New position at the Family History Mission

On Monday, May 18, 2009, I was transferred from the Indexing Zone of the Family History Mission in the Joseph Smith Building to the US/Canada Zone of the Family History Mission in the Family History Library.

Since Monday, May 18th, I have been in a 3 week training class.

YEAH!!

This is where I have always wanted to be working. I will be helping patrons at the Family History Library find their US or Canada ancestors.

I enjoyed my work in the Indexing Zone, even though I went there kicking and screaming. When they gave us a tour of the mission in February, 2005, I remember touring the 6th Floor of the Joseph Smith Building to the Indexing Zone. I thought to myself, "This is not where I want to be assigned". I was happy when I was not assigned to go there, but Carol was assigned to go there. They asked me if it was ok with me if we were separated. I said, "No problem". During the next 2 weeks they asked me several times if I minded that we were separated and each time I said it was all right with me.

Finally, they called me in and said that Carol was having a rough time and had erased some very important information from the computer. They asked me if I had any suggestions as to what they could do. I said what about transferring her to another department in the mission since they had 17 departments in the mission. They said, "what department would you suggest?" I said I did not know enough about the mission departments to make that suggestion. They asked if I had any other suggestions. I said, "No". So they said they would have to release us.

So, Carol and I went back to California thinking that was the end of our mission. In the meantime, the stake president of the Huntington Beach Stake called the Mission President and asked to give us another chance. So we went back to Salt Lake. I met with the Mission Presidency. I said, "Maybe I could be with her in the Indexing Zone." They said, "What a great idea." It turns out that is what they wanted all along.

The indexing zone was responsible for auditing extraction work that was coming in from the extraction centers throughout the Church. This extraction work was providing temples with over 40% of the names for the temples. After the indexing zone audited the extraction work, it went over to a department that made sure the work had not already been done for those names. Then the names were sent over to the temple for baptisms for the dead, initiatories, endowments, sealings to parents and sealings to spouses.

When we started working in the Indexing Zone, there was only 3 months reserve of temple names. The Indexing Zone was processing 300,000 names for the temple each week. But, the temples were using 500,000 names a week. The leaders were sweating bullets. It looked like the temples would have to be closed.

The leader of over the employees and the missionaries gave the missionary leadership a goal to process over 1,000,000 names a week by July, 2005 (we got to the mission in February of 2005). By May, 2005, we met that goal. By July, 2005, we were processing 1,500,000 names a week. By September, 2005, we were processing 2,000,000 names a week. By the end of our mission the church had a reserve of over 200 months of temple names. Everyone was breathing easier.

During our mission, Carol had two serious operations. The first operation was to remove an ulcer that was at the juncture of her stomach and her intestine.

The scar tissue from that first operation, eventually closed the opening between her stomach and her intestine. To fix that they removed 1/4 of her stomach and rerouted her intestine.

A while after our mission, I went back to being a Church Service Missionary (part time missionary) in the Family History Mission in the same Indexing Zone. I went back to that zone because I had some good friends that were still working there.

Two weeks ago, I suddenly started to have the feeling that I had been in that department long enough. So, I asked for a transfer. The Lord, through the mission presidency, sent assigned me to the US/Canada Zone of the Family History Library.

This is where I have wanted to be all along.

Yeah, yeah and yeah!!!

Love, DAD