish up the rest of the batches I was indexing in German--I had returned one because it had a portion about which I was unclear. The other nine are now safely submitted. Tomorrow I will download another group of batches. Although it would take three years working eight hours a day to become an expert, following the 10,000 hour rule, the time I am putting in is certainly improving my skill and my confidence. I also know that the Spirit is helping me. Today I was struggling to figure out a name when all of a sudden it was very clear, and I knew I had gotten help on that one.
Once the shift was over I met two of the other sister missionaries and we went shopping at three markets. It was rather fun to have their company, and they appreciated the opportunity to go to the stores. Neither of these sisters has a car here, so they allowed me to fulfill one of my reasons for bringing the car--to provide transportation for those without cars. Although they certainly did not need to do so, one of them gave me a nice piece of watermelon and the other gave me a cantaloupe! Yum!
I wanted to report briefly on two culinary experiments. The first started last night, as I had finished up a batch of root beer ice cubes--my habit is to fill an ice cube tray with root beer so that I can have a little bit of sweet every so often. I decided I really need to see if I could come up with a perhaps healthier, and certainly less expensive substitute. So last night I dissolved a some brown sugar in hot water, added some cinnamon, and poured that into the ice cube tray--not quite like the root beer ice cubes, but not bad!
The second experiment was actually serendipitous, as I was not anticipating the result I got. Having made flax seed crackers last night in getting them out of the oven today there were quite a few crumbles. At lunch time I put the crumbly crackers on a plate, laid a round slice of cheese on top, and put that in the microwave for half a minute. The result was almost like a flat taco shell, and bent over easily to form a pocket into which I put some pickle relish [I had been thinking of pickle on cheese sandwich which I had not had for a while]. I liked the result, and think that for someone who has issues with corn [one of the sisters here does], this could easily be used for fake tacos or other dishes. Not bad. My Sweetheart told me today his method of making smoothies and I look forward to experiencing that, also.
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