Obituaries and Miracles

This week has been really extra-ordinary in several ways.  I am feeling very blessed to be a part of such a great work.

On Monday, June 9, I had the privilege of helping prepare a sweet sister to be put to rest. Although I did not know her well, I felt very happy to help the family in that small way.  She looked beautiful and so much at peace.

Tuesday Jun 10, in the Family History Center. We had 7 people working together on adding the information from the obituaries that we have found.  The top picture is of Janell, who has to work very hard to do the things we take for granted.  She is always persistent and fun to be around.

 The three ladies in the second picture came in together.  Kelly worked on her own family history. Ashley worked on the obituaries and although we had several "tech problems" she was able to add a couple of obituaries to our growing file.  What was really exciting was the fact that she was able to add one young man's parents and 5 brothers who had preceded him in death.

  Then we had Amber who out of no where found her gr grandparents names and a social security death record for each.  To add to that great find, she found a picture of their plaques at the cemetery, which someone posted to findagrave.com   That does not happen very often, at least on the reservation. 

  I suggested that she take what she had found over to the mortuary and ask if they might have been the ones who had assisted with the burials.  They were able to add both parents to one of her names and the mother of another of her names.  Another miracle in my book.

  Sister Thompson worked on the materials she is preparing for her class on How to Keep a Journal.  She wrote up some very short entries and put pictures to go with them.  She is trying to show the students that they do not have to write pages and pages each day, but they can write short little entries to keep track of their daily lives.

  She does an amazing job with those students, building their confidence and helping them with their family history.

  It may not seem as if we did a lot, but we were very busy and productive for 3 1/2 hours.  We laughed we shared, we bore testimony of the Spirit that we could feel as we entered the information.

  Kelly came back around 8 and wondered if I would be there much longer, she wanted to share what she had been doing with her sister.  We stayed until 8:30.

  What a great blessing to be a witness to the small miracles of the small and simple things that bring great things to pass.