A Fun Week

11 February 2017

We feel well entertained this week! On Tuesday, there was a Missionary Appreciation night at the Salt Palace. They fed us a light meal; told us that, in 2016, our mission contributed more than 1 million hours of service to the Family History, Church History and Headquarters Departments of the Church; and, then we were entertained by the One Voice children’s choir. Oh. My. Goodness. They were fantastic!! The ages of the choir members range from 4-17 and they were so much fun to watch/hear! Very energetic and delightful!
Plus, Roots Tech is here this week and there are lots of things going on in conjunction with that.
Thursday night we got to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert in the Conference Center. The theme was “Music: It Runs in the Family” and the special guest was Oscar Hammerstein III (grandson of Oscar Hammerstein II) and the music was all show tunes by Rodgers and Hammerstein. -  i.e. songs from Oklahoma, Carousel, Sound of Music, South Pacific, etc. (It was hard not to sing along!)
As we were leaving the concert, we bumped into Bob Bray, and he came back to our apartment with us so we could visit for a bit. No one told us he is now serving as a member of the Raleigh Temple Presidency. That was cool to learn.

On Friday, we got to spend the day at RootsTech and we heard LaVar Burton’s inspiring presentation as the keynote speaker in the General Session. He was moved to tears when, afterward, he was presented with a record of his own family history.
We attended several classes (I especially learned a lot at the ones on Research Strategies, and on British Research) and we enjoyed browsing the booths in the expo hall.
Going to all these classes has gotten me more focused on work I need to do on my family tree, and, now I’m having trouble doing other things on my “to do” list today — because I just want to keep working on my genealogy!
One person we got to meet was the brother who runs the Church’s data center in Frankfort, Germany. He sends all the data they collect/film throughout Europe, via the internet, to our zone in the Church Office Building. It’s kind of fun to be able to put a face to someone on the other end of that “pipeline.” I wish I’d taken a picture.
Also on Friday, we bumped into Arina Aidarbekova, who is a CSM in our zone. She was in line to have a caricature drawn of herself and invited me to join her. Here is the outcome, though, I can’t honestly say it looks much like either of us. . .
We’re happy to hear that, after learning of our granddaughter, Nora’s, illness Friday, things are looking pretty good today. There are still some follow-up MD appointments, but she’s doing alright. We’re sending up lots of prayers.

Today was the closing day of Roots Tech, and we had more great classes. We came away with lots of information to help up move forward with our research and documentation. For instance, we learned if you’re looking at records in a language you don’t know, besides standard on-line translation helps, there are people in Facebook groups (made up of volunteers around the world) who will help you interpret what you’re reading. People often get answers within hours. We also got an intro to paleography that included some great tips for reading old scripts.
The entertainment for the closing event was two a cappella groups from BYU. The male group is Vocal Point and the female group is Noteworthy. They are both exceptional. Great entertainment!
One of the hosts for the shows at the conference was Jason Hewlett, a comedian and impersonator. He was very entertaining, and “clean” funny.
Next year, we hope to attend more days at Roots Tech.

1 comment:

Patti said...

What a fun and informative week! So, did you know that Bob Bray was called into the Raleigh Temple presidency? :D He and Phyllis are doing a great job.