Microfilm Madness

Finals week! Studying, testing, worrying, blah blah blah. I decided I needed a brain break and so I thought I'd talk about some of what's been going on.

First, Carter was nominated and elected as an ASCE officer for BYU (American Society of Civil Engineers). I'm not sure what he'll do, and we don't know exactly which position will be his, but we're excited.

I think he can do anything. I also think he'll be mad I put this up....oops....

Also, Carter and I have officially begun our careers as Provo Temple Ordinance workers. For those of you who aren't familiar with LDS temples, they are very special, sacred places where worthy Latter Day Saint members go to worship. In them, we make promises to our Heavenly Father and seal our families forever. Because Carter and I live so close to the Provo Temple, we've had the opportunity to go pretty often (its a cheap date night) and every time we do, I feel an increase of peace and love from my Heavenly Father. We're very excited! Because I'm pregnant, I'll only be able to work for the next six months, but Carter plans to stick with it, if he can, until he graduates in December of '14.
Learn more about LDS temples here 

San Diego Temple

Ok, so this is probably not interesting to anyone besides my aunt and I, but I just have to share. I am NOT a family researcher. I've always struggled, and still struggle with familysearch.org and have never found myself enthralled with indexing. However, during last fall semester I decided that my attitude needed to change, so I signed up for a family history research class. Well I ended up with a professor who is more than slightly crazy about family history and was eager for us all to become pros. It seemed like everyone in my class already knew a lot, and so feeling very insignficant and unworthy, I often sat in the back and tried to disappear. For the grand finale project of the semester we had to go down to the Salt Lake City Family History Library to do some original family research from primary records (no using ancestry.com or other like websites). I was really nervous but ended up with an interesting project from my aunt. Basically I had to establish a relationship between one seemingly parentless women and what we thought might be her family. Long story short, after looking up various microfilms and going over the records I found one tiny paragraph in German that proved the relationship. THAT WAS SO EXCITING!

I think my face might have looked like this

Or this.  

  Holy moly I was so happy! Anyways, that little experience has made me really excited about family history. It's so cool to learn more about your ancestors! Plus going through microfilms is really neat---in another life I would've been some sort of history major. I love old records, and just old things in general, so playing with microfilms really fascinates me. Anyways, the point in my writing this was not to brag about my one miniscule triumph, but to remind everyone that no matter how little you know, you can contribute something to your family history. Really guys, this stuff is pretty cool.