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.