Mission Report #2 (End of August 2011)

The past two weeks have been an interesting couple of weeks. We began these two weeks by continuing our training for working cases in the Data Quality Zone. You are so intent on what you are doing in this zone that you don’t realize how fast the time flies. I have been doing about 8 or 9 cases a day. That isn’t really that many as the old-timers and the young men missionaries can really do them a lot faster. Still I am staying fully busy. There is a huge learning curve so I figure it will take time to fully understand what to do on all of these cases.
On Friday we attended the training graduation activity for the half of us that went through training in PAF and new FamilySearch. At that meeting they were introduced to their new zone leaders. We have people serving in the Family History Library, Church History Library, Security, the Granite Mountain Vault, and various zones in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, like us. Some work with the papers of the Prophet, receive acquisitions to the church, preserve records, and index diaries.
This past week we were assigned to the Training Zone to get our introduction to PAF and nFS - which I kind of know. But I have never created sources the right way or attached digital images of the sources so I spent the first week just working on that. There was one really spiritual activity this past week. On Tuesday we went over to the Church History Library for a presentation on what goes on there. For me the spirit was especially strong. I have been having many spiritual feelings the past week or two but today at the History Library they were especially strong. One of the employees came in and brought some “show and tell” items to show us what kinds of things they have there. The first thing he brought out was one of the 72 original leafs of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon in Oliver Cowdery’s hand. What a thrill. He also had a first edition copy of the Book of Mormon worth like $50,000 to $400,000. Also he had a copy of the Book of Commandments (the precursor of the Doctrine and Covenants.) There are only 27 in existence and it is worth over a million dollars. The copy had the last part written by hand by Wilford Woodruff. In all it was a wonderful experience and the spirit just whispered – you know these things are true and these objects helped make the history you believe.