Amazing Day In the Family History Center

 Today we had two patrons come into the center.  It had been well over a year for one and about 2 months for the other.  

  We had been invited to go to Chinle for a Senior Christmas Party, but I just felt like there was a reason we needed to be in Tuba City.

  Bro. Haswood started his family tree.  He entered his parents names, and his mother's parent's names.  He also entered some of his siblings including a brother who has passed away.  All the names qualified for ordinance work.

  It took a while to get started because he thought he had an account, but we discovered he did not.  He said his home teacher had told him to write the names down and to GET STARTED.  

 I cannot convey the power of the spirit we felt as we found the social death records for all those people.  Brother Haswood was a bit a overwhelmed also.

  I told him he can now visit with the Bishop and get things in order, so that he can do the Temple work.  Words truly cannot express what we all were feeling today.

  Sister Singer from Kayenta, also came in and added her Grandmother and three of her children to the family tree.  She plans to go to the Temple next week and do the work.

  I had come over early to work with Sister Horseherder, who is also working on her family tree.  What an amazing day it has been to feel so close to those on the other side who want their work done.

  Both patrons plan to come in again next week.  I am not sure who Bro Haswood's home teacher is, but he obviously was inspired to tell him to write the names down and get into the family history center.  How grateful I am that he heeded the counsel he was given.

Dad and The Bee

I bet you already know which one won the fight.  Yesterday Dad had to respond to a call from Mother Nature while he was out and about.  It seems that a local bee found the inside of his upper right leg a perfect place to land.  Unfortunately for the bee and Dad, the bee was still resting when he pulled up his pants.

I have never seen such a reaction.  Dad did not come right home, but when he did, he asked if I would please remove the stinger.  Well, it looked like he had about 5 stingers, but one was more prominent that the others, so I girded up my loins and scraped across it with a credit card.  We had read that if you use tweezers, the stinger may break.

  What should have been a big red lump was actually a 3 inch circle with 15-20 blisters inside a 7 or 8 inch larger red circle.  It looked so bad.  I wanted to take him to the emergency room, but you all know your dad well enough to know that he was not about to go for just a little old bee sting.  

  He poured on the Lavender and several other oils, then sat in the tub.  I kept checking to make sure he was still breathing.  Even after prayers and he actually went to bed, I kept listening and touching him, so he would move and I could be sure he was okay.

  Today the smaller circle is still full of blisters that look like they are healing well, but the larger red circle is still there with considerable swelling, but does your dad complain, of course not.   It makes me cry sometimes when I see how much he endures.  I will be eternally grateful for him and the example he has set.  I can see how he lives with pain every waking minute, but he puts a smile on his face and goes about like he was 25 instead of 66.

  He is always saying that he would rather wear out instead of rust out.  It would truly be a death sentence to become a couch potato, but I am grateful each day he comes home, takes his long soak in the tub, says his prayers and crawls into bed.   We use to laugh when his parents went to bed at 7, but guess who is becoming his dad.  :o} It's 7:40 and Dad has been asleep for almost an hour.

  We always laugh when we come to visit and the time to leave approaches.  He looks at me and says, should we pull a mom and dad and leave at 4 or 5 in the morning.  DeRell and Marie would do that quite often.  We laughed a lot over that, but now that we are maturing, we understand better why they did that.

  I hope everyone is praying for good weather, bad weather would be the only thing that would stop us from coming.  Sister Stevens mentioned last night about a multiple car pile up somewhere up there, due to the weather.  I tried not to freak out.  The Justice family has 2 sons coming from Rexburg for Thanksgiving.

  We do need to check out phones while we are there and I would like to go to the Temple.

  We have our Stake Temple Trip on Dec 6, but if we go while we are there it would save us the 7 hours travel time to Snowflake.

  Well it is almost 8, bed time right LOL.  

  I like to crawl in about 10, but have learned 9 isn't so bad and being up and on the go by 4 insures that I will have uninterrupted time for scriptures and breakfast.

  Although every day isn't always great, we know that God has everything in hand and that we just need to trust Him and know that things will work out.

  We are very proud of each of you and thank Heavenly Father for the privilege of being your earthly parents.  We are grateful for the memories.

