Wow, am I a blogger or what!  My last post was in the middle of February and now its the middle September!  It has gone quickly to say the least.  The end of February we were asked to become leadership trainers for the half of the mission that were assigned to Pres. Paul Eckel.  So we had our zone work plus the leadership training seminars to do.  Since that time, it has been pretty crazy.  We are working a lot harder than before we retired! 

This is a mission picture taken in May with the former Mission Presidency in front.

The biggest shock came during the last week in May when we were called to the mission office to meet with the new mission president who would be starting on July 1st.  We had been told all spring by Pres. Eckel that he was recommending Dale to be a counselor in the new presidency but we knew it was in the Lord's hands and, I at least, didn't really worry about it.  But the result of this interview, with H Ross Workman (Seventy Emeritus, formerly of 2nd Quorum of Seventy) and his wife, Katherine, was a request for Dale to become his 1st counselor.

Lots of tears and fears were associated with this request!  Our mission includes about 375 full-time missionaries, over 700 church service missionaries (serving on the average 2.5 days a week), and around 80 young elders who have health challenges that prevent them from serving a proselyting mission.  We have missionaries in the Family History Library, the Church History Library, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (working in departments of the Family History Department), and the Church Headquarters Building.  There are 20 different zones, doing everything from helping patrons to do their family history; researching, writing, and editing for the Joseph Smith Papers project, the Mormon Pioneer Overland Trail project, the Relief Society Project, the Country Profile project; working in Water Resources, Temple Construction, Church Finance, Military Relations, Missionary Department, Security; and working behind the scenes to get all that wonderful family history on Family Tree, including providing product support, indexing support, family history center support, ordinance problems support, and many, many other functions.

This is new presidency - Dale, Pres. Workman, and Pres. Glenn Johns

 It is a wide reaching mission located in a very, very beautiful setting!  Every season so far at Temple Square has been breath-taking.  The flower gardens right now are overflowing and such a wonderful sight to see on the way to work and home!

We have had some really memorable experiences as we have begun our work in the mission office.  The new presidency was announced during the first week in June at a special mission meeting at noon in the chapel at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  Elder Allan Packer, Pres. Packer's son, is the head of the Family History Department and made the announcement.  There were three other members of the Seventy on the stand with him.  And there were two Apostles - Elder Scott and Elder Bednar! It was almost an unreal experience.  Pres. and Sister Workman had to talk for a few minutes and there was a short time during the meeting when it seemed like they had asked both of his counselors and their wives (US!) to speak also but as it worked out we didn't have to. I probably would have just passed out anyway!

We were able to tour the mission during the last week in June and learned a lot more about the many different aspects of the mission.  The highlight was probably going up to the Granite Mountain Records Vault and being able to tour that great facility, which I guess is not allowed very often.  It's under major reconstruction right now to upgrade particularly the information technology capability.  They hope to be able to store most records on servers.  They are also copying all the microfilms which have been made with acetate, to polyester films which should last for 500 years.

We had to document our tour of the Vaults.  We'll probably never be able to see them again!

We are working many, many hours but we love it and continue to feel the Lord's help in the things we are asked to do.  The work of the Church is indeed hastening.  You feel it very distinctly.  There are so many changes going on in both the Family History and the Church History Departments.  I'll have to write about some of the exciting things we are learning about!

Our biggest problem is we need more missionaries! This is such an easy way to serve the Lord.  We live in the "Garden of Eden", we go to church at a branch created for full-time missionaries, and we are involved in further the kingdom all day every day.  We are able to go to special family events, to see the sights around the mission area.  It really is hard to say we are sacrificing much! 

Our biggest sacrifice is we miss being around family and friends.  But when you consider what sacrifices our ancestors made to bring us this beautiful gospel, it doesn't seem like our sacrifices are
very hard.

Monday, February 18, 2013

We have the day off because of President's Day!  Because our zone supports a department without the Church Employment System (paid employees) and they have today off, we also get it off.  We've been in our zone for 2 weeks now.  (49 weeks to go but whose counting!!) Our zone's work is to support the Church department called Information Pipeline Organization.  Their responsibility is to take raw data - usually films with pages of information that have been taken from old records around the world - get it into a format that it can be sent out to the indexers.  Indexers look at each record and input any data that identifies people - names, dates, families, events, etc.  Once the information input into the system, then it all has to be checked for accuracy (data analysis), which is a several step process.  When it is through with the data analysis process, it is released to the public via Family Search or Family Tree.  It can be very boring to very interesting, depending on the records.  I can't say I love the work, but we are surrounded by interesting people who are wonderful to work with.  The sister who works on the other side of my cubicle is from North Carolina and has a beautiful southern accent.  I love listening to her speak.  I met a distant cousin who works in the zone and we were able to swap stories about our common ancestor.  So we are having lots of good experiences meeting new people.

