Call Back Week

This has been a busy week with “call backs.” Typically each month we have Church Service Missionaries (CSM’s) for one week of training, Full Time Missionaries (FTM’s) for two weeks training and the remaining week is for call back missionaries. These are missionaries who are currently serving but desire additional training or have questions about their genealogy. One day I worked with a sister who wanted to get some information from another missionary who is leaving next month. I downloaded and added about 1500 names to the missionary’s file. Another day I worked with a sister who is returning home after many years in the mission. She and her husband have given remarkable service in the Church History Library in Indexing and in scanning and cataloging patriarchal blessings but she has done little of her own family history. She is going home next month and our instructions are to make sure that missionaries have some personal “show and tell” to share so I spent the time finding information for her. She was thrilled to find a great uncle who just died a few months ago about whom she knew nothing. She also was at peace to learn that the lives of a “grandfather” and “stepfather” had turned out well. There will be a family reunion in Utah the week after their release before they return home to Missouri and she was excited to have documents and pictures to share.

This was our last call-back week for the next seven weeks. There is an extra large group of FTM’s coming in June so we will have one week of CSM’s then six straight weeks of FTM’s. We are grateful for the new missionaries because even with many missionaries extending, the missionary numbers are down significantly. Also during the call-back week we have inservice training, personal research time, and a temple and research day. We have Elijah Choir rehearsal three mornings a week at 6:24 AM regardless of what we do in our zone. We also had pizza and salad as a zone for lunch one day. This week we were privileged to attend a temple devotional at the Salt Lake Temple with Elder Whitney Clayton who demonstrated what he had learned by reading the Book of Mormon marking everything that deal with revelation and the Holy Ghost in the last couple of months. It was insightful. We spent Friday morning in the Jordan River Temple and met Sister Sasine, one of our zone missionaries, there.

John worked with a potential “rent-a-trainer” but spent many, many hours unraveling the new.FamilySearch (NFS) records for John Rogers (1800). Because anyone can add or combine records in real time, problems can occur if people are not very careful. Also new records have become available through the years which clarify that old ones. John Rogers had two wives and a child with each wife but the records had become jumbled so that they showed only one wife. John has been carefully separating the records and documenting the correct information. He has contacted many people to have them make changes because he cannot change their information. It continues to be a major challenge. Most people have responded quickly and positively because they want the record to be correct.

We attended the play “Hasty Heart” at the Hale Center Theater with Jeff Whitlock, my cousin Brent Whitlock’s son, playing the part of the Scotsman. This is the first time I’ve seen him play a dramatic role and he did a marvelous job. I love live theater because of the energy of the participants.

We had a brief break in the weather so we worked hard in the yard. We planted some flowers and vegetables. The spring flowers have been absolutely beautiful. Last week there were only two days without rain and the news commentators encouraged people to notice the “large yellow orb in the sky” which hadn’t been seen for weeks. The spring runoff from the mountains has barely begun and many campgrounds are still under 10 to 20 feet of snow. There has been some flooding and levees are being breached to control the flooding. There are mud and rockslides in the canyons. Even with all the rain, the pasture behind our house is regularly flooded with irrigation water but maybe that is just another way to get the water out of the mountains and safely down to Great Salt Lake. Usually by this time of the water year we have 13 inches of rain. This year we have had 22 and the rain continues. The high temperature today is only 55 degrees and it is May 29th!