GETTING STARTED

Welcome to my missionary blog.   

I arrived in Salt Lake City 4 December 2013, and my mission started two days later.   

I'm just starting my first blog, so let me update you on what's been happening so far.

I arrived in Salt Lake City 4th December, on a snowy evening, after about 20 hours of travel from Tasmania, and settled into my 1-bedroom apartment over the next month or so, gradually acquiring crockery, linen and some of the other comforts of home.   Having left almost all my email contact addresses behind, I also quickly started the process of trying to make contact with old friends.

Danish Sr Ane Krogstrup and me,
discussing the Tasmanian Crown
Princess of Denmark, who we share!

In America, I soon made many new friends as I met others arriving from around the US and overseas, and started the process of money transfers, buying a computer, and signing up for phone.   For our group the mission officially started 6th December, with a lovely dinner and inspiring address from our Mission President, Elder Ross Workman.

In travels around the city centre, it was great to see the Christmas lights everywhere, and to attend so many Christmas presentations and concerts.   Many of the larger Church-owned buildings have a grand piano in the ground floor public areas, and they were often played by wonderful pianists all through the lead-up to Christmas; it was so lovely!             

Christmas lights on Temple Square

The first 2 weeks were spent by all of our intake receiving an introduction to the Family and Church History Mission.   We received basic training in how to use the Family Search computer program to find our relatives, and how to enter family names not so far included in the system.
  

The FamilySearch database contains many millions of names, and it was not long before most of us had made good progress towards having 5 generations of our own pedigree.  A big focus was on finding correct sources to prove the authenticity of the relationships being entered, because sometimes people are so intrigued to find their family names that they try to make family connections that never really existed!!   (So in the lead-up to the RootsTech Conference in February, it was exciting to see the total number of sources for the family data exceeded the 12 million mark.)

But back in December, I was unwell the last day of training, so friends came with news about which of the 20 Zones in our Mission I had been assigned to.  It was B2, the British Zone, that helps patrons with specialist information about records from the British Isles, Australia and New Zealand.   My friend Ane was assigned to B1, the International Zone, and knowing nothing about our new assignments, we felt a bit like B1 and B2, the Bananas in Pyjamas!