Love,

Mom

Successful Gardeners 1

Pictures of Succes

This week on the "Rez"

This week has been pretty crazy in the “busy” way.  Elder Olson was gone every day but one, and he was only here that day because we had potential senior couples come to check this mission out.

 That happens on occasion.  A couple will call and express interest and President Justice invites them to come and visit and see what they think.  Sometimes it works really well, and other times, both parties decide that it really isn’t a “good fit”   On one occasion I said, “I don’t like to have to clean up after a storm hits” which is how I feel when people aren’t happy and are unable to work things out in a good way and can’t wait to get out of Dodge.  I will let you fill in the blanks.

Elder Olson went to Monument Valley Saturday with Brother Nez.  They did a Demo on how to prep the soil and put the fence up.  They had a pretty good turn out and I think everyone felt a whole lot better about going home and prepping their own gardens and putting the fence up.  The new senior couple were especially happy to have the support from the “Old Pro”  Elder Olson laughed because he is used to having everything laid out just so.  Well, they had 2 extra fence posts which when laid out did not compute.  It took a while for him to recognize that he had 2 extra that he was trying to fit into the layout of the standard fence of 30 x 30. 

We try to explain that while we have been here longer than most, we still do not know everything, nor do we pretend to know.  I think it turned out well and lunch was served.

The young Elders had made an apt for one of their investigators to come into the History Center on Saturday afternoon, but neglected to ask if someone could be there to help.  The other senior elder asked them about someone being there and they said something like, Sister O is always around.  He suggested they ask me anyway, which they finally did.

I knew the sister who came in but could not place her.  She is actually a member, but had not done anything on her family tree.  We started with her of course and then added what she did know.  One name lead to another and pretty soon we had her back about 4 generations.  We found census records with her gr grandparents including their first names which she had not known before, but wanted to know.  We found 2 young men who died at 14 and 16.  We actually found their death certificates.  One had died from drowning, the other from tuberculosis, because of “traditions” of not speaking the names of those who pass on, they might not have ever had the opportunity to be identified and sealed to their parents if she had not come in to get started.

We also found the Soc Sec Death Index for her grandfather who died in Texas in 2000.  While scrolling through the other names, she found a grandmother, an aunt, and an uncle’s information.  I think we had about 20 names recorded and several documents printed out before we knew it.

She stayed for about 2 hours and took pedigree charts and family group sheets.  She is anxious to come back and continue doing research to find others.  What a blessing to have such great tech support at our finger tips.  I love it when it works.

Elder Olson got a load of firewood and took it to one of our favorites in Red Lake.  A family member got angry and broke every window and door in her home.  They still have one large window that has not been replaced.  The wood helps tremendously, but the blanket over the one window, can only do so much.  When you say your prayers, please remember all the little things you take for granted.

Love,

Sister Olson

3:00 A.M. Phone Call and Stake Conference

  At 3:00 in the morning on Oct 28, my phone rang.  I just happen to put the phone on the night stand  One of our young sisters was calling.  I answered the phone and spent 45 mins  listening.  She obviously was going through a horrible situation.  I have learned to listen more and talk less.  When she was ready to hang up she said she could breathe again and that she felt loved and not  alone.

  The next day, I called to see how the rest of the night had gone.  She knows God loves her and she is going to make it.  I am sure there will be difficult days ahead, but I pray that she will always feel like she can call and talk no matter what the time.

  Prayer is interesting that way also.  There is never any message like Press 1 if you want...or Press 2 if you want..etc,  No call waiting message, no silence when you need to hear what only God knows can help you through whatever you are facing.

  I have learned to trust God more, while serving out here.  I have learned to listen more for the still small voice.  I have learned to love the people we serve. to celebrate differences and not be so quick to decide what the problem is.  Sometimes things are much different than you first think they are.  We also have to be so careful when we listen.  One of my favorite songs has the words, "In the quiet heart is hidden, sorrow that the eye cannot see."  

  I think we are often guilty of judging by appearance only and not looking into the heart.  So many people carry such heavy loads.  I hope we cheer more and stop throwing so many rocks.  We are here to help and to love one another.  

I wasn't planning on writing all that, but I guess there is a reason.

We just finished what I call our "Fruit Season"  The Stake President orders Peaches, Pears, and Apples.  We just finished with the Apple Order.  It is fun to watch the sisters order and bottle their fruit.  They are doing a great job of it too.

