The Family History Library has been rather slow this past week.  However, that should change shortly as in a little more than a week the RootsTech conference here in Salt Lake will take place.  I expect that the library will be fairly busy then.  On our British Services Floor we were all a little saddened as one of the young Full Time Elders was released and sent home due to some health issues.  A new Elder has been assigned and we expect some other significant changes this week.  More info as it becomes available.

In light of a bunch of filler for the remainer of this post, I am including a talk that Lorene and I will be giving tomorrow at the Weekly Monday Morning Mission Devotional.  Generally the Senior Couple Missionaries speak individually, however we have determined that we will stand together and give our talks by alternating back and forth.  The text in regular script will be presented by Lorene and the italicized script will be presented by me.  Our comments are suppose to be three minutes each, however ours is around seven minutes so we expect to beshown the red card which means its time to finish and sit down.  It should be interesting and we are excited to have the opportunity to speak to almost three hundred missionaries - well maybe excited is a little bit of an exaggeration.

"Good morning Elders and Sisters.  My name is Lorene Eggleston Walker and I am the daughter of Selar Orland and Arva Williams Eggleston.  I am the second of 6 children, 3 girls and 3 boys.  My parents both grew up in small Utah towns, my father in Eden and my mother in Vineyard.  They met in California while visiting family and friends and decided to stay there to raise their family.

I was blessed to be born of goodly parents who loved the Lord.  They both went on missions as young adults and have been called to serve missions on the other side of the veil.  I know this because of a dream I had after my father died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50 when I was 19 years old and in my first year of college.  In my dream, he came back and told me that he was called by the Lord to do His work on the other side.

Sister Walker and I met at the Institute of Religion adjacent to Mt. San Antonio Jr. College in 1968 in Southern California.  Upon asking Sister Walker what college classes she was taking, she informed me that her hardest class was in ear training which was a music class.  However, not wanting to let the opportunity to pass me by, I pulled her hair away from the side of her head and said as politely as I could:  jump ear, jump.  From that moment on she reveled in my sense of humor as she has for the past 43 years.  Leaving college, I joined the Air Force, and we saw each other one more time before our summer reunion in 1971.  We both happened to attend a Young Adult dance in Sacramento not knowing the other one of us would be there.  It had been several months since we had seen each other, and at the dance we both saw each other about the same time.  However, Sister Walker was a little bit unsure if it really was me.  I still don't understand her hesitancy, as the only thing different about me was my toupee and, golly gee, just because she never saw me with much hair on my head is no reason not to recognize me.

Thirteen years after my father died, when my mother was dying I was comforted by the Spirit with the knowledge that everything would be alright.  After she passed away, I questioned the Lord–His definition of “alright” and mine were not the same.  This period of time was very difficult for me.  I was a busy mother of 4 with one on the way, going to school to finish classes I needed to earn my California teaching credential, and of course serving in the church.  As I pleaded with the Lord to understand why my parents were taken so early in life, the Holy Spirit comforted me and I was blessed with the knowledge that Heavenly Father was in charge and it was His will.  Although it’s been difficult, I have learned to accept His will through this and other trials in my life.  I have also learned to depend on the Lord.

I, too, was born of goodly parents, or more to the point, I was born of a goodly number of parents.  First there are my natural parents Richard and Eleanor Walker, although actually Gray is my grandfather's last name and he was either adopted or hijacked the name Walker when his mother married John Walker after her marriage to Ora Gray ended.  Secondly, my natural mother returned to work right after I was born and I was placed in a foster home where I was welcomed into the Weberg family until I started high school then I returned to my real parent’s home.  While in High School, discovering my parents alcohol abuse problem , I spent a lot of time with the family of my best friend, Mike Vehawn.  After my parents died in 1985, Brother and Sister Vehawn became surrogate grandparents to our children. Lastly, there is my Mission Mom, Sister Sharon Walker, who we met in the MTC when we started our mission at the end of August.  So as you can see, I have a goodly number of parents and for that matter a good number of family lines to do family history work for.  It is almost overwhelming at times.

My husband’s parents died within two months of each other 2 years after my mom’s death.  Our oldest daughter was 11 years old and our youngest was two.  Because our children grew up pretty much without the privilege of having a close relationship with grandparents, we decided after we retired to move close to our children so that our grandchildren would have that privilege.  Hence, we bought a home in Cedar City, Utah where we would spend the summers and one in Surprise, Arizona, where we would spend the winters.  Of course, the nice weather in each place during those seasons had nothing to do with our decision.  We have spent the last 4 years going back and forth between our two homes.

Almost from the beginning of our marriage, my wife and I have talked of serving a mission after our children were grown.  As the years came and went, however, she developed some health issues so that when the time came that we were retired and would otherwise be considering full-time missionary service, we figured that her health problems would prevent it.  So we decided that we would serve as Church Service Missionaries.  We looked at a few possibilities and ended up serving at Deseret Industries. 

