7:57
am Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Good
Morning Brandon Perry Smith,
A
week has gone by and I hae not heard from you. Maybe they did close
down the outgoing mail, as you warned.
As
I rode home with Andrea Davenport from that Stake baptism Saturday
the 1st of November I mentioned to her that you had said,
Maybe not much longer. . . Since then I have realized that was your
way of saying good bye, and that you wouldn't be able to respond
again. But you are my missionary right now. My oldest son Mouis was
almost emotionally healthy enough to serve a productive mission to
Iowa Spanish speaking. Rod wasn't. : (
Mouis
did have some issues on his mission but completed it, that is why I
said almost. I went and visited him for 15 minutes last night. I
needed my weekly “family fix/shot”. It was so nice to see a son
and visit.
I
dropped by Jaren's house Saturday night and no one was home. So yes I
did ring the doorbell and banged on the knocker to my hearts content.
: )
I
sent out a text to 10 people/family that night asking what they had
done and where they were at. 1/10 answered back. Only Mouis.
Jaren
is due with #3 daughter on Thanksgiving so I texted her again this
morning expressing my prayers and love.
I
have a sister at Eagle Mountain, Grayelinn'72 who will take every
vmail I want to leave so there is always a place to talk, luckily.
I
think I told you I set the crazy goal of 3K II (italian indexing)
births this month. 15 usually take me an hour. At the FHC/FRL
yesterday I met a guy and his wife that had just completed their 3
week training and it was their first day as full fledged genealogy
missionaries. Brother and Sister Sewell (sounds like Jewel). He has
never done any genealogy or family history besides writing his
journal. She has been doing it for 30 years. What a courageous man.
He was all smiles and pleasantness but quite occupied with trying to
learn all the ins and outs of the system.
The
rows of computers face each other. So you can easily look someone in
the eye at all times. Just glance up from your screen and there they
are. Not an arrangement one would use to promote learning in school!
But rather a social environment. So as he lped different people who
were brought to him through the day, I got to listen in and observe
all their interactions. I encouraged him to keep a notebook or a blog
of the things he discovered and learned as he found them and to share
it with me if it was in the form of a blog and I would share my blog
with him.
Just
like I was curious as all get out, about you and prison life, I am
curious about the steps one goes through learning to be a family
history missionary.
I
doubt if anything will come of it but if it does it would be
exciting.
So
I made this goal of 3K names this month. To make it I would have to
average 100 names a day. I don't think I will make it. I am behind
already. It is the 11th and I should be at 1100 names if I
were on target.
And
then last week we ran out of names! On Thursday night there were no
more available. On Friday I checked all the different cities. There
were some batches written in free-hand but I can only translate the
typed forms in the registry not the full written pages. It is quite a
tedious process to download a batch from every city and then open it
to see if it has typed forms or in freehand. I did that on Friday and
only discovered a couple. I sent one back by accident and it was
gone. They don't reassign you one you sent back, duh.
Saturday
a minor miracle occurred for me. On Friday I had started at the
bottom of the list and worked up. Saturday morning, intrepid
adventurer that I am I tried again, this time starting at the top.
There are two Cremona's listed. The first one was empty. Why try the
second? It is the same city/province. But I tried it and pay dirt! I
was able to download 10 batches, (the maximum at a time). So I had 10
hours of work in the bank that I could draw on at any time. These
typed forms that I can read run from 1875-1902. The 10 batches I got
were mostly from 1875, the oldest! I particularly like those ones. To
me it is sort of like precious coins, the older the better. But then
the bad news, these clerics or scribes shaped their letters in brand
new ways! So not only were the names mostly unfamiliar, because each
place has its own unique popular names, but now there were letters
that didn't look like anything I had ever seen before. For example it
took me hours before I realized that this letter, J when written
upside down was a capital S and that this letter, j without the dot
was really a g.
Are
you good at making cursive capital Z? It is a weird shape right? Well
yesterday I discovered if you make one of those with a hump
afterwards it means double zz. And of course there are the weird
other sporadic letters like an s that looks like a cursive “l”
extending both above and below the line and capital T's and L's that
look just like the upside down J, which is supposed to be an S.
OK,
you get the idea. Now one of the most delightful things that happens
as I index is the thrill of getting a difficult name right! If it
turns pink after you type it , it means it is not on the authority
list. Bad and sad.
But
if it is IN the Italian white pages you can still count it as right.
I make lists of the right ones from the Pagine Bianche Italiano for
each city I work from so I won't have to keep looking them up. There
is a certain sense of control and over-riding when a pink one shows
up and you know that it is on your PB list.
For
the first time yesterday at 3pm I decided to keep track of my
riddle-thrills. The thrill that comes from solving a riddle. For the
next hour I wrote the time and the word that had given me the thrill
of discovery and a rating from 1-10 on the size of the thrill.
Similarly,
yesterday morning, here at home when I tried indexing this new city,
Cremona, every pink name just floored me! There were all these scores
of new names, letters I couldn't read and it appeared I was getting
them all wrong. I had started at 5am because of nightmares and after
my first batch I felt tired again and went back to sleep. I saved the
first batch rather than turn it in because I did not have the energy
to correct all those pink ones.
I
did 4 or 5 more batches at the FRL yesterday and by the last one my
list of Pagine-Bianche surnames was getting pretty long. I also typed
up 100 surnames unique to Cremona to help me get familiar with what
the letters were supposed to be spelling.
As
I slowed with exhaustion and prepared to come home I decided to go
back to all the ones I had saved starting with that first one from
5am to see if I couldn't clean them up and submit them/turn them in.
Much to my surprise and pleasure there was only one batch that I
couldn't clean up! YAY, I had learned lots during the day! And
progressed and succeeded!
And
all that without really knowing what I was doing as it was happening.
How much of that riddle solving came from the Holy Ghost or spirits
nearby helping me and guiding me? I don't know, but many times when I
succeed I say, Thank you Heavenly Father.
New
topic
I
finished studying Elder J Rueben Clark Jr's book: “Our Lord of the
Gospels” 1958 this weekend. Do you remember that is where he puts
all the 5 gospels'excerpts in chronological and side by side order.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, 3rd Nephi.
Well
as I finished all the quotes were from 3 Nephi because that was up to
a year after his resurrection in Jerusalem.
You
may even remember he came back special after his 3 day ministry here
to clarify the name of his church etc. as the 12 were praying and
fasting and seeking an answer.
Anyway,
stunningly clear to me this time was the difference between his
referring to his Father in 3N compared to the other 4 gospels. He
must quote his Father or pray or refer to him 100 times in that short
ministry.
Sometimes
I have wondered how much credit I should give the Savior and how much
to the Father. Some would say, it doesn't matter, they are one. But
in my mind I want to be fair and righteous. After reading the Lord's
words about his father and that we have to do it in his, Jesus
Christ's name, I believe that he wants us to specifically address
everything to the Father unless Jesus is in our physical presence.
That was good for me. I like nice clear lines. WE are to follow his
example.
New
topic
Last
week was a rich week of social adventure for me. I was asked to give
the opening prayer at our regional singles fireside our stake hosted
Sunday night. I had never attended one before.
I
went out 3 times with the “guys”. And was disturbed /unsettled
enough by them to need to pray about it at length when I got home
Saturday night. I don't like to have to repeat things I have already
written that are important enough to want to share. You have probably
noticed this as I forward to you things I have already written.
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