More Family History Work

I spent a number of hours yesterday and today going through old records and adding to the web site for the Heber Fielding Burton family.

The site home page is http://hfburton.buchananspot.com

Of the four family-based web sites I manage, this one generally has received the least attention from me. My wife and I went through a few piles of records she inherited from her great-great-aunt. In the process, I found a lot of pictures of family members that I did not previously have on the website.

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Now, since I have not been doing a blog very long, I thought I should add a few points about recent family history work.

1. Hans Sorensen family - I finished writing the history of Hans Sorensen, my second great grandfather earlier this year and had it published/printed. I made 225 copies and sold or distributed them all. The website contains a link to the history in PDF form. The document is 80 pages long, including many appendix pages.

I then later completed research into the son of Hans Sorensen, Soren Peter and posted a copy of that on the website as well. The Hans Sorensen history page is:

http://aeb.buchananspot.com/histories/Sorensen/Hans

2. I worked at a review of the research my father did on the Andersen line and ended up finding some new information about Anders Jensen Pind. I will put my summary of that in a separate blog entry.

3. Danish research - Over the past two years, I have bene able to do an extensive amount of research in Danish records right at home, because Denmark has released many volumes of records for searching and accessing.  In the process, I made up a web page to show people how they can get to these records and included a few pages showing some basic tools and resources in doing Danish research. THe web page is:

http://buchananspot.com/joseph/genealogy/DanishHelper.html

Well, this blog is getting big enough already.

New Challenges

I expect that there are tests on my resolve intensifying at this time. My health has been very good up until these past few months and now concerns are arising. It may be that there are still issues to be resolved and the Lord is bringing them up now instead of while we are on our mission.

Friday morning, very early, I was hit with kidney stone pain in the right side. It went away after 2 hours so I dismissed it as something quickly passed. Then, on Sunday morning at the same time as before, I was hit again and this time it did not stop. After a visit at Jordan Valley hospital and some tests, it appears that I am over it finally, but the tests revealed a possible other problem - a celiac artery aneurysm. The doctor is having me get another CT scan to be sure, but my doctor son thinks it will probably not require any special concern. I guess we just need to be sure before our mission.

Overall, I believe that the Lord is helping me strengthen my resolve to go forth and serve regardless of adversity. I still believe that my health is good and will not be a hinderance to my service. I know that once I am set apart, the Lord will carry me through any problems.

Progress and the past

I see this time as a critical moment before significant life changes. With the upcoming opportunity of serving the Lord on a 23 month mission, We are in the process of clearing and cleaning out the past and setting up for our new roles and challenges. A lot of what we are doing is going though the massive amount of things we have accumulated in the house over the past 32 years (including a lot I inherited when my parents passed on). What is significant? What is necessary? A lot of trips have been made to Deseret Industries (including this morning) and many items have been given away through FreeCycle. Our nephew is interested in some of the church books, which makes it easier to give them away. We'll see how that goes.

The other side of things has to do with preparation. One interesting development is that I recently discovered a new app for the iPad, NovoCard. I hoped that the iPad would be useful in my future work, and I hoped for some programming and database environment so I could make some organizational tools like I have done in the past. Up until now that hope has been in vain. NovoCard is based on the idea of HyperCard, which was my tool of choice for the past 25 years (lately using SuperCard). NovoCard is based on JavaScript, which I have already been using in web programming. The product is still in its early stages and some of the functionality is still unproven or not working (e. g. Functions), but that will be soon remedied. I have hope in it as a very useful tool for me. The author of the app has been communicating with me and is taking my suggestions to heart. An interesting point I discovered today is that he was once a Univac programmer like me, so we have some things in common.

The final point of this posting is that my spiritual preparation for the mission is ongoing. I love reading the scriptures and enjoy the inspirational insights I get. I have one that I have been developing recently and will post in another blog entry soon.

Upcoming mission

Well, the mission application process is finally completed, I hope.
We started this all back in February with our interview with the bishop. We then were able to start on the web page where we began filling out the various forms. Now, eight months later, we finally received word that the medical forms were complete and submitted. I suppose that one day I will document the process we had to go through to get this done. A lot of the delays were in getting into doctors and getting the doctors to fill out the full information needed, and also just waiting for the various people along the way (interviews, form reviews, etc.).

Now it will be interesting to see how long it will be until we receive our call...

- Laanjak

About Laanjak

Though my life experiences have been richly entwined with the Internet over the years, having a personal blog has never been one of my pursuits. Actually, I find it a bit presumptuous that anyone would actually be interested in what I have to say when it is not focused on a specific topic, such as family history, religion or online education. However, I felt it was time to start contributing to the rich fabric of lives and thoughts and ramblings that have become so pervasive in the Blogosphere.

About Laanjak ...

I invented the name Laanjak many years ago as the protagonist of a novel never written. Actually, I have written some of the first chapter and may eventually get it written. Being such a science fiction fan all my life, I thought to write a novel taking place in a decaying future colony on Mars. Laanjak and his friend begin questioning the authoritarian structure of their civilization and find ways to learn forbidden knowledge about their world and eventually break free of its grasp.

So far, the only thing to have survived from this literary foray is the name Laanjak. I am still amazed that this simple, seven-lettered name is still unique wherever I have have chosen to use it (usernames, etc.) and will continue to be the champion of the Laanjak name.