6 November 2017

Last week, Diane had a conversation with Sr. Natalie Bean, assistant matron in the Manhattan Temple about the Find-Take-Teach Program.  She asked Diane to give her instructions on how to do it.  Diane told here that the best way was for her to experience a "Helping Others to Love Family History" experience.  Sr. Bean gave her a goal, as well as her email.  So Diane used the Consultant Planner in FamilySearch.org to invite her, and her goal was getting to know something on her Stout line.

With this goal in mind, Diane soon found that one of Hosea Stout's granddaughters, Nancy Bowman had a spouse, Anderson Underwood, who had not been sealed to his parents because only the mother's name, Prisilla, was connected to him.  We found that, after some hours of heavy research in the census records and marriages, that we could identify several of his siblings, as well as his parents, who were already in Family Tree.

So over the course of this week, we prepared to make a lesson plan for Sr. Bean's experience.  With prayer from her side, and  prayers in her behalf, it did not take long to identify that Anderson needed to be sealed to his parents.  However, it took time through this week to research the records and find that some of the family were already identified in FamilySearch.org, but without parents.

On Saturday and Sunday, we were able to put the lesson plan together.  We found that Hosea Stout and Anderson's parents were from Orange County, North Carolina where some of them came from Cane Creek.  In the past couple of weeks, Mark Mitchell and Golden had found that the newly found Findley family that we had been trying to find for several years, were also from that same place in the same time period.

We found that David Underwood and Priscilla Melton were Anderson's parents, and their ordinances have already been completed.  But now Anderson can be sealed to them.  Siblings can be connected to the family so that their descendants will be able to find them easily and perform their sealings to the parents.

On Thursday, we served for our last time in the Manhattan Temple as ordinance workers.  Diane made cinnamon rolls and we provided that and orange juice for the workers serving that day.  It was a huge hit, since homemade anything usually isn't something that is common here in the City. 

With the change that FamilySearch has made to view records that have been digitized, it has become exceedingly busy and our eight computers are being used much more and the microfilm reader has not been used since we moved the equipment into the microfilm room.  As we serve in the Family History Center, we often see the young missionaries go by as they do quite a bit of teaching in the Lincoln Square building, or provide guided tours for the Book of Mormon original paintings of Walter Rane, exhibited in the building.

Sr. Lee, Sister and Elder Adams - Lincoln Square Meetinghouse/Building

On Saturday, after a very busy afternoon at the Family History Center, we were invited to join our Temple and Family History Center lead, Lyn Wilcox and her husband Bill for dinner and a concert.  We dined at a restaurant in the Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle, a few blocks away, and then attended The New York Philharmonic Orchestra concert. 

The program was Bernstein's Philharmonic: A Centennial Festival and was a two and one-half hour program involving Bernstein's "Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs", Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", and Bernstein "The Age of Anxiety, Symphony No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra".

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the end of performance of Bernstein's Philharmonic, pianist Makoto Ozone

On Monday, Lyn Wilcox hosted a farewell luncheon for us with the FHC volunteers.  We enjoyed each other's company at the Wilcox apartment on the 25th floor of her building across the street from The Lincoln Center. 

Lincoln Center Plaza as viewed from the Wilcox Apartment on Broadway between 62nd and 63rd Street

NYNY FHC Volunteers: (l-r) Stanton Biddle, Tom Hanson, Liz Hanson, Lyn Wilcox, Zaida , Nobuko Takabori, Golden and Diane Adams