20 November 2016

I was talking about you this week, Suzie, to one of our patrons. She is Jewish and a professional ballerina but she is not the ballerina type. She is rather rough around the edges so she has tried to apply more of the upbeat music -- pop music to ballet. When I told her of your love of violin and that you were a fiddler, she got so excited. She wanted me to bring you out here to New York and let you play for her and her ballet team. She was hearing the music in her head and was dancing in the FHC. It was really fun to watch her doing the Irish jig.

This week I had to opportunity of working with the missionaries who brought their investigator in who was from Ecuador to find some family. He did not speak English, but the problem was that they did not have enough information for us to be able to find anything for him. We suggested that he go and talk with his siblings to see what they could remember and then to write stories of what he or his sibling could remember so that they could preserve the now and not lose any more history.

Early Morning View from our Apartment Living Room Window

My next challenge was working with a sister from Korea. They were trying to get the name of her husband's father so that they could do his sealing in the Manhattan temple. The problem was that they could not speak any English so to get them to understand any instructions was next to impossible. It took me over two hours to get into her account only to find out that we could not find him. I did not realize at the time that it was her husband's father so I finally just created him as a new person and gave her the temple card to go through. 

It did not make sense to me at the time, but after they left, I finally realized that we needed to be in her husband's account and not hers because her husband, who is living, is connected to his father which makes his father's record invisible to her in her account. 

They kept telling me that all the work had been done and all they wanted to do was the sealing, so I could not figure out why he was not in Family Tree. When I realized the living situation and the relationship, it was too late and they had left, missing all of the sessions they wanted to go to. 

I am not sure if I will ever get good at trying to explain family history to non-English speaking patrons. It is hard enough to explain it to members who understand most of it.

On Friday we had the opportunity to go to the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular.

It was amazing what they do with technology. They had ice skating, trolly cars driving through New York, drones flying in the air. At the end they had a camel come in with the wise men, sheep with the shepherds, and an angel flying in the sky over the manger. It was a beautiful nativity scene and the music topped it off.

Radio City Music Hall - Child's Christmas Dream (Toyland)

The Wise Men Following the STAR.

Lighting Effects across the dome of Radio City Music Hall - Trains, etc.

Dancing/Skating on Ice

The Rockettes 

The "Santa Phenomenon" - How he is Duplicated

The New York Rockettes Dancing Through the Tourist Bus

The traditional Nativity Scene was Spectacular!

Grandpa Adams after the Show

Elder Dransfield, Grandpa, and Nana Santa's new lead reindeer

Diane told of her week, and I wanted to share a bit.  On Friday, prior to our going to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes, compliments of Mark and Susan Dransfield who have been working with the United Nations and representing the Church (they had just had a banquet and then invited the various Consulates to attend the Rockette's Christmas Spectacular) I had an amazing day at the Family History Center.  This is only one of the events of that day:

A couple who had just been to the temple came to the FHC with a question, as they had been told to ask how her son, who had passed away 7 December 2015, could have his temple work done after he had been deceased for one year.

I learned that this was a son of the sister's previous marriage and that his father was still living.  But this couple had been sealed together and they had children from this union.  I explained that we could update the information in the sister's FamilySearch account so it would be ready when that day came to print the Family Ordinance Card and have his temple work done.  He had already been baptized and confirmed.  He apparently died while attending school in Upstate New York.

I explained that he could be sealed to them.  This dear sister exclaimed, "You mean he can be sealed to me?" With my affirmative answer and this realization, she broke into tears as her husband wrapped his arms around her to console her. At this point, the Spirit was really strong.

I told her that she should schedule a time with the temple for the sealing and to get here early enough to have us print the Family Ordinance Card and get through Initiatory and Endowment session prior to Sealing on the year anniversary of the son's death.  As she left, she asked if she could give me a hug, which she did.

This was one of the best days of serving in the Family History Center here at Lincoln Square so far, and was one of three or four very spiritual experiences I had that day.

13 November 2016

This week had some interesting experiences in it and the event that will not be forgotten for many years. We were walking down to 43rd street to see "Matilda the Musical" a musical that was showing on Broadway. It sounded like a pretty good show from the movie that I had seen of it. The musical was very well done and I enjoyed it but, it did not have the zip that you would expect in New York on Broadway.

When we came out of the play around 10:00, there were thousands of people all around the Trump Tower and in the roads all watching for the results of the presidential election. It was far enough into it that they could see that Trump was on his way to the presidency of the United States, against all predictions made. For that many people, we were surprised on how quiet it was. Everyone was stunned and in shock for Hillary had an 89% chance of winning. It has been New York in Mourning ever since.

44th Street and 8th Avenue - Trump has more electoral college votes.

I guess what really impressed me was, here was a great lady within hours on potentially becoming the first female President of the United States, but because of a decision that she made five or six years earlier, she lost her opportunity. You might say, she sold her rights to be President of the United States for a message of porridge when she decided to use her personal server to handle national affairs and potentially use it for illegal activity.

US Flag on the side of Truck near Times Square, NYC

On Thursday, demonstrators were enmass at Trump Tower - Columbus Circle on 59th Street and Broadway. One of the new temple missionaries had just come from there when I met him.  He said: "I went out for two reasons; first - to get my wife flowers, and second - to watch the handing out of pacifiers to the babies demonstrating in front of Trump Tower."  Everyone here in New York projected Hillary to win, but many of us were involved in a special day of fasting for the Lord's will to be made known in the upcoming election the Sunday previous to the vote taking place on Tuesday.  Donald Trump winning the election was way different than the polls, and has been said to be the biggest presidential upset in the history of the United States.