We have lots going on all the time  The young Elders are meeting more people through the gardening initiative.  People love to talk about their gardens and that opens right up to the blessings of the Lord.

  We had Stake Conference this weekend.  President Justice is such an amazing Stake President.  He speaks with great power and insight.  There is no doubt that he loves the Lord and seeks His guiding spirit in how to direct the affairs of the Stake.  He is amazing.

  His comments last night centered around Obedience and Sacrifice.  He said we all know how to go without, but do we know how to sacrifice.

  He shared the sacrifice that Abraham was willing to make and the widow who feed the prophet and then prepared to die.  Her sacrifice blessed her life and sustained her until the situation changed.  Are we willing to make such a sacrifice as they did?  We feel so blessed to work with such great people, who have strengthened their understanding of the gospel and the principles that we came here to learn.

  We cannot always understand the WHY of things, but we can trust that God does and that he will never leave us nor forsake us.  

  He focused on the blessings of paying a full tithe and being Temple worthy.  He told the people of this Stake that if they also would be willing to sacrifice that they would never go without the necessities of life, but that they had to be committed.  It was such an amazing thing to be a witness of.

  We will have Fast Sunday next week and then on the 16th we will have the Phx Temple Dedication.  We are really looking forward to that.

  The time change is great because now I don't have to figure out two different time zones and what time my appts. are.  Is it our time or the other time????  Now when you go through the intersection it is still the same time.  LOL

  We love you.

Sister Olson

19 Oct 2014 Dedication of Lukachukai Chapel, Tasille, AZ

I get pretty frustrated when I am merrily typing along and then all of a sudden half of what I typed disappears for no apparent reason. :o{  which just happened while I was posting to my BLOG page, so I am going to type on word, then cut and paste.

This morning we left at 7 A.M. and drove the 165 miles to Lukachukai where they dedicated the first chapel for the Lukachukai Ward.  Ronnie figured it was about 46 years ago that he was transferred there, almost to the day.  How awesome is that?

We got there about 9:40 and Elder Rogers and some of the young men were directing traffic and showing people where to park.  We figure there was over 190 people all together for the dedication.

There were 4 speakers, Ed Tano the First Chinle Stake President, he is now a member of our 2 Ward in Tuba City.  Bishop Ralph Begay who read the letter from Salt Lake saying the chapel had been approved.  We were actually at the sacrament meeting in the gym at the college in Tsaille when he read it. Then Brother Harvey Gardner a Former Area Seventy who does an amazing job in helping further the work among the Navajo people.  He lives in Page and when he turned 80 a grandson gave him a birthday card that said Happy 80^th birthday Grandpa, written below in gold lettering it said, Inside is a special message from God.  When he opened it he read, See you soon.  Fortunately Brother Gardner has a great sense of humor.

The final speaker was Stake President Romero Brown.  Each speaker told of how things had been and what the people needed to do as they go forward with this beautiful new chapel.  Attend meetings, pay and honest tithing, magnify callings, keep the church clean and a make it a sacred place.

I am confident they did not compare notes, but the messages were all the same in the counsel that they gave.  It was a wonderful meeting and I am so glad we were able to go.

We renewed our friendships with the people that we had meet the first season we were here.  The O’Daniels now have a baby girl, Cassidy Rose.  They are always so gracious and welcoming.  Brother O’Daniel is the 1^st counselor and he conducted the meeting.  He is a great help to the people who garden over there.

Bishop Ralph Begay and his wife Priscilla also made us feel welcome and thanked us for driving so far.

Wesley Clement gave the closing prayer.  He is the one who goes out and helps new gardeners.  His wife and daughters are in the one picture.

We also got to see Rudy and Gloria Begay who drove over from Chinle.  They have been called to serve in the Family History Center.  I am hoping they will get the training they need very soon, so far it hasn’t happened, but hopefully soon.

We had a lot of memories flood our minds as we got closer to Lukachukai, I even suggested that we might ask for a transfer, only kidding LOL,  but it did cross our minds.

The all day sitting was hard on Elder Olson and since falling it wasn’t as easy as it usually is for me, but we are back safe and sound and very grateful for an amazing day.  The meeting was so full of peace and hope.

