062417_Family History Center

The new Family History Center in St George had an open house last week.  They dedicated it last Wednesday night and opened it for tours on Thursday morning, the 22nd.  We went to visit it and take a tour Thursday then I went back on Saturday evening just before they closed so I could get a couple of pictures.

The entry.  Those shades won't be up once they open.

 

At least in my mind, a lot of the stuff is pretty glitzy and not all that useful for researchers but it is pretty interesting.  It displays your LDS.org data in pretty interesting ways but it's still your data that you've come up with.  I didn't see any way to add more data but, then, it was only a few minutes at the several different stations.  Maybe I'll change my mind after I use it.  They give you a small tablet when you first walk in, you login to your LDS.org account then all your data is displayed in various different ways.  In this case, your family stands on certain spots and you select a background for a family photo.  The pict is then sent to the LDS.org email address on your account.

  

The main hall has everything you could possibly want.

  

In one room they have the ability to look at your family tree and look at each person.  You can see what was happening at times in their lives.

 

You stand there and use hand signals to select various images to represent what your ancestors looked like.  Not seeing a whole lot of use in this, personally. 

  

The tablet is on the right.  You can select an ancestor and look at their lives in great detail.

 

Over in the far corner is a child care corner.  Parents can bring in their kids, put them in the area in front of the computers, and keep an eye on them while they do research and the kids play.  It only has one exit and a lot of toys.  

 

This is available in other places on FamilySearch but it is pretty neat to see it on a huge screen.  It shows where your ancestors emigrated to where.

  

You can go back into a special room and, as a family, do a special session with an "interviewer" and come up with a kind of family session.  Kind of neat.

  

This is the research room.  I don't think this is nearly big enough but that's just me.

 

There are two classrooms for classes.  When there are no classes they said these can be used for research.  

They also have a place to turn slides into JPGs for digital format.  They only have one setup and I have hundreds of slides so I signed up to give it a try next week.  Should be interesting.  there are no films here at all.  Now, if I can only find Sarah Akin's parents....

062417_Cove Fort

Heading home from the pageant, just before the beginning of I-70 at the Mile 1 marker is Cove Fort.  It's a way station that was in service as a stopping place for travelers from the 1860s until the 1890s.  Built in the middle of nowhere at the time by Ira Hinckley, the grandfather of the recent president of the church, it was a pretty active place to be for those years.

After listening to a 15 minute video we walked across the street to Cove Fort.  We also talked to the missionary that was our guide.  They have 18 couples there that are guides or 36 tour guides.  They live in small houses behind where I am taking the picture.  I suppose they live there all year round but they do live in the same mission that we live in.  Only there is no costco within a two hour drive of the place.  Pretty remote.  They have the same mission president we do.  NIce tour guide, though.

 

Arlene and our guide approaching the fort.

 

Over the gate.  The guide told us they never used to fort as they thought they would.  Never fought off an attack of any kind.  It just ended up being a way station for travelers.  

 

The fort had 6 rooms on each side.  The North side was for family and the South side was for visitors.  Each room had one or two beds and a chimney plus various furniture.   

 

The main office had a strong box that weighed 70 or 80 pounds.  That made it so difficult to move that it discouraged theft just by pure weight and, I suppose, location.

 

Of course, it was a Post Office, so had to have a picture of it...

 

Interior of the fort.

The fort had a telegraph for communication.  Here is a sample of it receiving.  I believe it's saying welcome to Cove Fort but I'm a bit rusty on my Morse Code.  It's been a while.

 

The kitchen/eating area.  Our guide says they fed up to 40 people a day plus, when Brigham Young came through, and additional 40 or so.

 

They made about 40 loaves of bread a day.  The bread pans, upper right hand corner, were five pound loaf pans.  That's a lot of bread each and every day! 

 

This is an outside gun port.  Never used that could be verified.  Only one shooting incident was ever recorded where two brothers found a revolver and one shot the other.  The one receiving the gunshot survived.  It was Gordon B Hinckley's father. 

 

They have quite an extensive garden project at the fort.  It covers the back and the side of the fort.

 

They had Elder and Sister Crow out guarding the garden.

