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London Missionary Experience

13 December 2008

This week has been to say the least interesting. I'm not sure what I expected as a missionary in the England London Mission, but I know the events of this week are varied and notable.... at least to me. So here's a recap of some patron comments, events, happenings and work done.

A man and his wife came in looking for ancestors records in Australia. Now mind you, we are the London Family History Centre and not the Sidney FHC, so we are limited on what we can offer about Australian records. I have found, however, that we have lots of films from lots of places and our 'catalog' is amazing, so I took him to our catalog page and typed in 'Australia'. Up came 56 films relating to Australia. He was happy and spent several hours perusing films. As he left he came to me and said, "God bless you and your Church for what you are doing here."
Another man came in to say that he had called in the prior day to inquire about a particular film and was told we had the film. He handed me a slip of paper and said he would like to view the film. I looked at the paper with some perplexity at 'three digits' -- now our films all have seven digit numbers. I asked him if he knew the full number of the film. He said he had it on a paper at home but couldn't find it, but... he was told on the phone that we had it and now he wanted to see it. One of my colleagues, who is an attorney and former DA, took the slip of paper thinking he could perhaps help. In short order he processed the same information and walked away. The man said, "You mean to tell me that I came all the way here, and now you can't find the film?" I finally pried out another number from the man, who suggested the one he was looking for might be one digit away from that number, but he had looked in our printed catalog and "we didn't have it." I would describe him as being a bit agitated.

At his point I suggested that he let me look some more. A quick look on line in the catalog showed that we did indeed have it. I told him so, and he repeated, rather vehemently, that the "catalog says not." I assured him that the on-line catalog was sometimes more up to date and went to look for the film. Unfortunately, the film was not in the cabinet where it should have been. So, worried about facing the man, I made one more stop at our 'Short-term Film Cabinet' in the off-chance it had been erroneously placed there. Wonder of wonders, it was there! I gave it to the man, and he, with a harrumph, marched off to a viewer and I never heard another peep from him.

Later in the day I brought the incident up with Elder Innskeep, who said I was being very patient with the man; he said he would have preferred to punch him in the nose. We had a chuckle about the incident.
Another lady had been looking for information on wills. She had come up empty and asked me for help. Me... what do I know about wills. Well, back to the FHC catalog and in it I typed Somerset Wills -- 2244 results. She looked at it with me and zeroed in on a film that looked like it might be one of interest. Later in the day I helped her print out a will she had found, executed by one of her husbands ancestors in 1700. She was ecstatic. It looked rather nice, so I suggsted she should get it copied on some parchment-type paper to make it look more authentic. She came to thank me before she left and said she was going to follow my suggestion and even have it framed to give her husband for Christmas..... if she could curb her enthusiasm and keep it a secret.
We received some 800+ new films from SLC and we began to check them, label them and sort them to include in our cabinets and catalog. This is no small task..... consider integrating 800+ films into the existing 57,000 films means moving lots of films and takes a lot of work. So where did my job description list this! And not one of the films wanted to be 'baptized.'
I've been designated "Official Maintenance and Repair" missionary. We had a microfilm viewer that had a bad slip in it's drive mechanism when trying to advance the films in the reader. After some careful analysis, I found a gear that had been somehow installed backwards -- take it out, turn it around, re-install and voila.... works fine.
There is a door to a passageway where we have a number of film cabinets. It happens to have a one-way latch. The latch had been modified rube-goldberg style to provide a pull handle on the outside of the door to allow for opening both ways. It broke! I did a little "advanced rube-goldberg" work on it to make a new handle. Seems to work fine.
One of the other Senior missionaries had tried to 'laminate' something for her Primary lesson, and the laminator had 'terminally' jammed. I took it completely apart, cleared the jam and put it back together....and there were no parts left over. Hooray!! It works!! Yep... again...fine.
Most importantly, you should see Mom. People come in and she welcomes them, shows them around and helps them get started. I had to smile yesterday, when Elder Richins commented about how at ease she has become in helping patrons. She's over at a computer showing patrons where to click and what to enter to search for an ancestor. A computer mind you!
Then there's the Bells. I'm the low E and F guy. Mom's the top of the staff F and G. We are getting ready for several performances, the first of which, and perhaps the most important, is tomorrow night. We are doing a re-broadcast of the First Presidency Christmas message followed by a program, which we're on. We played last night, as a sort of dress rehearsal, on the street corner by the skating rink. We were less than perfect, but it was fun.

Well so much for bring you up to date. If you've read this far, great ... I'm glad to share our adventures. It rained all day today. We went to the Tate British Museum.... it was, for me, just OK. More later

Love you all....... Dad

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