The family that did the Demo garden that first year over there has been baptized, how awesome is that?  I am pretty sure she did not remember me, but I remembered her and told her how happy I was to see her there with 3 of her sons.

Tomorrow is our last missionary training meeting for the season, so I need to get some sleep.

Sister Olson

 Members after Dedication

Rudy & Gloria Begay,  Elder & Sister Olson

Brother Harvey Gardner,  Brother & Sister O'Daniels and Family

Bishop Begay's wife Priscilla and girls.  Elder & Sister Olson

The front of the new chapel as you turn in off Hwy 191

No Broken Bones 11 Oct 2014

To:

Subject: No Broken Bones ;O]

Today I went walking and managed to take a grand spill on the sidewalk.  Not knowing where dad was I called Sister Simpson, since I had my cell phone.  I told her not to panic, that I was fairly sure nothing was broken, but my elbow hurt pretty bad and I did not want to try and get up without help.

  She was just getting out of the shower and even though I assured her that I thought I was OK she and Elder Simpson must have gotten there in about 3 mins.  We laughed and talked a while before I felt like getting up.

  I hit my leg just above my right ankle, both knees, then my elbow, before I completely landed on my back, so somehow I rolled as I fell.  I am glad I did not hit face first. ;o}

  I have managed to stay down the rest of the day.  Sister  Deaton's , mom retired just a month ago.  She is a nurse and she came over to check me out.  She did everything they would have done at the emergency room minus the big bill.  She is confident that I did not break any bones,  but the bruising is a big reminder that I am not invincible.

  I know that I was blessed because of your daily prayers.

  Oh yes, I did call dad and while I was still on the ground he called and drove home immediately and lathered me up with essential oils.  Then I got a blessing.  I have learned from previous blessings that the priesthood holder who pronounces the blessing is only a mouth piece for the Lord.  There is no way that they can know  what questions have been plaguing you and to which specific answers are given as the blessing is given.

  I have learned much through the years about the "Why me?" questions and have realized that the better question is "Why not me?"  I was and have been greatly blessed this day.  The  soreness will go away. the bruising will go away, but the memory of the blessing will bear special witness of God's love for me as His daughter and that He watches over me daily..

Love,

Mom

Fruits of their labors.

Check the height of the corn.

This is their first year.

Anybody want a slice of watermelon?

Elder & Sister Olson, oops he forgot his badge.

We just had a couple of amazing weeks of working in the vineyard as I like to call it.  A week ago we offloaded 500 boxes of peaches and pears on Tuesday and then another 206 on Friday.  We worked from 7 A.M. until 6 P.M.  very long, but rewarding days. 

Last Monday we had our Missionary Training and then on Thursday we had the Demo for our participants.  On Oct 23 we will have the last Demo for this season.

These pictures only represent 3 of the gardens we had for this year.  Elder Olson worked with 67 new gardeners and lots of the previous gardeners.  All of us need an encouraging word and praise for doing an amazing job and continuing to plant, which the majority of our previous gardeners continue to do.

  The first picture is of Mae B  who was hesitant to do anything on her own 3 years ago.  You can see that she is literally stepping over her squash plants.  She and her husband mentor 3 other participants who also continue to plant.

The second is Lee and Rose Manygoats.  They planted a little late, but you can see that their garden did very well.  Rose does not speak English, so her daughter would translate for Elder Olson.  He does still speak Navajo, but having someone translate, made things a lot easier.  They plan to expand their garden next spring and are already looking forward to doing that.

The third picture is of Selina Slim and her husband.  They were the ones who did such a great job last year and now they are pretty self-reliant which is one of the goals of the program.  Their previous efforts had not been very successful.  They happen to be visiting with another participant last year and asked Elder Olson if he could help them.  When he went over their corn was only 8 or 9" high and had died for lack of water.  He helped them get started and they had an amazing harvest.  This year they did it all on their own with minimal help.  

On Thursday and Friday of this last week, 4 of the Brethren from SLC came to visit and check up on what we are doing in the Tuba City Stake.  I was able to put together a Power-Point Presentation with about 50 slides of both gardeners and pictures of those who come to the Family History Center.  The presentation seem to go well and we visited as we showed the slides.

