My phone rang last night and the area code was the same as ours but the caption underneath said, "Sedona". Well in times past this has usually meant that some sort of timeshare company wants us to go there and listen to their pitch and then sign us up for a time share in Sedona - about an hour away from Prescott. Well, If I am to go to a time share, then it had better be in some exotic place other than Sedona.
Last night when this call came in from Sedona it was a friend who is serving a mission in the Quetzeltenango temple in the mountains of Guatemala who called me and congratulated me on my new endeavours. I was very happy to hear from her. She and her husband will be returning to Arizona about August this year. She was using a Magic Phone Jack connection that allows her to make local calls; Imagine that, a call from a friend serving in the Guatemala highlands? It is almost on the same plane as my friend Graham who sent me an urgent email from Australia asking about the fires in Prescott while I was living in Lincoln Nebraska awaiting the birth of our fourth grandchild. I also got a call from a friend who lives in the Great Smokies in Virginia asking about the men who lost their lives in the fire at Yarnell. It is interesting to note that the president of the other quilt guild here in Prescott , mounted a campaign to make quilts for the people who lost everything in the fire. She worked diligently to see that the effort was completed, and within weeks of its completion, she died. It was as though she had a special calling from the Lord to see to it that this humanitarian effort was seen to fruition and then he called her home. The unfortunate thing about it is that her family declined to have a memorial service for her after her passing so those of us who worked with her were left to grieve alone as best we could.
The scripture I refer to in the blog is from Malachai, "Behold, will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we take this scripture to point out that the way the heart of the children is turned to their fathers is manifested in the great interest in Genealogy in the world today. And I hasten to point out that our Church did not start the Genealogical trend. It did, however, start gathering records and storing them and making these records available to the people of the world for free so that they can track their ancestors.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to be asked to serve the people who call in with questions about their research problems and hope that I can “pull a rabbit out of the hat” and tell them where next to look or even find the elusive ancestor for them. More and more records are coming on line every day and through computer technology people can find their ancestors and record them. Genealogy is a very satisfying pursuit.
I have received a training calendar and apparently next week it begins in earnest with the commitment to be engaged with learning activities for 5 to 7 hours per day. Yep, it seems like the training will be a full time job.
I just got off the phone with my Training supervisor and already my head is spinning and we did not do any formal training………AARRGGHHHHH!
She did, however, help me to find things on my computer that I did not know were there and how to use them. I am sure that further contact with her will give me more insight into this computer connection etc. She is a lady whose daughter is studying Japanese, and loves all things Japanese, and her call name is Okaasan which is Japanese for mother. She has told her daughter that I speak Japanese and her daughter is delighted. However, I doubt if I will ever get to talk to her daughter - that is not the purpose of the connection with this lady. She is my training assistant for the next four weeks.
She sent me the outline for the classes for the next four weeks and I will have a lot of work to do offline as a result. This is more education for me and I hope to use it to the advantage of the patrons who call in with genealogical problems.
Not only will I be working with helping in the genealogical problem area, but will also be helping with the indexing venture. My assignment already is to do 5 obituary indexes and 5 other indexing items. The Family History Dept is very interested in doing the obituary indexes because this year is the year of the Obituary - so they say.
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