The NewFamilySearch

I had typed a whole page about my classes that I taught at the Family History Center Wednesday and Saturday. I hit control and aimed for C and hit V so everything was erased “Family History Center” was in it’s place that I have been putting on top of each of my lessons. So I will try to summarize and get everything in just not so long. It’s not earth shattering but almost….. J

I taught two classes last week. The one on Wednesday was on World Vital Records, a website of database links to various websites that can aid patrons in looking up and finding information on their ancestors. Since I didn’t know anything about it I spent a lot of time preparing. In the summer not very many patrons come in to do research. So we missionaries spend the time teaching each other about different websites so we can be knowledgeable enough to help the patrons this fall and winter when they start coming in again. There are different missionaries who work different days. e.g. Grandpa and I work on Wednesday and Saturday only. Others work other days. So there was a different teacher each day to teach the missionaries that day. I went to the class on both Monday and Tuesday which really helped. I woke up at 5:00 am Wednesday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep so got up and started working more on my class. It went well. I was able to find pictures of Grandpa Wendel and Johnny’s headstones that are down in the Spanish Fork Cemetery that someone had photographed and put on the site. I had never seen Johnny’s so I was very excited to see it and was so pleased with it mainly I guess because of the manner in which he died. I’m sending them to you so you can see them too. The class went very well.

We had to be at the center by noon because they are starting to teach us about the NewFamilySearch that we hope to get by the end of this year or the first of next year at the latest. The Winter Quarter’s Temple District and the Mesa Temple District are already rolled out and using the program. We will be teaching the Stake and ward consultants in South East Idaho so they are now letting us have hands on on working on the NewFamilySearch site. We can’t type in anything new but can combine duplicates and search and add people that way so if they are already in the system we can add them to our profile. It is so exciting. Anyway at noon they go thro’ the e-learning lessons with us and then at 1:00 we have a class taught by Sister Freeman who is part of the Support group that answers questions about the NewFamilySearch from all over the United States and maybe even the world. By the end of August there will be 104 temples out of the 128 working temples that have rolled out. So we should be fairly soon we are hoping. The temples in Idaho and Utah are the last to be rolled out. That way hopefully all of the bugs will be rolled out.

On Saturday I taught the Beginning PAF class on GEDCOM files and Exporting and Importing files. It went very well. I was glad that I have taught this before and have used it often so I am familiar with it. There are some new missionaries that come to it. There were 8 there counting me which is a good size. I passed off all the questions on the sheet for the e-learning lessons for the NewFamilySearch that I found the answers to by going thro’ the lessons. I then got online with the NewFamilySearch and worked on my file. They told us last Wednesday that we can combine and search and add new people to our file but we can’t type in anything new because we are working under someone’s number. There is a lot that has to be done with it to make it right. I have been able to correct some of the things with combining and searching but there will be lots to do when I can get registered which won’t be until we are in the 90 day window of when our temple district will start using it. It is sooo exciting tho’. Both Bryan and Richard’s temple district has it. In a way I envy them. But it is getting closer.