  I always get a little anxious before they come, but having gone through this several times, I am not sure why I do that.  They are always so positive and so generous with their compliments about what we are doing, and how amazing the gardeners and their gardens are doing.

I was able to report the stats for the Tuba City 1st and 2nd Ward, but we no longer have senior gardening couples serving in our other units, so getting those stats is more of a challenge.  The couple in Dennehotso is MLS, but they are helping a lot and hopefully will be able to give us the info we need.

The couple serving in Polacca will go home tomorrow.  They are doing a great job and plan to come back in March.  He helps in the gardens and she works in the Family History Center.  

We expressed our concern about not having as much support as we could use out here.  Did you know that the number 1 reason that senior couples don't serve is the fact that they don't want to leave their pets?    The Simpsons told us that they could use 2,000 couples to fill out the requests from the Mission Presidents around the world.  Maybe you could spread the word.

The biggest challenge we have here is finding housing.  They have hook-ups at the units, but no trailers or RVs for the couples to live  in while serving.  When I see senior couples traveling through with big RVs I want to follow them and tell them about the opportunities to serve here.  I love the flexibility of our mission.  They train you and you get to set your hours.  The best thing is you get to love and serve your fellow man.  No set hours, you can work as long as you want. LOL

You learn a lot about yourself and your testimony of the gospel.  You learn to trust the Lord more and have more patience with yourself.  You learn to love the people more every day and appreciate the challenges that other people go through.  You find that your challenges don't seem very big at all.

You learn to stretch yourself physically and spiritually.  You end the day tired, but find yourself ready to go again in the morning.  I am grateful for the time we have had here and the people that we have grown to love so much.  We have laughed with them and cried with them.

I hugged a sister last night who began to sob.  I just held on and asked if she was OK.  She said it was her mother's birthday this week.  Her mom passed away unexpectedly just a few months ago.  I told her I did not have words, but I did have hugs.  She said, "You hug, just like my mom!"  Sometimes you are blessed to respond to the spirit and be in the right place at the right moment.  

I love each of you that read this message and pray that you will feel of the Savior's love for you.

Love,

Sister Olson

More Fun in the Family History Center

Today Sister Thompson did a mini class on familysearch with 8 students.  Later in the afternoon the group from Cameron came to learn more about Rootsmagic and familysearch.  We scanned pictures also.

One of the highlights:  They brought a young woman who is taking the missionary lessons. She caught on really fast and plans to get more information from both sets of grandparents.  Her last name is Bishop.

  We had patrons at every station and more in line to get on and get going.  It was great.  We found census records, birth records and some death dates.

  We are excited to get another computer up and running.  We are excited to have the young people getting on board.  They learn quickly and they want to know more about their families.  It is so fun to watch their faces when they find a document with their family name.

  We are witnessing the Spirit of Elijah at work and we are grateful to be able to help people as they turn their hearts unto their fathers.

FHC Fun Sister Sally Singer, Sister Norris, Lisa, Blanche, and Justin

Just thought it would be fun for you all to know that Sister Singer cleared 7 names today to take to the Temple.  She will now be able to do their Temple work and seal 2 couples together.

Blanche, her daughter Lisa and son Justin, also came in and are planning to get started on their family tree.  We gave them pedigree charts and family group sheets so they can get started.

Justin was invited to come to Seminary and his mom Lisa, said she remembered how much she enjoyed Seminary.  Sister Simpson was working on obituaries, so she was able to visit with them and tell them how much they would enjoy having him come.

Mom is planning on bringing him in at 6:30 A.M.  She has overcome some major challenges over the last 3 years and is making amazing progress.

Sister Norris knows quite a bit about their family and is planning on them coming in soon.  With her background she will be able to get them started and help them with research.

Picture Left to Right

Sister Singer, Sister Norris, Sister Deel, Sister Taho, Justin

Goats Milk and Finding Tombstones

We had our  missionary meeting this morning from 9-2. It is so wonderful to meet with the Senior Missionaries. 

I love these wonderful dedicated Senior Missionaries.  They each bring so much to the table spiritually and figuratively.  We always have a spiritual feast and then a food feast ;o}

The insights that they have into doing the work is always a shot in the arm.  I so love each of them.  I am adding the Gerber's picture.  They do not do baby food LOL, but they milk goats and make their own cheese (which is yummy)  I learned more about goats and the benefits of drinking goat milk than I ever knew. Did you know that is the closest thing to mother's milk than anything else??  It digests in 20 mins, while cow's milk takes up to 24 hours.

