MIRACLES, MISSTEPS, AND MISSING BRANCHES

 In this Gathering Academy episode, Colette testifies of a recent Thinning of the Veil experience as this ancestor was found in a most surprising way. She also covers the new QR code feature on FamilySearch that can make lost usernames and passwords a thing of the past. Do you a have GEDCOM file? FamilySearch has made it easier than ever to transfer that information into the Tree System. Colette wraps up with some easy tips to make your family history more enjoyable.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Welcome to Gathering Academy. How was your week? I hope it was great. I had some highs and I had some lows. We had a flooded basement. We had a chicken die. Um, but I also got to have a picnic with my family for Father's Day andor barbecue, I guess. And I went swimming with my grandson and um learned some good lessons in patience. So glad to be back with you. And I have actually I had a miracle happen the same day that my basement flooded, I had a miracle that I want to share with you. Um, so welcome back. If you are listening on a podcast, I would love to invite you to watch YouTube for some of the things that we'll be sharing. Um, in the beginning, right now, I'm just going to share an experience that I had. So never underestimate the thoughts that you have that might just randomly pop in your head. Don't discount them. My niece was talking to me and messaging me about revelation and how do you know if it's revelation? Um, and so I messaged her back and I just said, one of the things that I learned is any good thought comes from the spirit and act on it. And so I was on my way to the temple. I decided I'm going swimming, so I'm going to go go do baptisms. I'm already getting my hair wet that day. And so I went into the temple. Um, and gratefully, um, for me and for the people I was going for, I had 10 names. Usually they only allow you to do five, but I thought I'll bring extra just in case because it was 8:30 in the morning, and I thought maybe all the teenagers are still sleeping in. Well, I get there and there were only two people being baptized, and it was me. So they said I could totally do those 10 names. And then they said, actually, would you be willing to do this extra name? And I said, sure. So I changed and got ready and waited for a little bit, and then they took me into the font. And as soon as her name popped up and they started to say the words, her name was Axelina Olson, and she was from Sweden. And I thought, oh, what a coincidence that she's from Sweden. And it made my heart happy. But immediately I was overcome with the spirit. I just felt this intensity of joy and gratitude, and the tears were coming. I was just so overwhelming that she was getting her baptism done. And apparently what had happened is that she, um, a young woman had come and done baptisms and had left that card and it had not gotten done. And I later did a little bit of researching, and I'll tell you about that in a second. And it and it looks like she had baptized two daughters. So there were three cards that came. Two daughters got baptized, and then the one somehow slipped between the cracks and didn't get baptized. So I was like, wow. So what had happened is so I go into um the little chapel waiting area, and uh I was waiting for them to call me into confirmations, and I have this thought come into my mind see, uh, see if you're related. And I thought, what are the chances of that? Well, so, and then I was like, Well, I shouldn't be turning my opening my phone up in the temple. And then I thought, okay, I received that impression in the temple, and it's just a family search, and I'm just doing a quick check. So I open up family search, and when I went into there, I clicked to see if I was related, and she was my ninth cousin. And I think you've heard enough of this from me over the years in the podcast with Tia to know that when I have that thought, see if you're related, almost all of the time I am related. So I just was in awe. I thought, is that not incredible that the name got left? And I was the one to be able to do to do the work. And what was really interesting is the fact that because it was me, and I'm not just going to just say, okay, well, now I know we're related and we're done. So, no, what did I do? I had another thought, and the thought was, go check her husband. So I checked her husband, and all of his were green. So all of a sudden I realized this was a young woman that did ordinances ready. It brought up these three names, but it didn't be, I don't didn't bring up any boys because she's a girl. So logically, that's probably what happened. So I reserved her husband's name, and I'm trying to remember. Oh, so I reserved the name and then I closed out, and then I said, um, I I thought I'm gonna go do the confirmations, then I'll ask. Oh, I had another thought. This is what happened. I had another thought that came to my mind. See if they can do his baptism today, if maybe a young man. And I know sometimes they're a little bit hesitant about that, about asking other people, but they knew the story. And so, well, they didn't know the story yet. I went up to them and I told them the story because they'd been the one that gave me the name. And I said, Is it do you think there's any way that if we printed his name that he could be baptized? So they're baptized on the same day, this husband and wife, along with the two daughters. And so they