Missionary Moments #12 November 23, 2014

Another week has sped by.  We are making great progress at work and now we are accomplishing our goal each day.  We started with 24 boxes of unopened probate files and we have three boxes to go.  Now don't get excited because that just means we are going to get another set of boxes to work on.  But we are getting the job done!  It is fun to see the names on the files and sometimes when it is a name I know I start thinking about someone I know with that name.  One name in particular for me was Blake.  There were a lot of Blakes around this area in the 1800s.  Most of you know we named Ben after Benton Blake who was my bishop when I was in high school.  I admired him so much.  He was also a lawyer and many of the people I have worked on named Blake were lawyers as well.  I think that is so interesting.  Anyway we are both learning how to add a little interest to what we are doing.  One of our co-workers is leaving to go work at the capital building doing research for the legislators so they had a little going away luncheon for him.  It was nice to be included in the celebration.

Yesterday we had a nice p-day visiting Plymouth, Massachusetts--the home of the first Thanksgiving. (Check the blog in a few days for pictures)  We went to Plimoth Plantation where we enjoyed visiting a Native American village and then a 17th century English village.  They had people dressed in period costumes and if you asked questions they would answer you with information pertinent to that time period. The Indians didn't use their native language (needless to say) but the people in the English Village all had English accents.  The houses were dark and smokey, the tools and utensils were primitive, but life went on. The Indians slept on deer hides and kept the cold out with hides hanging on the entrances of their homes. They had a fire in the middle of each structure with a hole in the ceiling so the smoke could escape.  They dealt with extreme weather, starvation often on the horizon, illnesses that could kill many of them.  Two cultures came together with neither of them trusting the others but eventually their survival depended on each other.  The goal for all of them was to just survive.  And survive they did.  How can we not be proud of our wonderful heritage?