Ok, that;s probably more than you wanted to know about goats, but I thought it was really interesting.  Elder Gurber is  85 and in excellent health.

The other neat story was about family history of course.  We had our meeting and I just had gone back to copy a paper I needed and then practice the piano.  Well, Elder Simpson comes in and tells me that a couple had just stopped by and they were wanting to find a headstone in the Tuba Cemetery.  Our cemetery has no rhyme or reason to the layout if you could call it that.  They just dig and drop basically.  Elder Simpson directed them to the cemetery, then came in and told me what had just transpired.

I said that we had indexed every readable marker and that I could probably give them the information.  So I got in the truck and went up to find them, which I did.  It turned out that they were actually looking for the cemetery in Moencopi.  I spoke with with Sister Drew and offered to let them follow me.  She asked if she could just ride over with me and her husband could follow us.

I went in and asked permission to go into the cemetery and take a picture of the monument over there.  The lady at the desk said it would be fine, so we walked out and crawled under the low wire inside the gate.  Sure enough Stephen Martinsdale Farnsworth was

on the marker, but then Sister Drew added that her older relative had said that their was a bronze plaque where he was buried in the southwest corner.  Well, the sand is about 2 feet deep in that area, so I felt there was little hope of finding it.

We walked back to the monument and about 15 feet to the north west there is a tombstone.  I decided I would check that name.  There it was Stephen Martinsdale Farnsworth. with the exact dates of his birth and death.  I took their pictures behind the tombstone with the monument in the back.

Sister Drew said that she had said a prayer as they were walking through the sage brush that Heavenly Father would help them.  Brother Drew had also said a prayer and then added that an angel had shown up to help him.  What a wonderful experience it was for all of us..

I am so grateful for the tender mercies of our Heavenly Father and how amazingly wonderful he orchestrates our days, so that we end up in the right places at the right time. I am so grateful for the testimony I have of family history and if we are willing to make an effort it is rewarded in amazing ways.

Sister Olson

Cameron Branch Family History Center 10 Aug 2014

Earlier this week Sister Franklin from the Cameron Branch called and asked if we could come out and help the young women and a few others get their accounts set up on familysearch.and help them get started on finding names to take to the temple.

They have just 2 computers in an upstairs room and 2 very old printers.  We had 10 people show up including the adult leaders, and a husband  and two brothers.  

  I had taken my laptop and one sister had brought hers also.  She had driven to Tuba City twice in the last two weeks to get better access to the internet. 

 The husband, Benson Henry, drove home to get his "device" and then came back and got started.

 We had the ones who were not on the computers fill out their pedigree charts and then start doing family group information on the back of the pedigree chart, since they did not have any printed family group sheets available.

  We will send a couple of packages of family group sheets back with President and Sister Black and some updated pedigree charts, although it was fun to work on the older pedigree sheets, that we use to use on the long carriage type writers.

  I think the pictures will speak for themselves.  The youngest who is 10 was getting a little distracted with his toy soldier which could be taken apart piece by piece.  I told him that his little soldier was like doing his tree.  Each part represented a person on his tree and that it was incomplete when one of the pieces was not in place.  He then asked if he was the "head" piece and I told him, "Of course"  He seem to like that.

  We spent about 2 hours, but everyone was able to set up an account and each person left with a pedigree chart with 3 generations penciled in. They will add to it over the next two weeks as they visit with their families.

  We have Taylor and Kassidee Huskon as Directors, who did an amazing job of helping the people get their accounts set up.  They stay after church every Sunday from 2-4 to help people with their family history.  I am not sure the folks realized what experts they had in place until today.  

John & Jamie taking couch to Lake Point 26 Jul 2014

 These two little girls share such a special relationship with each other.  Aren't they the sweetest little people ever?

 

These are the pictures of John & Jamie taking the couch and barbeque set back to Lake Point.

Younique's new home. 24 Jul 2014

This is Younique's newest home.  It will be fun to take pictures on the next trip and note the progress as the remodeling takes place to  meet the needs of their growing company.