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.