Genealogy from the perspective of a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, LDS)

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

A Family History Mission: Snow, Spanish, and Family History Centers


No. 48

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

On the first day of Spring, our work at the Maryland State Archives was interrupted by a strong snowstorm. It turned into a Code Red day for all the government offices, including the Archives, in the state plus almost all the schools. I guess we can't help but contrast this with Utah where the world would practically have to end before they would have a snow day. We spent an unusually leisurely day in our apartment. Of course, I took the opportunity to write more than would be usual for the middle of the week.

I missed my weekly visits to the Annapolis Family History Center in our Stake Center. I am rediscovering what I already knew about Family History Centers: if you want to help people then you have to invite them to come and meet you at the Family History Center. You can't just wait for people to walk in and ask for help.

We have been working with the Spa Creek Branch (Spanish) for a few weeks now. We have started helping one or two people during the Sunday School time. We can use the Family History Center to help the Branch members get registered on FamilySearch.org and start to enter their ancestors to the Family Tree. The challenge, in some cases, is that we also need to teach them about computers and the internet. Some of the members can barely read. We hope to make a small difference in the Branch while we are here.

We live about 10 minutes away from the Stake Center which makes helping in Branch much easier. The Branch President also asked if we could teach some English classes. I taught ESL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) for a few years in Mesa and I really enjoyed teaching the classes so I was happy to help. I decided it would be helpful in more than one way to teach the classes in the Family History Center got permission from the Director. I thought it would be a good way to teach English, computers, and family history all at the same time. We'll see if anyone comes to our classes.

We have a family history conference coming up on May 5th. It is sponsored by the Washington, D.C. Family History Center. Ann and I will both be teaching some classes.

http://wdcfhc.org/Conference/index.php



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