Stake Year End Report
323,586
Names Indexed and Arbitrated for the year 2015
One in A Million
Sun Rise taken by Bob Woolley in PA
One Million Names
A news release from Gympie, Australia on Feb 9, 2016 tells the story of Irene Deans, 92 years old, who recently indexed one million names into FamilySearch. org.
Irene is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and stated that indexing, "is what gets her up in the morning and keeps her going." Irene gets up at 5:30 am every morning to sit at her computer and indexes for many hours. She is truly a remarkable example of someone who regularly devotes her time to service to the Lord. She is an inspiration to all.
Reaching Out
taken by Lee Schuler - PA 2015
Stake Indexers Help Black Community
Thanks to the promotion of the Freedmen's Bureau Project in the Oklahoma City Black Community, by the Church's Public Relations folks, about 25 Indexers from our Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Stake had a wonderful opportunity to reach out and help people learn how to index.
On Saturday, February 6, 2016, our group of indexers were invited to attend a 4 hour program at St. John's Missionary Baptist Church on North Kelley. There were approximately 50 people, not of our faith, who attended and they were so enthusiastic and excited about learning how to index and search their family trees. What a wonderful opportunity for all of us indexers to let our lights shine!
I was set up to help with indexing questions, but the two ladies I had the privilege to work with, Helen and Betty, were more interested in seeing if The Church had any records on their families. The result of this was that not only did I get them set up to index, but I was able to take them into FamilySearch.org so that they could look for those records.
Betty was particularly excited, her eyes lite up and she just couldn't believe that we could find her grandma in the US Census records. What a wonderful experience that was for both of us. While she could not stay long to explore more records that day, she did accept my invitation to come to the Family History Center the next Wednesday morning, when I work, to do more searching.
Sure enough, on Wednesday morning about 10:05 am Betty came to the FHC and I worked with her for 3 1/2 hours, on creating her own family tree and researching records to add as sources. She is so happy and said she would be back next week to do some more. What an interesting background and wonderful stories she had to tell about her family. She is even more excited to be able to start indexing those post Civil War Records from the Freedmen's Bureau Project. I was very touched by the spirit, to be able to help Betty and to learn of her family struggles and life histories.
