I would love to be able to capture the feelings we had in the Family History Center on
Thursday, but I am not sure that words
would be able to do justice to what we felt.
The day started out fairly quiet. J had been watching Sister B’s 4 small
children so mom could enjoy doing a 30 min workout with 3 other sisters. While waiting for Sister B to take care of
some last minute things before going home, J came into the FHC.
J has faithfully put
together a binder with her family information all sorted and organized. She has even designed a beautiful cover sheet
making it stand out among the other binders she has.
I was teasing her just a bit and said she should come into
the center in the afternoon and bring her binder, so we could work on her
family tree. Just about the same time Sister
B came and said it was time to go. I
told J I would pick her up.
I went over just before 2 and rang the doorbell. J didn’t come to the door, but as I got back
into the truck thinking she might have forgotten, she opened the door and
yelled, “I ‘m ready!”
In the short two and half hours we spent in the FHC we found 9 different
census records verifying names and
dates, surnames and ages. We calculated
some dates by subtracting their age at the time the census was taken, giving us
a good “Birth About” year.
Another patron Brother M has spent hours in the FHC the last
few weeks. As we went over the
information he added things like, “Oh he was known by Manyhorses and Walters,
but his birth name was Etsity. He
explained why and the records we found verified what he had spoken as he
quietly continued to work on his own computer screen.
Brother M has an amazing ability to understand relationships
among the Navajo people, their clans, their individual families, wives, children
etc. and how they are all connected. He
knows where to look and what to look for as people search for their kindred
dead. He speaks softly and patiently
answers questions for everyone who comes in to do work, explaining the various
connections that he knows so well.
We were very excited because it seemed like we were finding
something on every screen we opened. We had found several census records for
several years and Brother M quietly suggested we might want to look at the
1920 Census.
I thought we were going to the right place but discovered we
had ended up at the end of a census record where they had recorded the deaths
that had occurred during the year.
Ending up on this page by mistake we discovered the actual death date for
her gr grandfather and the death date for his mother-in-law verifying his
wife’s maiden name which we had not known for sure. J had recorded it, but had not been
positive. It was like taking a wrong
turn and ending up exactly where you needed to be to find what you needed to
find. I have a strong testimony that the
Lord orchestrates our days and directs us to where we need to be in order to
find what we need to find.
I told J that numerous angels had surrounded her there and
that I hoped she would return often and bring her unseen guardians. J ended up going back 5 generations and
plans to come in again soon.
There is no doubt in my mind that those that were found were
there to help us and guide us and we recorded the information that will allow J
to do the Temple work.
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