We were able to serve in Cedar City while we were there, and in Phoenix when we were in Arizona.  It was a wonderful experience which lasted for a little over two years.  After that, my husband started volunteering at the family history center in Cedar City.  After a short time, he tried to convince me to come and serve there also, but I felt that I didn’t know enough to be able to be of service.  Having come from a long line of pioneer ancestors, there was little, I thought, that I could do family history-wise.  Boy, was I wrong!  After I got started on family history, I discovered that there was much I could do to clean up the records that were on Family Tree.  I also found some ancestors which needed their temple work done.  It wasn’t long before the Spirit of Elijah took over, so, after a few weeks of my husband nagging, opps, I mean encouraging me, I too started volunteering at the Family History Center.  We also went to the temple regularly and did the work for several family names that we had found.

This continued for another year and a half.  Then, last spring, we felt like we needed to do something more.  I started looking at other volunteer opportunities, and Sister Walker did some sewing, but we both spent a lot of time watching TV and otherwise wasting our time. 

Just before April Conference, I knelt and prayed for direction and the Spirit whispered, “Go on a full-time mission.”  Some other things had led up to this point: for example, a conversation with a sister at the temple while waiting to do initiatory work and a comment from my doctor who is a member of the Church.  I had heard that the mission to the Family History Library in Salt Lake (I didn’t know the full name of the mission at that time) was a good mission to go to if you didn’t have the stamina to serve a proselytizing mission so because of that, and our love for family history, that was where I wanted to go.  So on the Thursday before April Conference, I told my husband that I thought we should go on a full-time mission.  He was so excited, as were our children when we told them.

When we got here and the Mission Presidency said that they had prayed us here, we knew it was true because we had felt the gentle nudgings of the Spirit which brought us to this place at this time.  The Lord has blessed me with improved health and I have discovered that there are some others that have health problems that are worse than mine yet they continue to serve faithfully. 

Being a convert to the Church has resulted in my search for my ancestors a little bit more challenging then Sister Walker’s.  However, since coming to this mission I have had an Elijah moment that I will remember forever.  My paternal grandmother told me that she had a half brother who immigrated to the U. S. in the late 1800's with his father and nanny from Germany; his nanny became his step mother within days of their arrival.  I had found Gustav on the 1894 Michigan State Census and the 1900 U.S. Census, but could find no more trace of him.  About a month ago at the Family History Library I found his death certificate indicating that he died in 1909 at the age of 22.  Shortly after finding this certificate, I had a dream that there was a banner across my family tree on FamilySearch that said "You will be happy to meet Charles, Clara and Gustav." At first I thought this message was for anyone who looked at my family tree, but I have come to understand that the message is just for me, and I look forward to the time on other side of the veil when I will meet my Great-Grandparents Charles and Clara and my Great-Uncle Gustav Janousky.  Recently I have completed his temple ordinances and we plan shortly to complete his temple sealing to his father and step-mother.

We are enjoying our mission here and love serving with so many wonderful people.  We know the gospel is true and bear this testimony in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

January 10, 2016

NEWS FLASH - SALT LAKE CITY

This item has just come in from our correspondent in Salt Lake City, Utah.  It has been reported that the casts from Steve Walker (aka Elder Walker) hands have been removed.  Furthermore, the doctors report that he can once again use the keyboard and resume weekly posts.  Ha, ha just kidding.  I hate to admit it but once you take a break from posting to your blog weekly it gets a little harder to resume writing again.

Things have been rather slow at the library on the British Services floor as most guests that have visited our floor lately seem to be able to find what they need without much assistance from us Missionaries.  However, when we are able to assist they seem to have a variety of needs which give us a little broader perspective and increase our skills a bit.  My assistance has been a little bit more basic than the aid that Lorene is asked to render, but still is important to the guests.  Lorene has had the more complex searches, but she has been able to rise to the challenge.  I am starting to mentally figure how to navigate the aids that allow our guests to search and find their ancestors and am hoping to begin implementing those tools in seeking some members of my own family tree.  Lorene continues to try and fix errors that exist in family tree and it is very frutrating when some of the information that is entered is obviously incorrect or not even possible.  I still am trying to understand why our ancestors want to us to seek them out yet seem so hard to find at times, but it's probably because the things that are most important sometimes take the most effort to achieve.

We still have not been asked to speaking at the weekly Mission Devotional and that is a little discouraging.  We only know of one other set of missionaries who came in with our group back in September that have not spoken, and they are scheduled to speak at the end of the month.  We don't know if we have been overlooked, or if we are on their radar and just have to be patient a little more.  We have our four month interview with the Second Counselor in the Mission Presidency and his wife tomorrow and  we are looking forward to that opportunity.  We have some a great Mission Presidency and their wives are just as awesome.  Their concern for each of the missionaries is matchless.  We continue to grow as we serve and are so appreciative of the support that our fellow missionaires and family give us.

I'd best set this aside so that your favorite Editor-in-Chief, well at least my favorite Editor-in-Chief, can reveiw, revise and otherwise redact my writing.

I "redacted" that statement because Elder Walker is a little too generous with his praise.  I don't think I'm doing any better than he is, but I'm trying!  (I didn't even know what"redact" meant until he explained it to me.  I thought it was a typo!  So I had to redact something just to be funny, but what I said about my abilities compared to his is true.)

We've been given another assignment.  We have been asked to serve on the "Hail and Farewell" committee.  We have our first one tomorrow night.  It should be fun, but I hope we can keep up with all of our responsibilities.  This is the fourth thing we've been asked to dobetween our zone, our branch and the mission.   We've been greatly blessee, however, and continue to enjoy serving the Lord.