For those of you who know me and what I think about what is happening in Idaho politics concerning education, you might be interested to know that the very first missionary I met our first day in the mission is a recently retired Idaho legislator who served on the House Education Committee!  I just about swallowed the cookie I was eating whole when he told me who he was!  The good thing is he is such a nice person and we've gotten to know him and his wife well, so I can't harbor any bad feelings toward him!  I'm taking a sabbatical from any politics this year!!

We are still loving living right downtown.  We spend alot of time walking.  I feel time we spend most of our time in tunnels, elevators, and on sidewalks.  But, we're getting to know where we can go to get what we need.  We'll go a whole week and not even go down to the parking garage. 

I've been trying to download some pictures but I can't seem to get it to work today!  Anyone know how to download a picture from a file?? I've tried the download button, copy and paste from the file, Nothing!  Boy, do I love computers!!!

I have to tell you about the strangest thing that happened last night!  Dale has an old book that tells about his great great uncle, Joseph Standing.  He was a missionary in the 1870's in Georgia and was killed by a mob because he was a Mormon.  There's a monument about his martyrdom in Georgia and in the Salt Lake Cemetery, the one I wrote about in a previous blog.  I was looking at the book last night and opened it up where there were 3 small old pieces of paper that look like clippings from newsletters.  As I looked at the first one, I noticed a item about an Elder C.W. Bodily performing baptisms.  This item's byline said Chicago.  I thought we had gotten the paper mixed up because  my grandfather, Christopher William Bodily, went on a mission back in the northern Midwest states.  I turned the paper over and there was an article about Joseph Standing's martydom years before. Dale's grandmother had clipped this article out of some newsletter because it was about her uncle and it just happens to have a item mentioning my grandfather on the other side!  This side of Dale's family lived in the Tremonton area in Utah which is in the Northern Utah.  My grandfather lived in Eastern Utah so there no way it was a community newsletter.  Can you believe that coincidence?  I'm still shaking my head wondering how that happened!  This family history stuff is really getting interesting!

We survived!  Our first week of our mission is completed!  We were trained on genealogy for 3 and 1/2 days, where one-on-one trainers tried their hardest to fill our brains with as much information as possible.  We came home every night exhausted.  But we were given our assignments on Friday.  We will be in the Historical Records Reconstitution and Data Analysis zone.  One of the biggest zones with the longest name of the 23 zones in the mission.  We start tomorrow.  Our work will have two parts.  One is taking oral histories and putting them in written form so they can be put on FamilyTree the new Family History program of the church.  Currently, they have people working records from alot of Polynesian countries and from Norway.  The other work of our zone is with indexing.  I know we do data analysis on the indexing material that comes in from all over and make sure it is done correctly, but I'm not too sure what that's all about! But I'm sure we'll know much more by the end of the month!

On Saturday, it was so beautiful outside that we decided to explore!  We walked on a park trail up through several neighborhoods and ended up here - -

We were amazed how clear the land is around Utah's Capitol, then we realized we are used to Idaho's Capitol Building which is right downtown surrounded by buildings!

In our wanderings we found this little park that is surrounded by apartment buildings.  This is what we found in the park -

I know you can't read the writing on this monument but it is Heber C. Kimball's grave.  It's just north of the Church History Library.  For those of you who don't know who he is, he was one of the original leaders of the Church just after it was formed in the mid-1800's.  He was an important figure in the organization of the Church and it's move out to Salt Lake.

During a stop at the Church History Library, we were told that there was a monument dedicated to Dale's great-great uncle in the Salt Lake City Cemetery so we went and got our car (too far to walk!).  We quickly found the monument.  This man's name was Joseph Standing and he was killed in 1879 when he was missionary in Georgia by a mob of 12 men.  The officials there indicted all twelve, tried two of the men, and they were acquitted.  One of the them is quoted as saying, "There's no law in Georgia for Mormons."  It was a very moving experience to see this monument as we have known the story for several years.

