On Saturday the 23rd, I had the spiritual thought. Once again I gave the story of my great-great grandmother, Rebecca Beery. She lived to be 94. Her first husband was John Turner. He died at 34 of typhoid fever and left her with 5 little boys. She re-married, John Shumaker, who was widowed and had two little children. They had 9 together. She outlived him also. Two of her younger daughters were with her in the census after his death, then she went to live with Clara, the youngest daughter, about 125 miles away, then finally returned to Fairfield County in her 90's, but is listed as blind. She lived with another daughter. I think it's such a touching story and I've used it in a class at BYUI, a talk in Woodville, and our farewell talk, but I just love the story. They seemed to like it.
On Monday, Robert and I were sort of out of sorts with each other. He is always antsy to leave and I hadn't had breakfast yet. I drank a couple swallows of my "green drink" pulled on my coat, and practically stomped out. I was walking ahead of him, which is not the norm. The sidewalk in front of the apartment was cleared, but while the snow was off the walk in front of the house next door, the ice was still there. I turned to cross over to the Conference Center and Bam! Robert was down. It scared the daylights out of me. All I could think about was his knee and his hip. He was on the icy walk and couldn't get any traction to get up, so sort of pushed himself onto the snow-covered grassy area. I put my hand out, but he knew I couldn't help him up. Several others tried, too, but when Elder Conlin got there, he took his hand. He got up and said he needed to go back to the apartment. When we got his jacket off, his elbow was scraped and bloody, but there wasn't a mark on his coat. His shoulder was killing him. He stood in the doorway, managed to pull his arm up, shoved it, and put it back in place. I really thought he should go to the dr. and have it checked out, but he was convinced he'd done what needed to be done. We didn't go to the devotional, but we went to the library in time for our shift.
Tuesday we weren't feeling like sight-seeing. Robert was really sore. He could barely move his left arm. He'd bought a set of skiis and ski poles a couple of months ago, thinking if the kids didn't use them, they could take pictures on them. None of them wanted to do it, so he decided he was going to find a hill and pretend to be skiing down it and I could take his picture. We drove up the hills near the City Cemetery and finally he found one and I tried to take his picture. I'm never the picture taker and I tried time and time again and out of all the times, we got one picture! I have no idea what the problem was, but obviously I'm not a photographer. I know he was aggravated at me and the camera both, but I had no idea how to solve the problem. We bought groceries and came home and cleaned and were glad to be inside and out of the snow.
Thursday we took an "enrichment" class on land records. It was really good. I really enjoy those classes and wish we could have one about every two weeks. They said there won't be any in February because with the first floor closed, there just isn't any extra classroom space. I hate that. Later that day I went to help a couple of guys about my age who were from Wisconsin. They've been friends for years and they go skiing together every year. They ski Park City for a week, California for a week and in Colorado for about 6 weeks. I told the one if I could find a bigger magnifying glass I'd see if there was anything in his head, but I guess if you've done it all your life, it's no big deal. When they got ready to leave, they asked if hugs were allowed and they both gave me a hug. They were really fun.
Friday I was scheduled to stuff bags for Roots Tech at the Salt Palace. I had no idea where I was going or what to expect. I didn't know they were going to feed us a light breakfast, a snack and lunch! There were LOTS of people there. We sat at a looong table with piles of pamphlets in front of us. We each took one to three and as they passed the bags down the row, we put the pamphlets in the bags. The Polynesian man across from me is a bishop, the young girl to my left is a student at LDS Business College and Sister Disque, another senior sister from the library, was to my right. We all managed to laugh and talk as we worked.
The bishop told us an interesting story at lunch time. When he was on his mission in North Dakota, his mission president called one morning and asked him to go into town and call all of the motels. One of the elders was gone and he thought the guy would be at one of the motels. This guy and his companion got a phone book and found LOTS of motels listed. They figured it would take forever to go through them all, so this guy chose one, asked for the elder's name, and was connected to him! He told the elder he'd pick him up and the elder said no, he had his bus ticket, he was going home. He tried several times to convince him to stay. Finally the elder agreed. They spent a week together and then the elder went back to his regular companion and area. A few years ago this bishop answered the phone and a guy asked for "Elder Whatever." He said it was him and the other guy told him he was Elder Whoever and he'd been trying to find him for 37 years. He said, "You made a difference in my life. Because of you I stayed on my mission. I'm active in the church. I've been a bishop twice. I am the father of eleven children. I wanted to call to thank you." What a great story. I loved it. We got done about 2:30. All the bags were stuffed. We could go. I walked back to the library with Sister Clarke. She came out with us and is in the deaf zone. She's such a sweetheart. I really like her. I don't understand how she speaks so well. She's very easy to understand. We went to the library and I told Robert I was going back to the apartment. I was wearing slacks and didn't feel I could work at the library like that. When Robert came in later he undressed and got comfortable and realized he had left the car at the library! He dropped me off in the morning and forgot he had driven the car! We are such creatures of habit.
Saturday morning it started snowing about 5:00 A.M. We were a little uneasy about walking to the library in the snow, but it wasn't icy, it was snowy! It snowed all day. People kept going to the big window on our third floor to look out. It was beautiful. We were up at limb height and it snowed all day.
I thought surely, no one would be out on a day like that to come in the library, but they were and they did! We're always busy on Saturdays and we stayed true to form. I had decided on Friday when I got home that I need to take one of my lines back another generation. I've been working for months on cleaning up each family--adding sources, standardizing, merging. I picked the line of Friedrich Steinbrenner and Elizabeth Baier Razor. They're born in like 1799 and die before the 1850 census, so I tried to think what records I could use. Elizabeth is buried in St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, so I decided to look in the catalog for church records and found a book on that church in Fairfield County! I was so amazed! It's a little skinny book, but had several birth, death and marriage entries for the Steinbrenner's. It didn't take me back a generation, but gave me information on Friedrich's son, Johannes' family. I was truly amazed.
We were worried about the walk to church, but the sidewalks and roads were dry, so no problem. It was really cold on the walk home, but it never seems to take as long to get home as it does to get there--it's uphill going and downhill coming!
President Garff gave the lesson in the combined RS/Priesthood meeting. He was president of the Seattle Washington Temple and then later president of the Washington, D.C. visitor's center (during 9/11). So he talked about finding patterns in the scriptures in the different dispensations of time and pertaining to the temples. It was VERY interesting. I asked a lady who types everything in every class and meeting and she e-mailed me her notes. I look forward to going back over them.
We Skyped with Matt and Meg and Mason this evening. It's always fun to visit with them and "see" them. We had a good visit.
We're hoping the walk in the morning won't be icy. It's different to walk at 7:00 in the morning and noon for church or 10:00 for the library. We'll see how it goes.
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