We stayed busy on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday by working in the Family History Centre. Paul taught a class on Tuesday about using birth, marriage and death records from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales to solve family history problems. Each class taught requires a powerpoint presentation and a handout. Seems like it takes nearly two days of work to get it ready and then four people show up at the class.
Friday was also a new experience for us. One way to use us is to take each of the Family History Centre staff and have them spend one-on-one time with Paul and have him try to help them with their own British research. However that takes one of them away from their Centre assignment. So, who better to cover for the one that is with Paul than Annie. Friday had four of them go through this rotation and Annie heard good comments from several of them. Where possible, we'll likely continue this new effort.
Monday, Annie spent most of the day in the FHC doing genealogy. Paul spent the day in the basement doing some records evaluation and taking sample images with the idea that we might want to image them in the future.
On Thursday, we got in a little late. Paul had to go in for his skin burn-off. He continues to get little growths or patches on his skin that could turn into skin cancer. So we made a determination to find a skin doctor and have them burned off. Best part of it is that it's free here in England to have it done.
Must mention that on Friday night we went out with two other couples from the Staines Ward, the Maythams and the Badens. Wonderful people! We went to an Italian restaurant in a place called Twickenham.
Saturday was our day to catch up on things. We went to Richmond to do some early birthday shopping for Annie. All we accomplished was "looking", no buying. We tried also to find a calendar for us to keep track of appointments. Again, no success. We should probably mention that we can buy calendars but they are quite confusing. Each week starts with Monday instead of Sunday. We thought we could handle it, but we are constantly thinking that Sunday appointments should be written on Monday and Saturday appointments should be written on Sunday. Anyway it's still hard to teach old people new ways of doing things. Guess we'll end up printing our own calendar from MS Word. Spent the rest of the day grocery shopping and preparing for next Tuesday's family history class and Sunday's Temple Preparation class.
Today is our wonderful Sunday. Still think its the best day of the week. We made our way by bus and train to and from Church. Got there early enough to set up for Sunday School. Taught our class. Need to mention that we have four young men in the class. Two or three of them will leave on mission in the first half of this year. One other young man will likely marry in the year. Four sisters are in the class who will probably take our their endowments this year. Needless to say, it is a down right privilege to teach them. Following in our three hour block, the Bishop asked to speak to us. He was concerned that he had heard that we might be leaving him. We think he did like what he was hearing, because he so appreciative of what we were doing and had done for the ward. He told us that when we got home and looked back on our mission that the one thing we needed to keep in mind, was those whose lives we had touched in the Staines Ward. Needless to say, we love our Staines Ward. We stayed after the block and Paul went to choir practice and while he was there, Annie ended up making appointments with the missionary Sisters to come to dinner today and with a sister to help her with her family history on Wednesday evening.
Forgot to mention a most welcome phone call that came on Friday. In fact this phone call was mentioned to the group we had dinner with on Friday, which is probably why the Bishop was concerned over losing us. The phone call was from Keith Penfold who oversees the Priesthood Genealogy aspects of family history in Britain. He said he would be here on Monday with a car for us and to explain what it was that he wanted us to begin doing with the stakes and wards here. Sounds like we may soon have a new assignment instead of the digitizing and that it may get underway shortly. He also told us to purchase a GPS so we can get around in the car. We did this on Saturday, having faith that the car would be here on Monday.
We look forward to a new week with anticipation of a new beginnings. Isn't it interesting that the Ensign's First Presidency Message for January is all about new goals and new beginnings for the coming year. We have much to look forward to. Although there is still considerable amount of work to do here, we also look forward to meeting or re-meeting family and friends later this year. Yes, on Tuesday of this week we will have been on our mission for one year. Hope that we can accomplish a lot in our remaining six months. We would love to wear ourselves out in the Lord's service during the next few months.
Our love goes out to our wonderful family and friends as we sign off for another week. We love you all. We appreciate your prayers and love in our behalf. We promise to keep doing our best to be good examples and to serve the Lord.
Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Annie and Paul, Elder and Sister Smart
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| The Group at Twickenham |
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| Baden's at Twickenham |
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| Maytham's at Twickenham |
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| At Twickenham |
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