Historia Familiar

This week is great.  We have a ton of progressing investigators, and now we just have to maintain them as progressing.  Guillermo is a young man who is friends with the daughter of the first counselor of the branch presidency.  He is progressing fantastically, and it's been fantastic to see his friend there to support him throughout his journey into the Gospel.

We've started to do divisiones in Rio Bueno.  We don't do divisions in the beginning of training because it's a lot to ask of a new missionary that doesn't speak Spanish well to direct a lesson.  But Elder Warner is ready for the challenge, and the best way to learn how to teach is to HAVE to teach.  We've been working more efficiently as far as teaching lessons.

This weekend we had a family history activity with the youth of the branch.  The branch temple trip is at the end of November, and the goal of the activity was that each youth would be able to take a family name.  There are seven youth signed up, and so far two of them have been able to enter the information into familysearch.org and print off the form.  I think that all seven of them will be able to reach the goal.

I'm been learning a lot about family history in the last two weeks, so that we would be able to pull off the activity.  I had never actually entered into familysearch.org until last week, and then I was able to see the fruits of the long diligent hours that my mother has put into family history.  Our ward mission leader is a bit of a family history guru, and he wanted to see how far back my genealogy went.  So we started to click and expand the family tree a bit, and it just kept going and going and going.  Guess how far we got back to?  500 BC.

WHAT.

So we showed that to the youth to kick off the activity, because most of them were first-or-second generation members, and they were starting completely from scratch.  They thought it was pretty cool to see all of the Kings of France and England in the 1600s and the Roman Emperors in the 100s.  A member even Googled some of the kings, and it turns out that they have pictures in monasteries and such.  I'll admit, I thought it was pretty cool too.  I had no idea that I was descended from Kings and Roman Emperors.  I'm definitely a little bit prideful about my heritage now.  It's kind of cool, because I think to myself, "Well, if my ancestors could reign over the Eastern Hemisphere, I can definitely talk to this stranger on the street."  I know that they're rooting for me, haha.

We visited a volcano this P-day.  It was sweet.

Love you,
-Elder Crotzer

Editor's note:  The genealogy research done by Thomas' mother only reaches back to the middle 1600's in some cases and the pre-Revolutionary War period of the 1700's in other cases for colonial America settlers to "New Amsterdam" (known today as the southern tip of Manhattan Island).  It is possible that genealogy research contributed by others may take some family lines back further, especially if one is able to "cross the ocean" back to European origins.  Familysearch.org is a vast repository of genealogical records that anyone can use to search for their ancestry.