Exit Interviews

The exit interview.

Essentially we had two exit interviews.  One with our Family Search supervisor and one with the Mission President.

The one with our supervisor took place at Applebees restaurant.  We had a very nice time this time and we talked about the problem of not enough senior missionaries in the field and the absolute lack of missionaries being called to family history missions.  He asked if we knew of anyone who might agree to come to the Archives and prepare the York records for digitizing.  Apparently they are planning on hiring some people to come to Augusta and digitize the Washington and York county court records.  Just think, they get paid $$ for each image they produce……but the document prep is what is the killer.

We talked him into coming into the archives to see what we had done and what we were doing and he was impressed.  He asked who taught me the system I have been using to write out the information for the writs.  I told him that I thought about it and prayed about it and it came because of inspiration from my Heavenly Father.

We had to go to the Winthrop Ward building to see the Mission President but we had not been there before and we got lost.  Finally we found it and all was ok.

The interview with the mission president was personal, private and spiritual.  We were asked to share some insights that we gained through our missionary service.  Bill told of one day when he was thinking that this digitizing stuff was boring, mundane and of no use but then he got taught by the spirit that to the descendants of these people the work that we do is invaluable.  It changed his whole attitude.  I told of being sent 40+ death certificates for my Lockyer side of the family.  That was huge.   I told him about the feelings I had as I worked with the first set of court records where we dealt with divorces, neglect and cruel treatment and drug involvement (opiates), alcohol  etc. and mentioned that for the divorces, the children were listed and that because children did not live very long in those days, perhaps the children mentioned in the divorce papers may be the only mention there is of the children because they did not live to adulthood and so evidence that they had lived at all was lost.  We discussed other spiritual aspects of the work – aspects that mean a lot to us but perhaps would have little meaning to those who have not had this experience.

We came home and Bill then went to Friendly’s for dinner with the men from Church.  I am glad that they are doing this for him.  Eleven ladies came out last night for ice cream with me.  The waitress wanted to know if we were celebrating a birthday or something and I said, “I’m leaving town”.  That opened up the question of why, and who and how and I told her why we were here in the first place and she said, “Oh, my mother goes to Winthrop Ward.  I work every Sunday so I don’t go to church at all.”  It was hard to hear her say that, but the ladies in chorus said to her – “Oh that can be changed”.

It does not seem real that we are leaving Augusta, but the Mission President said it was ok for us to take a trip to Pennsylvania on our way home and to go to Nauvoo temple and to see Sara and family.  He also mentioned that the church leaders had eased up on the requirements for Senior Missionaries in an attempt to get more of them to find it easy to go out as missionaries.  It is too bad that the economy has gone in the hole.