November 6, 2008

Turning our hearts

About 6 weeks ago, Tim received a call inviting us to join a family history class during Sunday school. I won't lie, I did not want to go. I love our gospel doctrine class. Bishop Wride, our former bishop, and his wife teach the class. It is a wonderful class. However, Tim was very obedient and told the SS President that he would go and invite me as to go too. I was reluctant, but I went mainly so I could be with Tim. I admit, I had a bad attitude about it.

Right from the beginning of the class I really liked both of our teachers. They are an "older" retired couple that I really didn't know. It is a small class with only 9 people attending. Slowly but surly my heart has begun to be turned. After the first couple of weeks, Tim and I pulled out the family history journal that mom and dad gave all of their children a few years ago. We started to pour through the precious gift. The journal is AMAZING, FANTASTIC & WONDERFUL. THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU. Tim took the journal for a "show and tell" to our class. Everyone was so impressed and very jealous of the book.

One of the first things we needed to do was download PAF 5 to our computer. It is a free download from the church. They have been very generous to offer to come help, so this week I took them up on it. They have been telling us that sometime in the near future, the old DOS system that contains much of the church family history information will be taken off of the computers. The reason being is that the old system is jamming up the new system and at some point will need to be removed. At the Ogden family history (I didn't realize it is the 2nd largest in the world..first being Salt Lake) out of the approximately 60 computers, the old DOS information is on 5 of them. I was able to download to a flash drive all of the information on both the Marden and Ditty families that are on record at the church. I was surprised to learn that there weren't a ton of names on record. Especially on Lily Ann Mullen's side. It drops off quickly. There were only around 300 names which may sound like a lot, but I found 7,800 on the Ensign side of the family. So, here is my question. Does anyone out there have the Marsden/Ditty genealogy information besides those 300 names? It was interesting because they showed me how to do a search for information on families, and posted was a plea from Auntie Bea looking for information.

I would love to get any more information if anyone has it. I would be happy to share the information I got from the family history center with anyone who is interested.

I love how Grandma blogs about family history. I have had fun learning more. Keep up the good work Grandma.

1 comment:

Little GrumpyAngel said...

That's really neat that you're getting into it Marge. I attended a Genealogy class when we lived in Salinas and it was great and very challenging. I found out that there are not too many records for me to research because my ancestors lived in a country that saw so much destruction during World War II and churches/public offices that held records were bombed/burnt and records destroyed. My siblings found the same challenge. I hope you will be led to opportunities of finding records of family remembers that may not hve been found yet.