The FHC yesterday

I had an experience at the FHC yesterday. Altho’ it has been closed this last week and will be the next week for deep cleaning, Elder Lyon gave permission for a family to hold some of their family reunion there. We were asked to go in as volunteers to help with it. we were asked to be there by 9:00. After we had stood around for more than 30 minutes we found that the people weren’t even going to be coming until after 10:00. Anyway, I started helping a woman who was looking for her grandfather after he divorced her grandmother. She said that he just dropped out of site. We looked on census, and ancestry.com family tree and everywhere else we could think of. After we had worked for about an hour and half or so looking of him, the only census we found him on was before the divorce, she asked a question about the ordinance work for her great-grand parents. She said she had checked FamilySearch.org and couldn’t find anything. So logged into new.FamilySearch.org and searched for him. He was there; his work had been done. She wanted to know who had done it. I went to FamilyTree in the labs.familysearch.org site. It just showed the dates and the temples that the work had been done in. It had nothing else. Sometimes it does. She asked me to check on her brother who had died four years ago. She had explained that her brother’s wife altho’ a member herself, was adamant about their son not being baptized and stated that she had had permission from her brother to do his work for him before he died. Anyway, since I was still in FamilyTree I just went to new Search and typed in his information. When I pulled up his folder and scrolled down it showed that his work had been done last year in the Columbia River Temple. She loudly exclaimed, “I’m so angry!!!” as she hit the desk with her hands that others wondered what was going on. After she stated two or three that she was soo angry, she started to just sob loudly as she was swearing, two or three different swear words, very loudly. I know everyone else was wondering what was going on. Fortunately, most of the people with the family reunion had left. (as I tho’t about it later, I’m even sure she was with those people because she didn’t interact with any of them. She seemed to just notice that the center was open so came in). She sobbed and sobbed. All of this was very loud. She said she wanted a copy of the work printed off. So I tried to do that. I was only able to get page one. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get page two. Brother Killian was there and had sat down at the computer on my right side, she was on my left, and tried to find out who had done the work. He has “support” powers so could find out things I couldn’t. He still wasn’t able to find out who had done it but he was able to print the page two. The woman apologized to me for swearing and explained that since her brother had given her permission to have his work done after he died, that she was going to approach the wife and hopefully she would say to do the son’s work too since he had died a couple of years ago. We couldn’t find any record of the son on the program which means none of his work had been done or we would have been able to find him. She stated that someone had ruined her family! She paid her dime for the printouts and left. I felt really drained. It reminded me of when I had to deal with difficult family members while I was at work. (e.g. a young woman with two small sons whose husband had died of cancer while I was the nurse and I guess she was in denial all along because she really carried on and cried hysterically and sat on his lap and refused to leave him. I finally had to call the doctor for a sedative for her. He said he couldn’t understand her acting that way because she knew he was close to death for a couple of weeks or more. I told him that she must have been in denial.)

The ironic thing is that exactly two weeks ago a woman came in just 20 minutes before we were to close and angrily stated that she was holding the cards and she had just found out on new.familysearch.org that her grandmothers work had been done and she was holding the cards!!! She was very upset. She had been holding the cards for two years. She explained she was waiting for her mother’s health to improve so she could do the initiatory work for her mother. Anyway, she also got very upset and swore. At least neither of them took the name of the Lord in vain for which I am very thankful. I told Brother Killian about it and stated I don’t know why I have lucked out so…..Sister Hendricks stated that people just don’t seem to understand that it is our ancestor, not my ancestor. The thing is tho’ is that both of these people were born after 1900. The grandmother was born in 1909 and the brother was born in 1947 and President Hinckley has stated that anyone born since 1900 should be reserved for their ancestors to do or to get permission before doing the work. And the people who did that work did not follow that because the ladies I was talking to had no other immediate families who would have done the work. The lady yesterday kept asking why the Church didn’t stop them from doing it. I just stated that it couldn’t, As I have tho’t about it since, I have come to realize that the prophet has given us guidelines and we as a people have our agency whether or not to follow it. That is what it all comes down to. Both of these women were too close to the situation to realize that the work was done and that is what was important.