 

We decided to stay and look around as many of the Church leaders are buried in the cemetery.  There was a bit of a problem, though.  The snow was anywhere from 1 to 2 feet deep most places.  Dale only had his athletic shoes on (totally not prepared) whereas I had on boots.  So I got the job of searching out graves that we wanted to see that were not near the roads!!  The hard part was sometimes you would step and come down on the top of a gravestone and take another step and sink down another foot because there was no gravestone!  But I survived with no injury!

 

We were excited to find graves of many past leaders but the one we were most excited about was this one -

 

 

President Hinckley and his wife are buried here.  He was the past President of the Church and we all loved him.  It was nice to be able to find this monument and be able to pay our respects to him.

 

Is it strange to find so much joy out of discovering people's graves???  Hmmmm, I'll have to think about that!

 

Well, we start the "real" work tomorrow!  We've had just enough training on the genealogical research end of Family History to whet our appetites so we are going to try and continue on our own and see what we can find - after our work in our zone, however!!

 

This week it has been the weather that has been the major event.  Our first day of training was supposed to be today but was delayed until tomorrow because of a snowstorm.  This snowstorm, however, was greatly anticipated and enjoyed by most of the people in this valley!  Let me explain - Since we have been here, there has been record-breaking or near record-breaking weather and weather caused events.  First, it was freezing, both day and night, very, very cold!  Then the inversion came in.  For days, there was very little sun, but lots of gray and brown clouds and disgusting smog.  We had the distinction of having the worst air in the country by last Friday.  The snowstorm, which happened on Sunday, was also record-breaking in the amount of snow that fell - 10 inches in a few hours.  But the best thing is that it broke up the inversion and we can now breath fresh air!  I had to take a picture of it in case the inversion comes in again!!

So proof that there really is still a blue sky up there! 

We are ready to get started on our mission.  It's been fun to get our apartment all organized and decorated and explore our new city but it's time to get busy and do what we came here to do.  We continue to meet new people and and are starting to feel a little more comfortable here.  I'm (meaning Lynne) still kind of homesick and try not to spend time counting the months, weeks, days until we are done.  Dale says that is pretty normal for new missionaries to do the counting of time left, so I guess I'm not too awful! It will certainly help to get busy!

We're in for more snow tonight so we may get to use our brand new snow boots as we walk to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to start our new adventure in the morning.  Can't wait!!

Beginning Post

This is a time of a lot of firsts - first time on a mission away from home, first time in a downtown apartment, and first time on a blog!  We decided this is a good way to record some of our experiences that we would like to remember and also to tell our family and friends about.  So bear with us as we get ourselves into the 21st Century and learn the world of blogging!

We've been in Salt Lake for almost 2 weeks now but it sure does seem longer!  Yes, Lynne is pretty homesick right now but as we get busy on our mission, that will pass.  We live on the top floor of our apartment building on South Temple.  We are a block away from the Beehive House, Church Headquarters, and let's not forget City Creek Mall!  We look out over the Brigham Young Memorial Park.  It has his grave, I believe, in the corner.  It looks like a small, peaceful park but we've only seen it covered in snow so we can't really tell! When we have gone on walks (few because of the sub-artic temperatures and snow!) we go to City Creek Mall or Temple Square.  There's a lot of areas left to explore.  We hope to get to a couple of museums this week.

We have an interesting ward here.  We meet in the Joseph Smith Memorial Bldg. in the renovated ballroom.  It's beautiful!  Our ward's nickname evidently is "Newly Married and Nearly Dead"- that gives you an idea of the demographics!  But we get to sit in Relief Society and Sunday School and look out the window at the Salt Lake Temple.  That tends to get you in the mood to listen.  There is no Primary or Youth programs.  But lots of sisters - 2/3 of the ward are sisters.  Today, we were in the chapel with Sacrament Meeting almost starting and in walks Elder Oaks and Elder Ballard from the Council of the Twelve!  They live in our ward.  It was a great experience to see them sitting on the podium all during the meeting.  Hope I never have to give a talk here when they are attending - how intimidating that would be!

We are just trying to get settled in our little apartment and create some kind of order.  It's amazing how much stuff you get into closets with a little bit of organization!  We still haven't gotten the food storage routine down though.  We walk to the store, a block away, every few days with our backpack and reusable bags and pick up what we need.  Feeling very metropolitan! We made the mistake of find the Godiva Chocolate store at City Creek!  I may be a triple wide before we get back home!!!

We start our Training for the Family History Mission on January 28th.  We are ready to get going on this.  We go through training for the first week and then on Friday, the mission president will give us our assignment.  We will be assigned to one of 18 different zones, which all have a different purpose.  So we have no idea what we will be assigned to.

We'll keep you posted!