Mission Report #7 (November 1 - 17, 2011)

We woke up this morning to 2 to 4 inches of the white stuff. Right now this is almost euphoric but I know by January we will probably be sick of it. In any case it is so much fun to watch the snowflakes float with the wind. With everything white things look so clean.
In our first PPI with our zone leader we were asked what we are doing to encourage those we know to go on missions. I mentioned these little notes and our zone leader was really impressed. I hope that through these little notes we can encourage you to begin planning to serve a mission some day or at least start the preparations that will be needed to enable you to go some day in the future. I have a new hero – an Elder and Sister Taggert came into the mission this past week. They live in our building and we sometimes walk together to “work.” This is their 11th mission – yes, 11. They have been on short 6 month missions, regular 2 year missions (like this time), and they even served in Africa as the mission president and wife. The people we serve with are so incredible.
Two weeks ago I left the training zone to go back to work in Data Quality. The week started with the weekly devotional as usual except this time it was a presentation from the HR director of FamilySearch. He stressed the vital nature of our being here to supplement the work done by the employees. He stated frankly that the church is unable to keep up expanding the work force of the church in proportion to the growth of the church. As the church gets bigger and bigger the need for workers will increase proportionally but the growth is going to have to be picked up by the missionaries that are assigned here. He foresees an ever growing need for missionaries to come to Salt Lake to help with all that needs to be done here. Now his focus is on the Headquarters mission where we serve but as we heard in conference the need is worldwide.
This week found me back in the Training Zone as they needed a rent a trainer for some Church Service Missionaries coming into the mission. These are part time missionaries and they get a week of training as the Mission Presidency decides where to place them. I was assigned Sister Linda Bingham from Sandy. She and her husband are recently returned missionaries from the Washington, DC north mission. They were proselyting missionaries in DC. When they returned they felt a great void in their life and felt they needed to serve some more and they both felt they needed to learn more about Family History work. Neither had ever done much about genealogy as they felt they had relatives that had “done it all.” Well Sister Bingham had a lot of genealogy showing in nFS but much of it has issues – there are lots of records that need correcting. Also as we worked to find sources she discovered that her father’s line virtually disappears in Scotland just 2 generations back as they were Jacobites (those who fought against the government all the way back to the 13th century.) They just don’t appear in Church or government records. It was quite an eye opener to her. The spirit got to her so strongly that for two nights straight she woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this and had to go on line and read about it in the middle of the night. She was assigned the spiritual thought in Friday’s morning devotional and stated that this week had changed her life as for the first time in her life she felt really connected with her family and was beginning to actually feel them reaching out to her and compelling her to write about them so the rest of the family would know about their lives. It is sweet to watch so many who come here that are touched this way.