 

Well, now, that place looks very familiar.

 

Ira Hinckley and his wife. 

We had a great time while there and learned a couple of things about an interesting place in the middle of nowhere.  It's still the middle of nowhere, too.  

062417_Osbourne Inn

We stayed at the Osbourne Inn in Spring City, Utah.  The proprietor/owners are Dane and Barbara Chapman.  We knew the Chapman's back in the early 90's when they lived in our ward in Camino for a few years....when I had hair and we had a lot fewer kids.  We also served with them in Nauvoo when we were there serving a mission last year.  It was great to catch up on how everyone was doing.

The Seger's and Dr. Dane and Barbara Chapman.  Dane is now working in Nauvoo at the Carthage Hospital as a physician once a month.  He flies back to help them out.  They need his expertise back in the Nauvoo area.  Barbara maintains the Inn but is thinking about turning it into a family type rental for overnights.  It is a unique home.

 

The classic appearance of a B&B.

 

Welcoming you into the Inn.

 

The hallway to our room.  As viewed from our door.  We were on the first floor.

 

The Fox room, where we spent the night.

 

The private bathroom.  Even had a clawfoot tub/shower.

 

The sitting parlour, of course.  The Chapman's sat with us for a little while and talked of the stuff we have done since we parted company in Nauvoo.  And, it was all air conditioned for you sissies.  Not that you would need it as it was pretty nice the two days we were there.  ...and Wi-Fi.

 

For good luck, they have a Robin on their roof jack...no really, it was a live one.  Sat there for about 5 minutes while I was taking stuff out to the car on Saturday morning.  No particular hurry.

 

Just across the street is Orson Hyde's last home.  It doesn't have any signs saying so but historically that's the story.  Nicely kept up.

 

That's a gate closer.  You can also use it to kill a bear if you need to....

 

Walking down the street a little, towards a delicious breakfast at Das Cafe, there is this beautiful 1902 LDS chapel that is pretty unique in architecture.  And, of course, the Chapman's, living right next door, don't go there.  They attend across town.  That would be too easy....

 

History on "Spring Town"

 

Last, but not least, Arlene in front of a post office.  Spring City, Utah.  'Course, I'm in it too 'cause Dane insisted!

062317

We've been waiting for a while for the Manti Pageant, "The Mormon Miracle Pageant" as it's called officially, and it finally came this past weekend.  We also got the opportunity to visit with the Chapman's in their Bed and Breakfast, the Osbourne Inn, for overnight accommodations.  We got a little time to catch up on things and to renew our friendship.  More on that in tomorrow's installment.  We went to the ROC for part of the morning then headed up to Manti and Spring City later in the morning.  Since it was going to be 115 that day in St George, no argument there.  However, since the humidity runs about 1 to 2%, it's not nearly as bad as anywhere in Kalifornia.

One of our Service Missionary couples, Elder/Sister Anglesey, also went to the pageant and booked a room just across the way from the pageant.  They offered to get us a parking place at the motel so we were able to park there (no charge) much closer than we had thought we were going to.  That's Sister Anglesey pushing the baby carriage there with her Chihuahua in it.  Cute little dog but needed to be corralled.  Didn't make a peep during the whole performance and we sat there from 5:30 until 11 or so later that night.  Just wanted to be next to Momma.  The motel office behind was selling Pageant Meals for $6.  Barbeque beef sandwiches, a bag of chips, a soda and a dessert (for me a Ding Dong).  We didn't have anything all day so this was more than reasonable and pretty tasty.  

 

The pageant is performed on the hill below the temple.  That is a pretty impressive hill.  Throughout the afternoon/evening, I watched actors walking around and not all of them were all that young so I'm thinking, "You really need to be in pretty good shape to run up and down that hill to be a performer".  

 

That is a lot of chairs!  I asked around about how many and couldn't get a good response.  Looking online, I found out they set up between 12 and 14, 000 chairs for an 8 day run (2 weekends).  Consider that Nauvoo sets up only about 2, 200 chairs for a nearly 30 day run.  Makes you wonder.  And Manti has about 3, 100 people in the whole town.  Where do all those people come from?  That's a pretty stupendous effort on the locals part.

