Satisfaction in the work

Some of the records get separated from the main body of the records.  For example, the records of the Court of Common Pleas of York County were packed wherever the clerk found room for them, so there are records from other courts’ sessions mixed in with papers in the boxes.  This morning I had 5 court cases that I could not find a place for them to fit in with the area I was working.  I had to ask for the ledgers to be brought back so that I could look through them and see if I could find where these five fit in.

I had been over the index of the ledger over and over and still did not find this particular case.  So I looked for the names of others who were mentioned and at last I found it.  I was so happy I threw up my hands and yelled “I found it!”.  Jeff was in the room at the time and he congratulated me and Bill asked what did I need now that I had found one of the cases.  I said, ’You could throw money!” and he came over and tossed me a 25cent piece.  We all laughed and it helped make the room seem lighter and easier to navigate.  We have piles of papers drying out under boxes ready for me to work with them.  Jeff says that he does not want me to leave piles of papers on the tables in the process of flattening out because he does not know when new missionaries will be coming in and there is always a chance that the papers will get tipped over and lost.  I think that when we are at the end of the 1807 Judicial year, that we will stop humidifying and pressing out and just do the entries and put them in the boxes.

When we got to work today we noticed that the parking stickers for the legislature are now up and so we have reduced parking places available.  Get there first and you get to park.  Come late and…………….

Last night it rained a lot.  I slept through it and did not hear it, but Bill was up when it was pouring rain.  Today at lunch they said that this rain we are getting is the leftovers from the Hurricane that forced the Republican Convention to start a day later than planned.  I guess by the time it gets up here to Maine, the winds have blown themselves out and only the rain is left.  I wonder if it will cause the Kennebec to flood?  Very few cars are driving around with mud on them today as a result of the rain.  Who needs to go to the Car Wash?

After work today we went over to Mary’s house to see the new kittens.  They are really very pretty cats.  I managed to get all but one of them to purr for me.  Mary was telling us that she took Kayla (their Australian shepherd dog) over to the Togus Hospice unit today – Kayla is a therapy dog.  There is one particular patient there whom Kayla loves to visit and usually gets up on the bed and just snuggles in but  today Kayla did not snuggle in but was really very restless and upset and got off the bed quickly.  The staff explained that there was probably some sort of reason that Kayla was different today but not to worry about it.  The patient has lost a lot of weight this past week and perhaps there was some sort of chemical change that Kayla sensed was one explanation given.

We were asked today. “What do you get out of doing a mission like this one?  After all you come at your own expense, put up with inconveniences and other troubles – so why come in the first place?”  Well, a simple answer is found in the Book of Mormon which states, “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God.”  Our digital work is put on the internet in time, and for free people can search the images and find reference to their ancestor’s lives etc.  So, we are in the service of our fellow beings and that alone gives great satisfaction.  Anything we do for our fellow man – whether it be cleaning up the church after a party, picking up trash on the roadside to help clean up our environment, even cleaning up after a kids activity at church is in the service of our fellow man and thus in the service of God.  The satisfaction and blessing of this service is payment enough and I will miss this ‘fulltime effort’ and the blessings that come with it when we leave.