Adams in Manhattan: 11 December 2016

Well another week has gone by and life and its challenges are great to learn by. I think my best experiences this week was with Pedro. He is a patron that comes in each week to have help with his family history. The problem is that he does not listen to much about how to do it properly but wants to tell us his story of how he came about finding a record and then trying to figure out how he is related to the people in that document.

The other missionaries in the center have pretty much written him off and refuse to work with him any more. They tell him that he already knows what to do and they are there to just teach the how to's of Family Search and then he was to do it on his own.

When I was working at the Family History Library in Salt Lake three years ago I remember how difficult it was for several months because of no training and lack of confidence. I went to a class and the trainer made one comment that I have never forgotten and I decided that I would treat Pedro with this counsel. It was that some patrons come to the center but they really don't know why. She said to live by the spirit and it will direct you what to say and do and things will always work out.

From what I was picking up with Pedro, he just wanted someone to talk to and to listen to his story about finding his family. As I watched him, I found that he knew FamilyTree pretty well. I also knew that he was always very willing to help translate in Spanish when we needed it. I decided to ask Pedro if he would be interested in being a volunteer at the center to help us with translation. I told him that he knew FamilyTree well enough but that he just lacked confidence in flying his wings. He smiled and said that he would be happy to learn how to be a consultant with the patrons. His whole demeanor changed and he had a purpose to look forward to and felt needed and accepted.

When the other missionaries came in to relieve us, Pedro immediately said that he would go home now and stayed away from them as much as possible. It was really sad. I hope that he can become a really good asset for us as we do not have any spanish translators and I really like Pedro and maybe the other missionaries will begin to enjoy him.

When Pedro came back the next week, he started off the way he usually does by saying "let me show you something ok." He then tells how he found this record and thinks that it is his relative somehow, then he says "what do you think, or what should I do now." So, I started my first lesson. I asked him to show me where he thought that the record might belong in his family. When he showed me I asked him if the people in the document, born in 1848 could be descendents of the family of children all born in the 1840's and he could see that it would be impossible for them to be descendents. I then asked him if he could see if it were possible for them to fit into the earlier generation and they would not fit in that family either. His conclusion was that they were not his family.

I then suggested to Pedro that he had two options: One was to disregard the source and go to another one or two, he could create a family with the information on the source and then attach the source to that family and all the generations that were listed on the document. When we were through he had created three generations of a family and had attached the document to each member so that the family would never be split because of the proof he had attached. He was happy and wanted to do more.

I think after a few weeks in doing this process with him, he will know how to analyze documents, create families with them, and then document the family. I told him that somewhere, someone was going to love him for the work he was doing and he gave me a big smile. I hope that I can change the attitude of the other missionaries as he gains his skills and confidence in family history. This process is also helping me get my confidence.

I took some pictures of our everyday life at the family history center. I took pictures of the missionaries that come everyday and stand on the street and invite people to come in and take a tour of the art gallery we have covering stories from the Book of Mormon. These pictures are beautiful and all original. The artist lives in the stake here and has agreed to keep them on display for two years.