  

We were warned, from several different sources, about the protestors that post themselves outside the entrance.  There is a street that splits the park area and the seating area.  I was told the church bought that street and doesn't allow the protestors to stand there any more.  They can protest all they want outside the gates,  it's standard fare as they protest in front of temples and about anything the church does anyway.  This preacher was hollering, "Holy, Holy, Holy.  God Almighty", etc... Over and over again.  Then, occasionally, they'd kneel and pray for our souls.  Or something like that.  I appreciate being prayed for....I think.  Problem was, when they were saying the opening prayer for the pageant, this guy was screaming his prayer very disrespectfully.  Kind of distracting.  But, I remember prayers at family home evening when the kids were young so it wasn't too awfully different.  Brother Chapman was doing security that night and said Security found an abandoned backpack.  They had to look inside to see who it belonged to.  It was one of these protestors and they found a paycheck/pay stub for $700, apparently to disrupt the proceedings.  So, someone was there but not out of his convictions...I'm thinking it's called "filthy lucre" or something like that.  

 

FamilySearch had booths there.  Several, in fact.  I asked Sister Seger if she wanted to go do some indexing...

  

Dusk finally came around and the pageant looked like it would start.  It doesn't start until 9:30 and runs till after 11:00.  I won't get that time back.  The seats didn't really start to fill until 8 or so.

 

It was well lit and could be heard everywhere.  As it grew darker, it was even easier to see.  Some scenes literally took most of the mountain.

 

In this scene they lit up an angel on the top of the temple.  Probably the only time I wanted to have my 300MM lens on my camera in the last 2 years.  But, that thing is pretty heavy and the close lens is an 80 so taking close pictures is difficult.  Not sure if you can discern the angel or not.

 

If this isn't the whole cast, it's gotta be pretty close.  Because of where we were sitting, I had to shoot between the temporary stanchions for the lights.  I wouldn't make that mistake again but we didn't sit there and get baked waiting for the sun to go down either.  I guess you need to pick you battles.  There's always next year.  

 

At the end, the cast is up on the parking lot above, singing.  It was pretty impressive.  We enjoyed the pageant.  So did 12,000 other people.  Getting out wasn't all that bad but it did take a while.  They traffic was usually pretty bad going North but I really didn't think it was all that bad.  I've certainly seen worse elsewhere.

061417

Some catching up...

Elder Cheney came down from Salt Lake to visit with us for a couple of hours on the 14th of June.  Mostly just to catch us up on the latest things going on up North.  So, we had a luncheon in his honor and celebrated Flag Day.  Any excuse for a luncheon.  He shared some of his experiences working with records and missionaries over the years.   We had a good time listening to his stories and testimony.  And the lunch was pretty tasty, too.

Elder Mathews started out the 11 AM festivities/devotional by doing a PowerPoint presentation about what the ROC does including where the digitized films come from and what we do every day.  It's a presentation we all have available now for our own presentations to give at wards if they want to know what we do.  

Elder Cheney was introduced and spoke about his experiences working with many languages up at the ROC in Salt Lake and where we are going.  He also gave us some inspirational direction, which we always need.

 

The devotional room was full, as it usually is when we have a guest speaker.  

 

Then on to the main event, the eating.  Elder Savage, one of our young Service Missionaries, who serves in the North Wing along with Elder/Sister Payne as their leads.

 

The devotional room turned into our eating room after the training session.  A nice place to gather since the air conditioning works much better than outside.   That is important here in St George!

 

Elder/Sister Mathews trying to get in a couple of bites as I wander around taking pictures.  He cooks and she tries to coordinate the activities.

 

Elder/Sister McAra on the left, the leads for the ROC with their Grandson, who is thinking about attending Dixie College in the fall.  Elder (back to us)/Sister Parker are a couple of our newest Service Missionaries.  They are out in the South Wing with us doing pre-indexing records preparation.  Elder Parker had never touched a computer before he came to the ROC so this has been a new experience for him.  Albeit, a somewhat difficult one.  He is doing just fine.  Anyone can do this!