On Tuesday, before going to "Matilda the Musical", at the family history center, Golden worked with an elderly lady from Japan adding information to her FamilySearch Family Tree.  She had lots of family group records that someone had printed for her in Japanese, but since she was not "fluent" with computers, she asked me to enter the information.  Of course, I could not read the Japanese characters, so she had to write the names on slips of paper as I added them in the program in English.

Her husband worked here at the church building for 30 years prior to his retirement and is called back sometimes when there is a real need that no one else can figure out with maintenance.

On Thursday, which is our day to serve at the Manhattan Temple, we were in a sealing session with President Mark Bench.  Toward the end of the session, while we were doing a family sealing, Pres. Bench asked Sister Winger if she was available to serve as a temple worker.  She answered a couple of questions that let her to say she was wiling.  I received an immediate impression that Pres. Bench was acting under inspiration and I mentioned it to Sr. Winger that I felt he was acting under the mantle of temple president, as this came "out of the blue" while we were readying that sealing.

On Thursday, I had an opportunity to work with a woman who was trying to find information about her uncle from Slovakia, who seems to have been a cipher.  She found the day before that he had been buried in New Jersey from the funeral home that had taken care of his remains after his death.  We found a couple of passenger lists in 1950 and 1951 along with photos of these ships.  She was from Groningen, Netherlands where her husband was from.  We exchanged a bit in Dutch, and she took my address and said she would send an old-fashioned post card from Groningen after she returns later this week.

Once again, I worked with Maria Quinones with her Peruvian family.  We found there were duplicates that needed to be merged which affected the family's temple work that she had recently printed on Family Ordinance cards. So after this, the family ordinance cards needed to be printed with the new information, and also had the opportunity to explain what the different colors mean on the temple reserved page.  As a member of the deaf branch, this was a real challenge of communication but she said that she learned more than she had known before.

Stephen Winston, the Young Men President in Inwood 1st ward is one of our new family history class members, and also the coordinator for the men's early morning temple shift.  I spent several hours putting a lesson plan together for his grandfather and great-grandfather's information as there are discrepancies in his Family Tree using the Find-Take-Teach outline the Church is now using to work with members.

6 November 2016

This last week as has been pretty routine and not a lot of change in schedules. I began trying to clean up my English line on the Fowlers. One of the lines is the Bradshaws and the Halls. I am of the opinion that English research is hard. I have families that have been combined with each other's children. The trick is to figure out which of the children belong on my line and which ones have to go. All I need is one record with enough information that will help me identify which town, and time period matches the known records. Right now I will just say, wish me luck and send your prayers. This is not my speciality by any means.

We got to work in the baptistry last week and what was going to be just one sister turned out to be two sisters and a family of five. It proved to be a great experience for the sisters that I was training and for the family that came. This was their son's first time doing baptisms for their ancestors in the temple and it was special to be part of their experience.

The FHC has been pretty slow. I spent my time on Thursday solving problems with mission microfiche and back ordered microfilm. Some days I wonder how anyone can communicate without misunderstanding. I am still working on the lost microfiche and will probably have to reorder and get settlement from Fed-Ex as they lost it, and I discovered that when microfilm is backordered it means that they have to make it and the minimum time allowed is 90 days and then it is whenever they get it done. That doesn't come across very good to patrons and I felt really uncomfortable telling them that. I did offer that he could get reimbursed if he wanted to cancel, but he said he was not worth the trouble.

The last two days they have been having the New York Marathon that usually brings in over 60,000 people and our apartment complex was right at the end of the run. I opted not to take the subway to church today because I was not in the mood to be nose to nose with strangers. Instead I attended the Manhattan ward that meets in our building. It was so nice to just walk around the corner to church. 

I have attached some pictures of the street where the race was ending. This is right outside our apartment entrance. In order to cross the barriers, we had to give the police our address. Security was really tight on all the cross streets were blocked from any cars or traffic all day Sunday.

NYC Marathon spectators - corner of Columbus Ave and 66th Street

A Maraton Runner celebrating her finish just outside our apartment entrance.

NYPD was out in force. Columbus Avenue in front of the Church Bldg and Temple.

While Diane stayed at Lincoln Square, I took the train to Inwood and numbers of people was very light.  Our second cohort group started today in the Sunday School FH class.  It was very successful and the 4 who were there got right in and started working on their My Family: Stories That Bring Us Together online booklets.  In the process they started to work on their trees and a couple were full trees and a couple were partial trees.

Next week when we introduce them to cleanup and standardizing, they will be in pretty good shape to do this.  I think this will be a good group and the printer finally got hooked up (although no paper) and still needs to communicate with Salt Lake, but we have made headway.

Getting back to Linclon Square from Inwood wasn't real heavy on the train until we got to about 79th Street and the crowds really piled in because that was the end of the marathon for the early runners and then they started to head back downtown towards Staton Island and the hotels, etc.  It was really difficult getting off the train at 66th STreet-Lincoln Square as the people were stacked 5 or 6 deep trying to get on the subway while I was trying to get off!  But they started to separate as I came through like we did when I was a kid and there was a herd of sheep in the road.  Dad would have one of us get out and start to walk in front of the car and the sheep would scatter to either side as the car drove through behind us.

On Thursday, after officiating initiatory and endowments, I got to stay longer and several sealings were completed for family file names.  So it was a good week for our own personal family history, even though it was quite slow at the Family History Center here in Manhattan.