Sunday, October 4, 2015

Missionary Moments #57--Oct 4, 2015

My one of two favorite weekends of the year--Conference weekend!  What a wonderful opportunity to hear from our Prophet and apostles and to think of the great men who had served in that position just a year ago.  Excited to have three new members of the quorum called and sustained yesterday.  I loved Elder Hollands talk about mothers and it had a profound effect on our two elders because they both asked if I would text their moms and tell them that they love them.  I hope all of you grandkids will take a minute to thank your moms for all the amazing things they continually do for you!  Grandpa and I had another great experience when we took the Elders out for dinner.  This is what is known as "transfer weekend" and if a missionary is going to be transferred to another area they will receive a call from the Assistants to the President letting them know to pack their bags and meet on Tuesday in Manchester for their new assignment.  We knew that at least one of our missionaries would probably be transferred and so we told them we wanted to take them out to dinner one more time.  We enjoyed dinner with the Sisters on Tuesday night and then last night we had dinner with the Elders.  We picked them up after the second session (which ended at 6 p.m. our time) and took them for sushi (their choice--definitely not mine!).  While in the restaurant their call came and watching their reaction was priceless.  The best part of it was that when we got to the restaurant they put us in a little room and closed a rice-paper screen so we had complete privacy.  Elder Poe received the assignment to be a zone leader and Elder Butler will be staying in Concord and have a new companion.  The sweetness of the experience for me was watching them humbly accept their assignments and then after hanging up tell each other how bummed they were that they weren't going to be companions any more.  The good news is the sisters will both be staying.   Missionary service isn't for wimps!!
We got back to work on Monday and although we are still not as fast as we had been we are consistently increasing our time.  It is so interesting to pick up documents realizing that they are over 200 years old.  We have encountered several that are so fragile that they are in envelopes that tell us not to remove them and whoever wrote the note has taken copies of the original. These particular documents are in alphabetical order which wasn't the case in our previous county.  In fact we started out this assignment with taking pictures of only name change requests which was a surprisingly large amount of documents.  Those took up two and a half full boxes which is significant because the majority of the information was on just one page.  When we completed them we found that the regular probate files had been put in ABC order.  They began in the 1770s and seem to end in the 1850-60 time period.  On Friday we were taking pictures of the names ending in C.  I am interested in seeing what will happen when we finish these up.  When we started in Rockingham they were numerically filed started in 1860 and went through to the 1918s.  I haven't had much time to peruse the documents because we have been trying to get a substantial amount of document prep ready so we never have to wait at the camera for work.  We have wanted to stay about five boxes ahead and right now we have only three boxes waiting.  With the help of the missionaries who come in and work with us once a week we are getting closer to our goal.  Once we are a little ahead we can spend more time looking over the wills and other interesting information that these probate files contain.  I have to say that when you see these old documents you definitely think of a pirates treasure map.  The paper is so worn and the edges have literally been worn away.  They have ink stains, and blotches, (and I think blood!) and often time water stains on them.  It is such a great thing to know that we will be preserving document records that would in time probably be impossible to even pick up.  Proud to be part of such a great cause!  I hope you are all doing well.

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