This was my late start day. As it turned out, I did not get my hair cut, which was probably just as well, since I was busy until the last hour at the Library, but did not get overly sleepy. I spent time this morning talking with my oldest daughter, and with my Sweetheart, and reading The Book of Mormon, and washing dishes from the past couple of days. I also fried up the rest of the yellow squash--so delicious!
Several guests at the Library had happy successes. First was a guest I have blogged about before, who was looking for an ancestor but had not proven to his own satisfaction that the person in the record was the right one. Last week he got to travel to Iowa to connect with cousins, and now they are eagerly awaiting the report of his success. His case was an instructive one as far as always checking the primary record.
An index of the German church records is available online. In the Iowa trip the guest was shown a family history with a specific date and place of birth. The record was on the microfilm for that date, with the appropriate name, in the appropriate place. However, the index of the record which is posted online specifies that the child born on that particular date died two years later. The guest was motivated to check every one of the records with the appropriate surname that appeared on the microfilm. As he did so he found his ancestor, but the very next record was for another child with the same surname, and at that record was the death indication that had been attached in the online index to his ancestor's record. It actually took a few minutes to convince him that the index was in error! But when he understood, he was overjoyed! Now he has another generation, and those records are in the index, but he will go check the original records--and he will contact his newly-met cousins with the good news. On top of that, he informed me that he and his wife have submitted their application to serve in the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission! When I first helped him with translating a few weeks ago he had mentioned that his bishop had been suggesting that, so I had told him a bit about the mission, and how he and his wife would be such a valuable asset. Maybe I was an instrument in the Lord's hands to help them make the decision to serve. They had served a previous mission overseas.
I had another success of sorts when I was asked to leave the Greeter position in order to help a family with research in Slovakia. I really do not know much about Slovakian research, but I was the best that was around at the time, and I do know how to teach the research process. That family found that the online records had the records of grandparents. The couple also told me the story of how they met. He had a desire to find his Slovakian people, and had a photo of a man on a motorcycle. He traveled to the area with a map and a language book--and the woman found out about his desire to find his relatives, had taken a few lessons in English, and offered to be his guide and translator. They eventually found a first cousin of his Dad, who upon seeing the picture said, "That is me!" and produced a duplicate photo! Because of their experiences together, the couple eventually got married, and had the son who was with them--who also found a record of his grandfather.
I spent a lot of time translating German, but passed off a Latin record from Germany to someone with more experience in that language.
At choir practice today we had a visit from the choir director's niece, who is a fairly new member of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir! She shared some of her experiences about marking music and paying attention to what the director says. Of course, what she shared supported the things that her uncle has been trying to teach us! As a choir we have made noticeable improvements in our singing in the past few weeks as we attempt to learn what is being presented.
Tomorrow morning will come way too soon, so time to wrap this up for tonight.
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