The First Ice Cream Social will be held in the Oklahoma City Fourth Branch on Friday night May 27th at 7:00 PM at the Stake Center. President Baclawski is bringing the ice cream and they are bringing the toppings and other goodies that they wish to have. Sister Gilbert will talk to everyone about Indexing and there will be an opportunity to go the the Family History Center to sign-up to become an indexer. There are many Spanish records that need to be indexed and any help will be greatly appreciated. Saturday night, the 28th at 6:00 Pm the OKC First Ward will enjoy their Ice Cream Social at the Stake Center. We look forward to the whole Ward coming to eat some ice cream with President Baclawski and learn of the NEW "DINNER WITH THE PRESIDENT CHALLENGE" !!!! You'll like this one too. There will be more information about this new challenge on this blog page next week. Thanks to my home Ward (OKC#1) for having such dedicated indexers. We have always been the number one Ward in the Stake at indexing, even though some other Ward ?? (I won't mention them by name,QC) has tried to unseat us, in the past. We love a good challenge and I am saying this all in a fun way. Edmond Ward's and Woodward,we are working on a date to come and have ice cream with you also. Other Ward's that are trying to reach their "Magic Number" please keep up the good work and set a month that you want to acheive that goal and everyone work hard to do it. It can be done if you all work together. The following article was sent to me via Familysearch and I thought you might like to read about the importance of the Indexing work that you are doing. 
Indexing Helps Researchers
Worldwide
by Jim Ericson, Product Marketing
Manager
While many people know that the time and effort they spend indexing
historical records helps the family history community, many don't understand
exactly how these records are used. Many volunteers have asked for some
clarification on how the records they index are actually used and what benefit
they provide.
The Benefits You Provide
Volunteers from around the world
have indexed hundreds of millions of records over the past 30 years that are now
available free to the public on familysearch.org, supporting the site's mission of
helping the entire family history community have access to the records of their
ancestors.
Every name you index is a name that will eventually be searchable (and
findable) on familysearch.org. Indexing isn't a way to benefit FamilySearch as
an organization—it's a way to benefit the entire community of family history researchers find
records and identify their ancestors more quickly. Many people every day are
making discoveries or research breakthroughs because of the volunteer efforts of
FamilySearch indexers.
Appreciation Expressed
Here are a few recent notes of
appreciation that have been shared on our Facebook fan pages at http://www.facebook.com/familysearch and http://www.facebook.com/familysearchindexing:
Happy Mother's Day to All While working as an arbitrator last week on the 1930 US Census Records for Pennsylvania I came across a couple of batches that had to be returned because someone had mistakenly put in "No Extractable Data" for pages that contained no data, rather than " Blank". I have no idea who did the indexing but I thought it might be a good idea to remind all of the indexers in OKC Stake that while you are indexing you should be sure that "Blank" is used when there is absolutely nothing on a line. "No extractable Data" means there is something on the line, but not what you are asked to index. Another tip to remember is that when the last line of a "fixed line" batch like the census records where the worksheet is automatically sent to 50 lines and you can't change it to less lines, that is where you have to make sure all the lines have something in them, even if it is "blank". When you are on the last line and you put in "Blank" but you can't submit the batch, look down on the bottom right side under the worksheet to see what your percentage of completed batch says. If it says something like 98% and you can't figure out why then try using your tab key to get to the end of the last line. That is usually the problem, you need to tab all the way across the last line when it is blank. That should then change the percentage completed to 100% and you will be able to submit your batch. NEWS FROM OUR STAKE PRESIDENCY They are raising the bar for our Stake Indexing program. The Stake Presidency would like us to Index 750,000 names by the Days of Thanksgiving which is the first week in November. They believe in us!! They see what we did in April and believe that we can easily make the new goal, if we just keep up the good work. My thoughts were, Why stop there, why not go for ONE MILLION names by the end of the year? Tell me what you think. Do you think we can make the new Stake Goal or more by November? Just leave a comment at the bottom of this blog page, or email me at lgmgilbert2@yahoo.com. Ice Cream Socials To Begin Plans are underway to start the first of our 5 Ice Cream Socials for the Challenge winners in April. That would be OKC 1st Ward, Edmond 1st, Edmond 2nd, Woodward Branch and OKC 4th Branch. We look forward to coming to all the Ward's as you meet the challenge sometime this year. Keep up the great work and we will see you soon. All indexing efforts are greatly appreciated. Brother and Sister Hathaway, our Area Family History Advisers paid us all a wonderful compliment this week, via email to me. I would like to share what they said about indexing in our Stake . Sister Hathaway said: " I enjoyed viewing your blog and wish every stake was as involved as yours is in indexing. Yours is one of the most active stakes in indexing of the 34 stakes we work with. You are doing an incredible job with involving those of your stake in indexing. Keep up the good work! :)
Ice Cream Social Challenge 108,054 Names Indexed and Arbitrated It is amazing what a good challenge will do for a Stake! I am totally excited about the efforts that were made this April with indexing. This Sunday in our Fast and Testimony meeting several indexers got up and bore their testimonies about the importance of Indexing. Not just for the Stake, but for the World. That through our indexing work we are providing records to the world that may never have been available before. I can't thank you all enough for helping with Indexing and hope that we may continue our great work for the Lord. APRIL RESULTS totals = indexed and arbitrated Clinton - 7204 names magic number = 19,394 Edmond First - 13,900 names magic number = 9390 Edmond Second 10,987 names magic number = 4708 OKC Fifth 8,498 names magic number = 8706 OKC First 39,439 names magic number = 31,636 OKC Fourth Branch 7,400 names magic number = 30 OKC Third 5,945 names magic number = 16,414 OkC University 27 names magic number = 1366 Quail Creek 5,977 names magic number = 31,198 Village 2,224 names magic number = 17,226 Woodward 6,418 names magic number = 504 Those highlighted in RED will be having an Ice Cream Social for the whole Ward/Branch. I can taste that Ice Cream already. If your Ward did not make it this month, you have till the end of the year. OKC Fifth you were so close this month, keep up the good work. TOP 7 INDEXERS THIS MONTH IN STAKE: Indexing accomplishments of over 5,000 names in April; These names and numbers are posted to be an inspiration to the rest of us in the Stake. These people have an absolute love of indexing and it shows us all what we can be capable of. I am so grateful to all the indexers in our Stake. Every name is important and even if you can't accomplish this many names in a month, if you will just try to do all that you can, on a regular and consistant basis it will be greatly appreciated. We have at this time 217 indexers registered. The total names indexed this month, 108,054 was accomplished by just 61 indexers. What do you think we could do if all 217 members indexed on a regular basis? I think it would be incredible. Let's encourage everyone to index.