said, Well, we just had two young men come in, so we'll ask them. So they said, Go ahead and go print it. So I go into the little room to print it. I'm all there by myself, and I have another thought, check the rest of the family. So I went and checked the rest of the family, several other there was another daughter that was baptized in I think 2013, maybe, and there was a son that hadn't that had been baptized and a son that was had not been reserved. He was sitting there. So I was able to reserve him and his dad, his mom I had been baptized for, the two sisters had been baptized, and then a brother and sister had already had their work done. So I went back and I told them the story that I found one more, and we left those. And later I checked and they were able to do the baptisms for all of them. So this entire family of, I think there's seven of them, were able to finally have all of their baptisms done on that day because I was in the right place at the right time. And then I listened to those little thoughts. Uh, another thing that happened after I had gotten to the temple before I did the baptisms, I went to the locker and I was changing and I had this stroke of inspiration. And I know it was the spirit because it was almost like a little sentence. But it was it was for my niece Emily, ask Emily to help you with Joan's tree. So if you've watched the Gathering Academy previously, I've talked about, I've told the story about how on Family Search on the right-hand side, um, when we were in Sweden a few years ago, that we saw that there was a cousin, Johan Hokkinson, who had added information to the tree. We ended up connecting with him and he ended up sharing, he showed us around all of the houses for the family, but he shared his JEDCOM file. And if you don't know the JEDCOM file, it's a genealogy file that somebody does in their uh computer software for family history on their computer. He'd been working on this family since the 1980s. So what is that, 30 years? And he had almost 15,000 names in it. So I shared in a previous um podcast how we can take that JEDCOM file and put it into Family Search and now add those matches to Family Search. And but it's overwhelming. That's a lot of people. And I was just like, I don't know how my husband and I are gonna get this done. And Emily had just had kind of a hard thing happen in her life and was just feeling a little bit down, and all of a sudden I knew this was a little love note. This was a little message from Heavenly Father. Invite Emily to help with this tree. And so that's what I did when I went home. I invited her to help with this tree and to be able to add the information. So if you did not see it before, let me show you that again. And I'm going to show you a couple of other cool things. So let me share my screen. Don't you think that was such an amazing story? I just I feel so grateful. Um and just know that you might think, oh, that never will happen to me, but it will. Um, it will. Just have faith. If you listen to those promptings, you will see miracles in your life. So, one thing, if you have not seen this before, you have the ability now to sign in with a QR code. So there's a QR code right here, and it works, it works if you've signed into Family Search on your phone. So if you're meeting together with somebody and they can't remember their password, but they've signed into Family Search on their phone, you can click on this use my phone. I don't, oh, do I have my phone with me? So, what I will do, you can see there's a verification code right there. I can scan. So I bring my phone right up here, and when I hover over it, family search.org, and a little yellow bar pops up, and I tap it, and then it will say sign in because it remembers my sign-in on Family Search. And it says Colette Family Search Access, ZQL T V L P Q. Does this match? And I say yes, and watch this, it's going to sign in for me on Family Search. It signs in on my phone. So now I'm signed in my phone. If you can see that. And now I'm signed into Family Search. So it helps so much if you have somebody who can't remember their password or yourself, or if you're on a public computer and don't want to put that password on there, you're able to sign in without putting that password on. So it's really, really helpful. Um, so we're gonna, I'm gonna go back and just do a little review on this. Um use it's basically it's a a user tree. They're they're in the process of maybe changing it, the title, but it's under manage trees. It used to be a CET tree, which was called the controlled edit tree. But now it's here, it's I guess it's called Trees You Created. And this is the tree, and this is where I uploaded the JEDCOM file. So if you have a JEDCOM file in a Roots Magic or a Family Tree Maker, or maybe it's from the old path, and you're not sure if all of the information is in family search, you can click on this upload JEDCOM, and then you will select the file. So wherever it's at, and it'll be dot Ged. So if you click in the search bar and do dot G E D, and then name contains that, and you'll see if you have it. So I don't know if I have one anywhere in here that ends in that. And so um, but that's how you do it. Then you will name it, maybe put a description and you read through the rules and check both boxes, and then you'll upload. So I did that, and this is what I now have. This is about a month ago. So if you go back about four weeks, I think I did a podcast on this. You're going