Another Week -- Another Blog (Week 43)

One more week of no digitizing.  We find that for the past few weeks we have worked ourselves out of a job.  The situation is an interesting one.

There are actually five of us (two missionary couples and one full time employee) that are assigned to do digitizing.  We completed two projects and started a third.  At the beginning of the third project, the archive informed us that they could only work so fast in preparing documents for digitizing.  Their specific instructions were that two cameras were to do one series of records and a third camera was to work on a different series.  While we may not be the best at math, a quick computation shows that two plus one equals three.  Wait a minute!  Three is two less than the five of us.  Guess that means that two of us have nothing to digitize.

We decided to rotate and take turns.  Then we realized that three of the three of the five cameras were not suitable for digitizing, leaving only two cameras -- but we were still doing to much digitizing too quick.  As of last Monday we were told that we should stay busy but stop digitizing and let the one full time employee carry on so that he could be paid for his work.  All that needs to be done now is to figure out what to do with the four missionaries, part of which is us.

That still remains to be determined.  One couple could go to Germany where there is more digitizing (likely the Powells since they have some knowledge of German).  Another couple (us) could be used in the family history centre or help in the priesthood genealogy area. However, there are so many complications and challenges in making these changes happen that we (at least for the present) can only continue doing our family history at the family history centre.  Please, just hold your breath until the next chapter.  Maybe something will be determined this week.  Stay tuned.

Our past week hasn't been too bad.  We continued to stay busy.  On Monday, we met two - not one, but two American families on the way home from the archive.  They are both LDS!  Both temporarily live in our housing complex.  Both are BYU graduates and football fans.  Both have young kids.  Both arrived on Saturday, a week ago, and both are likely moving because it is too expensive to live in these flats.  We also went to church with them today.

New LDS Couples - Carter & Pett

Tuesday we spent most of the day doing research until it was time for Annie to go.  She and Sister Carpenter had planned long ago to go to the stage production of "Wicked".  It was truly one of the marvelous highlights of our stay in England.  We stayed up way late into the night, talking about it and waiting to rejoin each other.

Wicked

Happy Wicked Goer

Can't Go To Wicked Without Eating

Wednesday and Thursday were days for research and making preparations for our trip to the Isle of Wight.  The Isle of Wight is in our mission and Paul's mother's family comes from there.  Paul has worked on this family for over 40 years and is hoping to make one last break-through by going there.  Since we're in between work right now, we thought this might be a good time.

Friday is another story.  For the past three or four weeks Paul has had a bad left hip.  He nevertheless kept right on going as if there was nothing wrong.  Friday morning we rubbed the hip with deep heat.  It got worse and worse.  Eventually we decided that he'd stay at home and try not to walk on it.  We also decided to go with a regular regimen of Ibuprofen.  In the mean time, Annie, our budding genealogist, went to the archive to do some research and to prepare some of our past imaging for sending it off to storage.

We really worried about Saturday and whether Paul would be up to taking on a previously arranged service project to replace a part of a kitchen floor and help one of our single sister home teaching families.  Much to our surprise, when we awoke on Saturday morning, Paul was able to walk quite comfortably.  We along with Elder Holmes and Brother Maytham, were able to tear out the old floor and put in a new one and have Pizza Hut pizza and clean up by 1 pm.  Good day! and Paul still feeling pretty good --  at least until BYU lost to Notre Dame, later that evening.

Today, Sunday, was a wonderful day, as usual.  Perhaps the highlight was our ward's Primary program in sacrament meeting.  Both of us felt so blessed to be there.  Both of us couldn't help feel that in a small measure we were witnessing our own grandchildren in each of their Primary sacrament meetings.

Guess that brings us to this week.  It's hard to think about our families being at home for Thanksgiving and us not being there.  Yet, we know that we are here to represent the Lord in His work and to represent each of our family members in the Lord's service.

As for our Thanksgiving, we'll have a dinner on Wednesday evening with some missionaries from the other mission that work in the family history centre.  We may do something by ourselves on Thursday evening, after being at the archives.  On Friday, we hope to head to the Isle of Wight.

