Blog Sucess

     It seems to me that if a person wants to write a successful blog a regular schedule of new posts is essential.  So much for being successful.  I noticed that my last post was already a month old.  Okay...I am now making a committment to write in this blog at least once a week.  Even if I have to get up in the middle of the night to do it I will post regularly.  Enough said.
     The second thing to do is to apologize for making you look at that horrible picture of Larry and I!  We were at a funeral and asked my friend, Carol's, daughter-in-law, Mandy, to take our picture before the funeral started.  She was very obliging; she carries her camera with her everywhere.  We needed the picture to submit with our mission application.  I guess they want to make sure you aren't toooo ugly!  Not sure how we passed....  I'll look for an updated picture to post next week.  Promise!
     We are no longer the deer-in-the-headlights looking newbies here on our mission.  We have been here for two and half months and two new groups of missionaries have come in after us.  The largest group came in the beginning of August:  42 couples, single sisters, and young elders have joined us.  Hooray!  I hate being the "new kid on the block."
     We are also getting so good in the book scanning business that we have been asked to train.  Now that is a miracle!  The most we ever used our computer for at home was to e-mail, play spider solitaire, and skype with the kids.  Now we can use various programs to scan books, edit the previously scanned pages, use a bulk numbering program to correct page numbering errors or to renumber in sequence....Our brain matter is quivvering from all of the new information we have stuffed in to it.  Perhaps it will stave off Alzheimer's a bit.
     It only took us a day or two to catch the vision of what we had been assigned to do for the next 18 months to 2 years.  Even though we began our training in a dark cubby in a back storage room (we've all moved into one "Scanning Center" now) we can see the value of making all of the printed matter in the Family History Libraries available to the world. 
     Part of our zone includes the "patron request" section (they are in a different room down the hall).  When a person in Russia or England or Louisiana searches on http://www.familysearch.org/ in the Library Catalog and finds a record that they would like a copy of they send a letter to the Family History Library asking for someone to make a copy and send it back to them.  It only costs the person $2 per request which is so much less than most libraries or genealogy organizations can offer. 
     Scanning books and films, then, makes all of the records at the libray available for free world wide.  I was afraid if they did that no one would ever come to the genealogy mecca of the world (SLC) again but the top guys assure us that most of the people who come to the library come for help and training.  And there is a line outside the door before 8am every morning of people waiting to get in......
      The book that caught my heart and began my devotion to what we are doing each day was about a young woman who died at an early age...in her early 20's.  She had a very rare disease that very gradually took away her ability to move, to talk, to see, and to hear.  And yet she was cheerful in her eduring.  Her siblings wrote the book about her life after she died to extend her memory.  By scanning the book and making it accessible on-line, we are extending her memory even more.  And, because of the genius of computers indexing abilities, anyone who is searching to know more about that disease, or about her, or about where she lived or went to school would be able to bring the book up and read about her and her amazing life.  Yes, our work is blessing others.  We really don't have time to even look at much less read the hundreds of books we go through each week but that book caught my eye in the first week and helped me to understand the goals of our zone. 
      More later about how those goals continue to expand...and how we are just barely hanging on to our fast changing, ever moving, computerized daily service. 
     It is cool enough now to go out for a walk but getting dark.  Gotta go!
    We send our love to you all.
     Elder and Sister Thomas.