to click review matches, and what it does is it compares the family search tree on the right with the tree that you've uploaded on the left. And what I've been doing is I have been going and I will click on a name. And if I see these little dashed boxes, that means that I'm not related. Does that mean I'm not going to add them to the tree? No. But what I do do is I will kind of on this page, I'll just scroll down and I'll just choose somebody. And this one I can't tell because all of his work was done. It's in gray. But I click through and I see if anything green pops up. If I see all of these in dot or dashes, that means I'm not um connected enough. Oops, let me see. Let's go back. That took me too far. If I just click on Elizabeth and here, and there's some green, but that means somebody shared them with the temple. I could take them to the temple if I didn't have other names. I could grab that and help do her work. So, what I'll do, I'm just going to go to her right now and I'm going to say compare. So I can see that on Family Tree, we have her. See, she has a different ID number. This is her family search ID number. This ID number is specifically for that JEDCOM file that I opened up. So it says potential new one person. It could be more than one person. That's a conservative estimate that they gave. And so I'm going to say compare. And they want you to be pleasantly surprised when all of a sudden you see there's three children to add. So do you see how powerful this is? If you've got a relative or even if you've done a lot of work outside of Family Search and want to see if your family's in there, you can download that JEDCOM file from Ancestry or from your own software. And I can see actually it says that there's a spouse that I can add. So I'm going to click add. And if you notice over here on the side, it says select items to copy. I'm going to take all of them because I want to know the birth, the christening, the death, the burial residence. He did a really good job. The one thing that I'm going to have to fix before it's going to be standardized dates or places is I'm going to have to fix any dates. All the dates look good, but the places, this is the name of a farm, Sovda 23, in the parish Sovda. He has an M for Momahus, which is the county, and then I need Sweden. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to copy the person and it's going to put it in a family cert. I didn't even have to type it. So when you when I click on this though, you'll see that there's yellow. See how they're all in yellow? And see these dashes. Either that means I don't have enough information about his parents or I'm not connected. So what I would do is I would, I'm going to show you this. I'm going to come in here to Ola. And for some of you, this may be old hat. And there's also a possible duplicate I'd want to reserve. Or I mean check, not reserve. But I'm going to click on here and I'm going to click after the number two in the new space. And then that allows me to standardize that date. See how it's in green. Same thing here. There's no standard date. It will not allow me to reserve the work unless it's standardized. So I'm going to get rid of the M. And I'm going to see if it has a Malmahoose. Right here. Sovda Fars Harid. So that's the court district, then the county, then this country. I want to make sure that I have this Sovda. So I'm going to copy that. I'm going to do Command C on my Mac or Ctrl C. And I'm going to delete that. So then I can just choose this. So I have the parish, the court district, the county, Sweden. Then I'm going to paste that little farm back in front because I want to know what farm they lived on. Family Search doesn't know about this farm. They can't keep track of every farm in Germany or Sweden or Italy. But we can put that in in front and then we click on this in bold and that creates a standardized place. It thinks it's this, but allows me to keep this full name here. Does that make sense? So then I'm going to say save. So I'll want to do that for each of these things because it's going to still give me these messages here. But I'm going to go back now that I've done that. Now I can come back and I'm going to add all of these other children. So I just copy the person and now he's in there. And I will have to do the same thing for him. But it's so fabulous that I can transfer this information. Okay, so I shared you, shared that with you. And then I want to show you one more thing. This is a word of caution. When you're doing your research, uh, there's a possibility that you could have two people with the same name in the same parish, and it can be very confusing. So I was helping my friend Lois today. This was in a Swedish record, and I want to show you this family. So we have this family. This guy's name is Olaf Olsen Kroates, and he has this wife, Karn Per's daughter. So she's born on the 29th of December, 1842, in Dalby, Varmland. And he was born in Varmland as well. So then you see there's some children. So this says a child that was born before the marriage. And here's another daughter, and it looks like the same thing. So all of these children were before these children were before in the marriage. They were married here, 26th of December, 1872. This child was born 23 June 72. So he was before the marriage as well. Then we have a daughter, Johanna, she's born in 74, and that was after the marriage. So you have to look really closely at the record, and some of