In the meantime, rest assured that we will continue to do our best.  We love the Lord and have strong testimonies of the truthfulness of the gospel.  We love each other and our families and loved ones.

Have a wonderful thanksgiving,

Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Elder and Sister Smart, Paul and Annie

Tourists at London Market

42 weeks in London!

We started our week, once again, chasing ancestors.  Paul learned that the observatory at Greenwich had some indexes to rope makers that had taken out fire insurance.  He is and has been for some time chasing clues to open the family line of John Major a 1760 rope maker in the Isle of Wight

To get to our destination, Monday, we first took the underground, then transferred to a rail train and then to a bus.  Since Paul had made an appointment with the one keeping the records, we were allowed to make our way into secure areas of the observatory.  She showed us nine file drawers with indexing of occupations that had taken out Sun Fire Insurance.  We did find John Major in the Rope Maker file.  We knew about one of his policies, since we had looked and looked and found it at the London Metropolitan Archives.  The index let us know that he had taken out another policy a few years later and possibly one or two of his kids.  We now have to make another trip to the LMA to find the original copy of this policy.

At Greenwich with Dr. Gloria Clifton

Index card to John Major's insurance

 It was very interesting to be at the Greenwich Navy sight since the Greenwich records that we are digitizing  at The National Archives are all about seamen that visited or resided at Greenwich.

View from observatory looking at Pensioner's building.

 

 

 Work at the Archives is different than it has been in the past and very slow moving.  We are now doing records of the Navy Pensions and they are all in book form, some being very large books.  We have been told that we must do them with a cradle, not a flat surface any more.  Since only two of the 5 camera set-ups were cradles, our supervisor found one more cradle and set it up for Paul to use.  It is a an old dinosaur apparatus and is very temperamental.  Notice the crank that is used to raise or lower the table.  The lighting set up only works when it wants to and that means Elder Smart can only work on digitizing when the lights decide to work.

Elder Smart with his dinosaur

Elder Smart & Henry Germain holding digitized book

Sister Smart is sharing another cradle with Elder Powell.  He works on it half of the time and she works on it the other half.  When we are not busy with the digitizing, we work upstairs in the London Family History Centre.

We just returned from our Stake conference where a new Stake Presidency was sustained.  We are grateful for our neighbors, the Goodlet family who gave us a ride to Conference.  We were going to have to be at the train station at 7:00 a.m. this morning. That would mean catching a bus pryor to arriving at the train station.  We would then have ridden the train to Staines where we could catch a shuttle bus with other ward members to Stake Conference.  Instead, due to our wonderful neighbors, we met them just outside our flat at 8:45 a.m. where they drove us to conference via the motorway and we arrived 1/2 hour early. Oh, the life of not having a car!!!

It has rained almost everyday for the past 3 weeks.  It is almost always overcast and gets dark so early that we are forgetting what a sunny day might be like.  It will get worse, as we get more into winter.  We can hardly wait.  This next week is supposed to get very cold with an "Arctic blast".  It is all ok, though, life is still good and we are very happy to be here in the Lord's service.  We do miss family and friends in the states.  Our fondest hopes are centered in knowing that you will all be there when we get home.  The way time is flying it will happen before we know it.  There is a lot of England that we will really miss when that time comes.

We know we are doing the Lord's work and we are so very happy to serve.  The Church is true!!!

Love,
Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Elder and Sister Smart, Paul and Annie

Sunset near Heathrow Airport

Christ Church College, Oxford,  One of Oldest Trees

 
 

 

Oxford City Original Wall

Our Mission's 41st Week

Another strange week has come and gone.  We list it as strange simply because things were so common and routine before and now we don't know what we will be doing from week to week.

Paul's camera is still acting up.  Most of the time the lights don't work and he still doesn't know if his images are acceptable or if they have too much blue in them. A lot of the time the two of us simply go up stairs and do family history, prepare for classes, work on projects for our leader, or simply goof off.  We expect that to change for at least one of us.

