though there were some trying times, including the problems Mom had with getting the camera broken, and spilling the lunch on her white blouse. We were able to get others to take digital pictures, so we got by on that account. And Mom was wearing an outer „FamilySearch“ shirt which she buttoned up over the white blouse. She joked about smelling like lunch for the rest of the day. But despite the unhappy moments, there was a lot to make the weekend a positive memory. We were told to prepare for about 60 participants, so we printed handouts for 70 plus a few that we had that were defective. We had to give out every one. I had to teach two classes in German. Each class was two hours long. And the connection to the Internet was intermittently not working, so we would have to deviate from the plan from time to time. In both classes, however, we kept going for the full time, often using something we had stored in the computer from some previous presentation. We would load up a PowerPoint presentation and use a few slides to answer a question, then use another one for the next question. In both classes we finally got a good connection for long enough to demonstrate how the use of a name index can speed up genealogy research. 
I told them of asking my oldest sister about my grandparents none of whom I knew. She gave me a few names which I wrote down. I then opened the FamilySearch web site and got into the Record Search Pilot to demonstrate how I could learn more about them. I entered “Emma Shiply” (misspelled) with a time period covering about 90 years before I was born, and had it search for my Grandma. The first search produced over 260 names in just 2 seconds, and Grandma was in the list, but way down in the list, so instead of trying to read each entry to find her, I refined the search by limiting it to the United States. This reduced the number by about 40 names, then I further limited it to Utah, United States. This produced only two results, and the spelling for both was “Shipley”. You can retrieve a digital image of the source document right there in Record Search and it shows a Census record for 1870 with Emma at age 5 with her brothers and sisters and parents. Using this experience we could talk about a whole lot of genealogical issues, including the SOUNDEX coding (which took care of the spelling problem), the speed of name searches (each search was completed in less than 5 seconds), and the rate of information retrieval when working with text versus the retrieval of the digital image (a few seconds as opposed to half a minute or more). It provides a very convincing explanation for the need to create a name index for all of the genealogical records. Everyone in the family should try this search in a Family Home Evening. See how fast you can go from two names (one of which is spelled incorrectly) and a guess at dates and locations to some valuable information about our family. This demonstration was very convincing for the participants in the classes. Just start at www.familysearch.org, then click on the search tab, then RecordSearch Pilot.
The other part of our classes was training in reading the old German hand writing. The handouts we had prepared contained several pages of helps, including one section I had created that was unique in its design as it was organized by the basic shapes of the characters rather than by alphabetical order. Of course, there were people there who could teach me much, but I just let them teach the other participants.The people in Hannover were wonderful. We really enjoyed working with them. Additionally, we had two of the Church-Service Missionary couples there, and we will give you more about them in another post. They added much to our enjoyment of the trip. There was already a floor-covering fair scheduled for Hannover, so all of the Hotels there were full or very expensive, so the local leaders arranged for us to stay in a little city about 50 kilometers away called Stadthagen. This community has one of the oldest branches/wards of the Church in Germany, We found one of the Church-Service mission couples was staying in the same hotel, so we got together and walked around the town before dinner on Friday night, and we were able to take them with us on Saturday morning instead of them using public transportation to get to Hannover. These Church-Service mission couples are a tremendous local Church asset.
After our Hannover weekend, it became necessary to immediately put a lot of effort into another project. Our little building on Steinmühl Strasse was to be the venue for a meeting of the FamilySearch leadership of Europe, with additional visitors from Salt Lake. Beginning Tuesday, there were three days of meetings among the upper echelons of the organization. We understand they discussed all kinds of policy and budget issues.
Obviously, we weren't in the meetings, but our assignment was to assure that the participants had snacks, drinks, and fruit available during the meetings, and lunches each day. Mom took the lead in this, and did a great job. On Thursday, the directors for Sweden had to leave early to go to the wedding of their daughter, and we were assigned to provide the transportation to the airport. That meant getting up about 4:00 in the morning so we could pick them up at their hotel in Friedrichsdorf (near the temple) and drive them to the airport over on the other side of Frankfurt to be there by around 6:30 am. Even though we (I) made mistakes on the roads, we got them there. That was our first time to take that particular route, since from our part of town a different route works better. 
Then on Friday, before the last of the participants left we had a baptism session in the temple beginning at 8:00 in the morning. The FamilySearch Support office provided all of the officiators, and witnesses for what was quite a long session doing work for Russians. The Europe East Area FamilySearch Support director, Dema Mikulin and his wife Victoria Mikulina who live near Moscow, Russia had brought the names with them. Dema and Vicka are quite a young couple in their early thirties, but he is also the District President in the Church presiding over 5 branches. Vicka is able to stay home and take care of their 5 year old daughter. During the baptism Pat got a chance to talk to Vicha and found out that she had an opportunity to live for a year on an exchange student program with a family in Gilbert, Arizona. The Lord placed her in an LDS family and she eventurally gained a testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and joined the Church. Later she met her husband to be in the Ukraine, where she is from, and in two weeks they were married and moved to Russia where her husband was working for the Church. During the baptismal service she was able to have the work done for both of her grandparents. Now, she said, some of my family are members of the Church. Dema and Vicka are such a sweet, humble couple. All these activities helped to make it a very interesting week.
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