Madison's Missionary Journey - Week 3

Hi Everyone! 

Thank you so much to all those who have written to me over the past 2 weeks, I will be replying soon! I cannot believe that I have completed 3 weeks of my mission already! Time is flying by!!

( A beautiful piece of art in the Center)

It's been a good and fruitful week. I was able to help a variety of patrons this week.

 Two that really stand out to me are, Sisonke and Mimi.

 Sisonke is a younger sister and was very nervous to be there in the Family History Center. Sometimes doing something new can be overwhelming, but taking that courageous first step is all that is needed to start a wonderful journey. I was able to help her enter new information and print ordinance cards. 

Mimi is an older African sister who is very sweet. As I saw how much work has been done on her family tree and how many of her ancestors have had ordinances done in the Temple, it reminded me that I need to get MY family names to the temple. 

It simply isn't enough that they are on Family Search.

 The job is not yet done!!

(The Center foyer/waiting area - complete with toys for the children and scriptures!)

I was able to complete 3 batches of indexing this week and work on my special project.

 For those who do not know what indexing is - I basically looked at scanned images of documents and extracted necessary data, such as marriage events, death notices, etc and indexed the information online to make them digitally searchable. (We need more indexers...and anyone can do this!!!) 

( My special project! Look at those dates.......1600s! Super exciting!!!!)

On Thursday, I was able to meet up with 2 of my childhood friends, Lilian, and Jared Shongwe. 

They are both returned missionaries! 

Along with my brother Liam, we spend time serving in our community for Nelson Mandela Day. 

We added pass-along cards to items of warm clothing and hung them in trees, in areas frequented by homeless people, inviting them to please take any item that they needed and to join with us at our Sunday meetings.

 It felt good to be serving in this way!

Despite getting a dose of flu and not being able to serve at the center on Friday, I was able to work on my own family history and also helped my parents with various work on FamilySearch. I showed my Dad how to merge duplicates and make sense of some of the information. We made a good breakthrough in my maternal great-grandmother's Kruger line, going back to the 1850s. My dad was SO happy!

"Some men believe that it is only GREAT power that holds evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the SMALL things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love." (Gandalf - The Hobbit)

I hope that we can all remember that it is the small, consistent efforts that can bring about the greatest change. I am so grateful to be a missionary!

Much Love

Sister Erasmus