You might ask why only one of us.  The documents that we are now digitizing need to be done on a "cradle".  That's a camera that protects the back/spine of a book.  To lay the book flat on a table or desk would break the spine.  The archive has requested that this not be done.  We have two good cameras that are attached to cradles and Paul's bad camera that is attached to a cradle.  We have two other cameras that are table top or desk top cameras, both currently assigned to the ladies including Annie.  Unless we find some flat documents or more cameras or transfer one of the couples, we will always have periods of time where there will not be a lot of work.

So, that is the camera work story for this past week.

Recognize Wet Tourist?

Senior Missionaries (see upper left)

Oxford University

Oxford University - Gardens

Aside from that work, we continue to help others with their family history.  We did have kind of a special outing with the senior missionaries.  We spent Friday at Oxford and saw a lot of the city and quite a bit of the University.  Oxford is steeped in tradition and the school is world renown.  It is said to be the second oldest university in Europe.  We learned that the university system here is not at all like the American system.  Here you apply for a college within the university and you meet once or twice a week with your professor in small groups of three or four.  You then go off and study and then meet together next week.  You are tested along the way and if you do well in your exams, you graduate. 

Harry Potter's Hall

Tea at Potter Hall

Harry Potter Hall

Cheshire Cat's Tree

Alice in Wonderland Door

We spent time going around the city as well as the university.  As a city, Oxford has two LDS wards.  It also has quite a bit to do with the Harry Potter movies and Alice in Wonderland.  We saw several of the sites that were used either in the filming of the movie or were used as models for sets that were created elsewhere.  We were hosted at the university by one of the employees who just happens to be the LDS Bishop of one of the Oxford wards.

Oxford University Scholar

Oxford University Want-to-be

By the way, did we mention that it rained all day.  Our traveling, touring, etc, were all done on foot and in the rain.  Yes, we were quite wet.  It also rained most of the day on Saturday.

We spent Saturday cleaning, grocery shopping, and we traveled into London and saw an art exhibition that was hosted by our friends the Badens.  The art was interesting, but we enjoyed the market at London Bridge as much as we enjoyed the exhibit.  We also enjoyed being with the Badens.  They are great people and we continue to pray that Paul Baden will find an interest in the Church so they can be an eternal family.

Today is Sunday and we always enjoy our Church meetings and being with the saints.  We helped several people with their family history today and Annie taught the Relief Society lesson.  Following Church today we had two families over for dinner.  We are also assigned to home teach them.  Annie prepared a wonderful meal and then we all talked about our favorite conference talk.  We really enjoyed the time together.  Sister Goodlet also informed us that she is pregnant.  They have tried for some time to get pregnant and they are looking forward to the arrival of the their first child in April.

 

 

Sunday Dinner with Goodlets and David Mason

Our stake president was visiting our ward today for his last time.  He is an American that has ties to Utah -- the Salt Lake area and the Vernal area.  His name is Judd.  He has served for about 8 1/2 years and is being released next Sunday.  Guess that means that Stake Conference is next Sunday.  That should be interesting for us to get to Stake Conference. 

We are in the Staines Stake and we attend the Staines Ward which is the stake center for the Staines Stake.  However, the stake center will not hold the stake it is quite a small building and although it is ideally located for public transportation, there is no property for us to build on.  So, we will travel to Reading and use their nice, large stake center for our stake conference. Maybe they'll announce something more next week about buildings, etc.

That's about it for another week. 

We'll close by telling you how much we miss you all.  It is just about unbearable to think of the coming holidays and how important families are and to know that we will not have any of our families here.  Guess we'll have to simply rely on the love we feel from each of you and to stay busy.  Rest assured that we are happy to be about the Lord's work, but we dearly love you all and miss the contact of having you all near us.

Our testimonies are firm in the faith.  We know that God lives.  We know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  We read it everyday.  We know that we have a prophet that leads and guides this great Church. 

Love to you all,

Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Elder and Sister Smart, Annie and Paul

Week 40!

