May 14 Post Mother’s Day Reflections

I had a great Mother’s Day weekend. I was able to help my mother-in-law and sister-in-law on Saturday. Sunday, I enjoyed a quiet morning of study followed by an uplifting Sacrament Meeting. Relief Society was a chance to connect with my ward friends, many of whom have been friends for over 20 years.

The afternoon was relaxing. Jessica and Nicole prepared a wonderful meal and organized a get-together with my sisters and sister-in-law.

It was an enjoyable meal and evening together. We shared stories and caught up with family events. My family in Idaho was similarly gathered with our mother.

Mother’s Day 2024 with Liz, Krista and Barb

My ward Relief Society shared this quote. My own mother came to mind immediately when I read this quote because she personifies someone who goes about doing good, like the Savior.

In February, she fell in her kitchen while making cookies. I was able to go up to Idaho on the day she was released from the hospital. On the way home, she was checking on friends in her ward whom she knew were sick or struggling. It wasn’t long after we arrived home that she was checking on her indexing activities.

My mother has been able to make a remarkable recovery from her hip fracture, and I believe the secret to her recovery is her focus on others. She always wants to be doing and serving. Despite having to use a walker to get around, she does housework, cooks, goes on walks with friends, accompanies friends to appointments, and visits the sick.

My mother is a woman who truly blesses others’ lives by her “efforts.” She emulates the example of the Savior of the World as she goes ..”about doing good. ” 

My mother and father visiting my sister Allison’s grave on March 27, 2024

I am so grateful for my mother. She is a profound influence on my life.  I am truly blessed to be her daughter.

My Impact

I often wonder if the efforts I make as a novice genealogist make a difference. I rarely seem to be able to find and attach records to the appropriate people. There are so many options sometimes and it seems like I am just guessing sometimes. Even indexing names sometimes seems like my guess as I try to decipher handwritten records from two hundred years ago. It is easy to feel like my inconsistent and novice efforts to do Family History have little impact for good.

I opened Family Search this morning to do some indexing and found this new (to me) addition to Family Search. A whole page about My Impact. The page shows records I have indexed and records I have attached to persons in Family Search. Another section shows what happened to those names that were indexed and attached.

For example,

George StanleyHanisko

Male1897–1964

You indexed George Stanley Hanisko’s name. His name was taken to the Veracruz Mexico Temple on 26 January 2019.

Many of the names I had indexed were distant relatives of mine or Gil’s, like Gil’s 10th cousin twice removed.

Virginia NorfleetJordan

Female1867–1948

You indexed Virginia Norfleet Jordan’s name. Her name was taken to the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple on 9 June 2017.

I find this new feature an answer to prayers. I keep trying to do Family History because I know that I have a responsibility to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with both the living and the dead. I have a firm testimony that making connections between families is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. Despite having that desire and the testimony, I have struggled to be consistent in working on Family History daily. Seeing these connections now happening because I took 15 minutes to index some names or research some hints, gives me a lot of encouragement and hope that my every effort is meaningful to someone. I do make a difference.

I am also in awe of my mother Serena Watt. She just turned 85 on Saturday, January 13. She has worsening macular degeneration and struggles to see a computer screen. She is an avid indexer of records. I was visiting her this week and found her in front of the computer checking indexed records for accuracy. She has been doing this more often because she can see the typed names better than trying to discern the handwritten names. What an inspiration to me she is! An example of someone whose abilities are declining but she still makes the effort to serve others.

The screenshot shows how much work she has done over the years. I can’t even imagine what her Impact page shows!

Serena Watt’s Indexing Numbers

Family History Options

Today I did 10 names from the Improve Places Names option in Family Tree.

Screenshot from Family Tree App

Working on this took me about 5 minutes. Some of the place names I reviewed were for ancestors and others were not my ancestors but they are someone’s ancestors.

I also spent some time on Instagram checking our Family Search posts. Again very informative and they take only a minute of so to read.

I also made connections with Kanda in Thailand on Instagram. I sent her the Church’s post on the Bangkok Thailand Temple Open House and encouraged her to go see the newest temple in Bangkok. Kanda and I had a short conversation over Instagram at 6:30 in the morning. A wonderful connection to start my day.

Technology is truly amazing!!

Birthdays and Photos

How do you manage your photos? We produce so many photos that it becomes overwhelming to keep them organized. I recently asked my youngest daughter to put together some photos for her father’s birthday. She and one other daughter put together 174 photos which they shared with myself and two other daughters. I added 100 photos and that was only back to 2019.

I had to recently upgrade my storage on Amazon so I had enough storage space for videos and photos. I have made some cursory attempts at organizing them, putting together albums, deleting poor quality photos and duplicates. There are still thousands of unorganized photos on Amazon, Google and our hard drives.

I just attended Rootstech 2023 and was amazed at all the companies promoting software that helps organize and store photos. One was Collectionaire and another was Photomyne and then there was Mylio and Storied. I am sure there were more exhibitors there that had variations on photo storage and organization.

I think the key to photo storage and organization is for me to develop a habit of working on my photos for a few minutes each day. For example, I have the app Journey on my phone which allows me to journal and attach photos in a daily entry. I will start doing an entry daily in Journey actually two entries..one entry for the day and one entry for a day I missed in the past.

My daughters are helping me try to get photos organized on Google and Amazon and I think I also have a Dropbox account. It actually all seems a bit overwhelming but I want to be an organized person so I need to put in the effort to develop habits that an organized person would have.

I just started reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. He states: “the most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.” I want to become an organized person which means I need to have daily habits that support that identity.

Gil and his girls in 2017