these things you may not notice. And so then it's on me to go and look at the actual birth record to see if he was actually the father or if there was another person that was the father. So now let's come down here. Lots of times in the Swedish records, there's a gap between the families, so you know uh this distinction. This there was no gap. There just is Carl Johann Abrahamson, and then you have it said Hustru, which is wife, but it's crossed out, and then this EA. EA means anke or widow. So always pay attention if you're in uh Spanish records or Italian records or German, you've got to look at all of the little notes that are um on the page, and that's why you always want to go and look at the actual record instead of just the index. So she became a widow, and then I see this little cross here. So I look over here, and there is actually an um there's the marriage date in 71, and then it looks like, oh, right here it is. If I go up to the top, the column, here we go. Death. So he died. So he died in 73, 13th of January, 1873. So here we've got this cross. This guy died. They were married in 71. The couple above above was married in 72. But look at this. Who is the name of the wife? Karen Perr's daughter. So the other thing that was kind of confusing, so she was born 6th of June, 1848. The other Karin was born 29th of December, 1842. So, what made it even a little bit more confusing? You have this is a D for daughter Emily, but then you have a son. He put son here, and then Carl Oldlaus, and he was born in 78. Well, if I wasn't reading all of the other little bits of information that he died in 73, I might assume that this is the son of these two. Well, what happened is that, um, and then this one as well, son as well, Gustav Adolf. So these two were born. Here's a little note here. If I wasn't reading it, it's K-R-O with the two dots, and then J T, and then it looks like maybe an S. So Kroates Barn, children Barn is children. So all of a sudden, I've got this little X here. Sometimes they put an X by the person up above, and here's this Kroates. There's no little plus, but um I'm like, hmm, who is this? Did she marry this guy? But this Karen never was listed as dying. So that's not the case. And I thought, did they have an affair? Because she's living next door, she's a widow. So all of a sudden, this family got a little mixed up, and Lois had a hard time connecting them all. And so two of the children, ah, excuse me, two of the children, these ones down at the bottom, she thought that they were this family's children. But I said, we need to go look at the actual record. So we noticed that there's two car and pairs that are on the same page, but their birthdays are six years apart. So we went and looked up this little Carl Olaus, his birth record. Here's Carl Olaus. He was born on the 4th of May. He wasn't christened, but then they do say May 26th. In Sweden, the law was seven days, and they were supposed to be christened. So um they waited a little bit. Then you've got Carl Olaus, and it looks like he's child number six, maybe, because it looks like it could be five, six, but then there's a ten. So you can get a clue that he's making a note here that this was the sixth child in the family. So you look for those little details. Sometimes it takes a little guessing until you figure it out. But over here we see the father is Olaf Croats and his wife, Karim Per's daughter, and he has his um occupation here, and that they were living at this place. Sickness at that's kind of a funny name, huh? 154. So if I go back here and look, page 154 and sickness. So all of a sudden now I see that actually he is a child of Olaf Olsen, Krotz, and Karin Per's daughter, not of this Karin Per's daughter because she's not married to him. Does that make sense? So always be super careful. Um, and if in doubt, then don't do, don't do it. So um let me stop sharing my screen. All right. I feel like I'm looking a little haggard. It's the end of the day. Usually I record on Sunday, but um I just wanted to be able to share this with you. I want to testify to you that God is a God of miracles. He um He puts us in the right place at the right time. And if we just pray to be His um to be His His Angels here on earth, He will allow us to be able to help gather His children. So my homework assignment for you this week is to not be afraid to get into the records and get on your tree and look for, you can do this on your main page. I'm gonna share the screen one more time.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Allow to share screen. Okay, let's share entire screen.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

So if I go here and I if I go to Family Search and I go to my main page, if you're a beginner, if you have been doing this a long time, come to this main page, choose either the AI research assistant to add somebody to your tree, come down here to your temple hints, choose somebody. So this Maria Pear's daughter, I can come to her and then make sure everybody in her family's been done. Or choose one of these record hints and go ahead and attach that. Um just do something. And as I've said before, let me see if I can unshare screen. As I've said before, um, give your widows might, even if you just have a minute, attach one record. There are great blessings for your willingness because sometimes as you add that one record, you end up finding missing children. So have a great week, and we will see you next time.