Journal, January 18, 2011

Wendy spent a few days in Newport Beach CA with her faithful girlfriends. She left on Wednesday Jan 5th and got back on Tuesday Jan 11th. They went to one temple session at the Newport Beach temple, toured around, went out to eat several times, and did a lot of visiting. The weather was mild, without the rain that had been so heavy earlier. Here is a picture she took of a beautiful sunset looking out over the Pacific.

While she was gone I had some time to work on Lewis family history. I have been trying to document the descendants of Mary Lewis, a sister of our ancestor William Lewis, and her husband James C. Robertson, who was also a brother of William’s wife, Sarah. The Robertsons moved from Floyd/Patrick county Virginia, to the area of Charleston, Virginia, now West Virginia in the late 1840s and have mostly stayed in that area. They had large families and I have been gathering data about their descendants for about a year now, with the end not really in sight yet. This morning I finished the entry work in PAF of information I had gathered about the descendants of McClelland Erman Canterbury, born 1891, the 5th child Nancy Jane Robertson, born 1869 who was the 2nd child of George Washington Robertson, the 3rd child of James C and Mary.

A couple of my impressions are 1) there is an ever-increasing amount of family history information available on the web:
–Ancestry.com adds new records all the time
–An increasing number of persons are submitting their own family information to ancestry.
–Other web resources are being added, for example in the last few months the State of West Virginia has created a website to display their Vital Records, that is, births, marriages, deaths. This has really enhanced my West Virginia Robertson efforts.
–New family Search has made the search of temple and other Church family history records much more coherent and accessible
2) A lot of the temple work has already been completed for people I am researching. I try to clear names as I enter data about individual families into PAF. I find myself in sort of a gleaning and cleaning mode. Most families in which persons were born prior to about 1900 (this is a sort of cut-off for being able to submit names for temple work) have at least part of the temple work already completed. I mostly make corrections, pick up stragglers, and fill in gaps. Sometimes it is sealings that are yet undone, other times extraction has done the sealings or baptisms leaving other missing ordinances. Or part of a family needs ordinances while some members have their work fully completed. It also appears that the earlier that persons lived, the more likely that their temple work has been completed.

On Sunday, January 9th, I participated for the second week in row in the priesthood ordination of a grandson. This time it was Justin being ordained a Deacon. They did this ordination at Emilie and Scott’s home, because of the new baby. The Bishopric made quite a production of this (in a good way). The Bishops counselor conducted this as a service. Also present was the Bishop himself, the YM 2nd counselor/Scoutmaster and the Deacons President. After an opening prayer, the latter two did a sort of orientation as to the responsibilities of a Deacon. Then they asked me and Emilie for testimonies, and the Bishop also did a sort of welcoming testimony. Finally came the ordination. The whole business made me (and also Justin I assume) feel impressed with the importance that the ward leaders place upon the priesthood and its young men and their efforts and commitment to help the young men to feel wanted in the priesthood. I have had some more interaction with Justin lately and am impressed with his desire to do what is right and how much he is growing and maturing. I am glad that he is in a ward that cares deeply about its young men.

I am working on a project to recertify MB counselors in our ward. We have about 35 persons in the ward who we list as merit badge counselors, but they need to be reregistered. BSA (and maybe also our Council and District) has added requirements, that these persons need to be formally trained in their role, that they must complete scouting’s Youth Protection Training, and that they must submit a signed application (to allow BSA to do a BCI (Bureau of Criminal Identification) check. I attended a training session for Merit Badge Counselors at Round Table last Thursday evening, with the idea that we will do the training of our MB Counselors ourselves in our ward.

The last Monday while Wendy was gone, I went to Ogden and visited my sister Dorothy, staying overnight, then picking Wendy up at the Salt Lake airport Tuesday evening on my way home. Dorothy and I talked a lot about genealogy, worked together on the Guy Lewis records table of contents project, and solved a lot of this country’s political problems.