We were so strongly reminded today how much we love public transportation!  Paul has finally accepted the fact that if he wants to keep Annie happy, he will pay the price and ride the train on Sundays. It usually gets us to church 1/2 hour early.  Our "old age travel pass"  is only good part of the way to our chapel.  This is because our chapel in Staines is out of the Greater London Area.  We have to buy a ticket for the last part of our journey.  If we ride the bus we can ride all the way on our pass, but we have to change buses part way there and wait outside for 15 minutes for the bus connection.  This usually get us to the church 2 minutes late.

We left the house at 8:40 to catch a bus to the train station (of coarse to make Annie happy.)  We got in line to purchase the train ticket.  We were told that the train line to Staines was being worked on and the train line in service would take us to another station and then put us on a bus to go to Staines and everywhere else that the train usually stops at.  We decided it would be better to get back on the bus that we usually take and head to church.  We were glad that we were able to catch a bus to get us to where we have to make the connection for the other bus on time.  Due to the fact that the trains were not running in that area, the bus was very full and stopped at every bus stop on the way.  This put the bus behind schedule and we arrived 10 minutes late, at 10:10.  It is always nice to walk into church 10 minutes late and have to walk across the room to find a seat :o) .

We have finished digitizing all the World War I Royal Air Force records.  We are going to be doing some of the Navy records now.  Most of the records are old books and require a different kind of camera set up.  Our area supervisor came this week to change the camera set up for Paul.  It is a dinosaur contraption that they pulled out of a scrap heap.  The camera itself is still the same one he has had, but the desk, lights and cradle are all different.  It appeared to working fine except there were no screws to affix the camera to the bracket that holds it steady and so the supervisor left to other parts of the country.  Late the next day the screws arrived.  The following day Paul mounted the camera to the bracket, but when Paul tried to use it, one of the lights did not work.  (Mind you, they were working fine when our supervisor left.) He made sure it was not just a bulb problem, which it wasn't.  He has not been able to get it working and who knows when it will run again.  Anyway, having no camera, has given Paul time to do family history work and  time to help a lot of others with theirs.   Annie has put him to work to find the death records of Jane Wood Windus Eaude.  He is almost through solving this puzzle.  The spelling and pronunciation of names in the 17 and 18 hundreds is unreal.  Thank goodness for Paul's talents and "Smarts" in doing genealogy.

Annie spent Tuesday with our friend Helen Baden. We have mentioned her to you in earlier posts.  We went with her for her first visit to the temple just a short while ago.  She has had a challenging few weeks, to say the least.  Her brother-in-law was hospitalized with pancreatitis and in intensive care for a while.  He is home now but not over the hill, yet.  Her mother in law is in the hospital with terminal cancer.  She is going down hill fast.  Helen has been under a lot of stress with her new job and her jaw has locked.  This week her husband lost all sensation and use in his right arm and hand.  He has been hospitalized and going through tests for stroke and lots of other things.  While her husband, Paul, was in the hospital,  her father fell and dislocated his shoulder and tore up his leg.  Their home had been torn apart due to painters coming to paint the walls.  She was beside herself!!!  Annie and Helen spent the day cleaning and straightening her house and sharing things with each other.  They finished the day, before Helen went to the hospital to pick up her husband, with dinner at the Smart's home.  It was fun for Annie and life saving for Helen.

We just have to think of Helen and her trials this month to realize how blessed we really are.  The Lord loves each of us and sometimes our trials make it hard to recognize all of the love we are being shown.  It has strongly impressed us that trials are given to us because we are loved.  The Lord wants us to grow and be refined while we are here on this earthly journey.  We all must remember that the way we handle our trials can determine how much we grow and improve and help us be more ready to meet Heavenly Father.

Happy Birthday this week to Sara and A J (Austyn).

Sara enjoying early Birthday Cake.

She is growing up!

We love you all and pray for you.  The Church is true.  The Lord loves you.

Grandpa and Grandma Smart, Mom and Dad, Paul and Annie, Elder and Sister Smart

Halloween at our flat

Our 4 cygnets have turned to 3.  Notice more white on the "little" one.

Our most recent Senior Missionary Meeting

We loved the Halloween pictures that came this week.

Cute Spooks

Early Morning Zombies