Thankful Journal 2020 - continued

 

Day 21 - I just noticed that yesterday I posted as Day 30, made a quick correction and we are back on track. Last night I was working hard to finish the list of books used for the major current family history project. Today was for relaxing and celebrating. Some very generous people helped me along this road of discovery. Here are the results.

156 Books viewed for a list of surnames - Tidd, Teed, Death, De Ath, Dodman, Mazry, Mazzy, Appleyard, etc., mostly in Virginia and some in New England. One friend has 112 Virginia books and 15 New England books, and 38 had important information. There were 29 books reviewed by a volunteer at the Genealogical Forum of Oregon and 11 had key information. This took a couple of months to accomplish. I am so grateful for everyone who assisted with this project. Now I am patiently waiting for the box of six books from GFO which should arrive on Monday. Miracles happen daily in our lives and I give thanks for those blessings in my life. Look for the miracles happening in your life.

 

Day 22 - Have you noticed a change to some of the posts being shared by your family, friends and acquaintances? On Friday the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and others throughout the world were issued a challenge by the President of the Church, Russell M. Nelson, age 96. The challenge is to write posts about Gratitude for seven days. My writing actually began November 1 and will go to November 30. If you want to join the group sharing on facebook use #GiveThanks. There are already almost 1.5 million views of the short live video of his presentation. Having these posts reach out to people around the world is the goal. Listen to his own post of gratitude. If nothing else take time to read some of the very endearing posts as they can lift our spirits and help us face the challenges of our time.

 

Day 23 - Three more days and our family will have some time dedicated to visiting with each other. We will be joining on Zoom from three or four different places. The spirit of the holidays can be felt in our home. I often reflect how these traditional events help us through the winter months of unpredictable weather. We don't usually travel very far during these months, so staying close to home is fine for us. We enjoy putting out the decorations, listening to Christmas music, eating traditional foods, and reflecting on our blessings. These days we limit presents to the grandchildren, which is especially nice as I have not been out shopping more than a handful of times in the last nine months. Online shopping is okay, but I am a person who just likes to walk through the store. With added restrictions for shopping, travel, etc. things just seem easier to deal with. So relax, carefully spend your time in doing things that matter the most and let other things go. We live in a time of amazing things. Be grateful and share that gratitude.

 

Day 24 - This day I am feeling grateful for education. When I attended Brigham Young University my major was education. Then one day they told that with my hearing disability I would not be able to teach. It was a devastating thing to learn. There was plenty to be learned those two semesters and I was honored to receive an associate’s degree in Spanish. During summer break David proposed and we were married at the end of June. My teaching career had just begun. As our family grew to include six children there were plenty of opportunities to teach them. Then there were other volunteer efforts, preschool at home, and community involvement. Over the last twenty years the number of classes taught for genealogy became more than 200. A little over twenty years ago the decision was made to return to college after fifty years and I earned a Bachelor of General Studies in Family History. Even though life was crazy busy this huge accomplishment meant so much to me. Every day I ponder what is next for me. I am very thankful for the blessing of education! This year I finally got hearing aids and they are fantastic, state of the art, additions to my life.

 

Day 25 - and I want to express how grateful I am for Thanksgiving and our ancestors who had the dream of coming to the New World. This past year through DNA testing our family has come to know more people who we share these ancestors with. Through birth, adoption, and just plain love we gather these individuals into the fold. These unexpected new to us cousins bring with them their own stories. They are encouraged to test if they have not already done so that we can look for even more relatives. There is always the possibility of unknown parentage that needs to be handled with gentle care. I believe adoptees deserve to have answers to questions they have, but also respect the privacy of the newly discovered relatives. Both need to understand that finding one another does not automatically create a new family circle. This must be done with loving patience. May you at Thanksgiving find peace in discovery. We need to have gratitude for the opportunities these amazing tools bring for so many people. I don’t sell the tests, but I want to provide an objective understanding of what the tests can provide.

 

 

 

Day 26 - On this day when our stomachs and hearts are full we remember with peace and thanksgiving the joy that life brings. We all pitched in to clean the house, set the table, cook the food, serve the food and clean up afterwards. This year we ate the traditional foods including turkey, gravy, scalloped potatoes, asparagus, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, stuffing, fresh fruit and vegetables, crackers and cheese, rolls and butter, pumpkin pie and  pecan pie, and homemade grape juice from our garden. With fewer people at our table there are plenty of leftovers in the refrigerator. We should have done like my niece and her family. They delivered plates of food to those who were home alone and elderly. It was her husband's birthday and she made his favorite meal similar to the above list.  My brother did a different act of service when he went to the cemetery where our parents are interred. He and his wife cleaned our parent’s headstone, even repainting some of the faded letters. They were surprised at how many people were at the cemetery. We communicated with everyone, by phone, email and Zoom. For me I enjoyed the personal conversations the most. We keep in regular contact, but on this day it was significant to share our stories. There is a need to be more purposeful in reaching out to each other. May God bless you, one and all, as we continue on to Christmas and the New Year.

 

Day 27 - Cabin fever anyone? Sometimes I just need to see wide open spaces. With neuropathy in my hands and feet it can be hard to travel very far. This year things have improved some. With Covid challenging our world there have been some great accomplishments. My goal is to be able to go visit our daughter and her family in Wyoming. The last few trips to see our daughter and son in law in Portland have been better. Going to the doctor is a little shorter trip and is actually enjoyable. A great blessing in living in a rural area is the scenery when traveling. While we are not going out much, I truly appreciate having a break from staying at home. At least our budget looks better when we stay home!

 

Day 28, 29 and 30 - Yep, this is the grand finale. Back to working on the project that I hope to complete this coming year. It is genealogy at its best. Over 400 years of family history. About thirteen generations of amazing information. This is my only line to come this early to New England. It is why my area of accreditation is in New England. They kept such beautiful records. The key is finding the records, some of which are still coming to life after hundreds of years being kept in archives. A heartfelt gratitude goes out to familysearch.org. They have been mining these records for over a century and making them freely accessible. Then they teamed up with ancestry.com and americanancestors.org to continue to seek out more records. Again familysearch.org does their part of the work with volunteers and missionaries. They are working around the world, around the clock to digitize records to protect them from being lost to future generations. If you want to help they are always looking for people willing to do indexing the records to further move the work forward. It is an amazing work and I am thankful to be a part of it!