Family Visit and temple

 The past two weeks were full of happenings. We enjoyed having our son and family visit us from Utah. The children's other grandparents are also serving a mission in New Zealand so they came, spent about a week with us and then a week with them. In between, we went with them down to the Hamilton area to attend the temple and to visit places there. It was glorious.

This shows us at the temple in Hamilton

Before going south, we explored together the ancient kauri forest and the Kai'iwi lakes, then a beach on the east coast, then falls there and then took our trip south to the temple.

Overlooking the Hokianga bay to the dunes on the other side.

Our granddaughter on the beach

Some of the grandchildren at the ancient kauri tree

Whangarei Falls

While we were in the Hamilton area, we visited the Māori experience in Rotorua — a very impressive demonstration (sorry, no pictures) and the Hobbiton filming site at Matamata.

The Green Dragon

The Baggins residence

The mill at Hobbiton

On the way back, we got this picture of the new Auckland temple, nearing completion.

Finally, a couple more photos. The first is one of my sweetheart as we were viewing the Wairoa river from the Dargaville Museum hill. The last one is a picture of a tree. These trees are known for their bright red color around Christmas time in the area here. This one is a block away from our home.

We are enjoying the experience of getting to know the people of our branch. There is quite a varied group of people, most with Māori ancestry, some of other Polynesian cultures. It is quite an education. They are all dear people and It is amazing to know them. One remarkable experience we see is at times going to the local stores, having people (unknown to us) talking with us, and we learn that they are not actively attending meetings. They are happy to see us and often invite us to visit them. The hand of the Lord is here with us!

Silver Beets, Burger Fuel and Whaka papa

 In visits and activities over the past week, we had some good connections and learned a lot about the local culture and people.

We had our District Council meeting last Friday in Whangarei (pronounced Fawn-ga-ray). This picture is in an eatery area in the city. We bought food from different places and ate in the same location. There was a sushi shop, pizza place and a place called "Burger Fuel." This picture is of many of us together in the sushi place (I missed getting two other elders who were between me and the wall.)

We had a good experience on Sunday in the local branch. They had their Primary Children Sacrament Meeting program. It was wonderful (sorry, no pictures). Many of the children wore Maori tapa cloth skirts around their waists and shells on necklaces. There were a lot of visitors as well. We met our branch president for the first time as well. Following the meetings, they served a very good meal of local foods.

In our visits, we find the people very generous and received food from several, including "silver beets," lemons, celery (all out of their gardens and yards) and also a generous sampling of some frozen beef.

Lemons (above, with an egg shown as comparative size)

Silver Beets (we know this as Swiss chard).

In one of our discussions, we found that they are interested in Family History research for their families. We are excited to help. The Maori word for genealogy is "Whaka papa" (the Wh is pronounced like an f or a soft v), their word for grandparents (or ancestors) is "Tupuna". We also learned that a lot of the people in the area, though many with British, Scottish, etc. ancestry, are also connected to the Maoris and have Polynesian ancestry. One brother just returned from an experience called a "Tangi," meaning to cry or mourn. He had a close friend pass away and they get together to mourn and be around each other in these circumstances. We find these people very open and caring. It is a wonderful experience.

Welcome to Dargaville

 Well, we are here. After a long flight (LA to Auckland=13hrs.), we arrived in Auckland a little over a week ago. At the mission home there, we visited with the office missionaries (seniors and Elders [ no, that is not being redundant]).

They assigned us a new car and the next day we experienced driving on the left side of the road. Sister Buchanan did a fine job of the driving the first day, though was definitely hassled by the time we arrived after the 2+ hour drive to Dargaville.

Our flat was one formerly used by the younger missionaries for a number of years and showed the experience. We got all set up and going. 

We struggled with jet lag for a while, but participated in Zone Conference/Mission Tour. Elder Meurs and his wife were visiting. We enjoyed a wonderful conference and got acquainted with the many missionaries here in the Northland.

On Sunday, we went to the church, but instead of the normal meetings, we viewed the broadcast of our stake conference. The Stake Center building in Whangarei is under construction, so they met in a different building and broadcast the conference to other church buildings. The picture at the top is our church building in Dargaville. The people are wonderful. It is a small branch. We connected quickly with some of the members and felt the spirit of them. The stake conference included a number of returned missionaries and a short message from each of them. 

We had a visit from a member couple who live close to our flat, the Wilsons. They are great people who have done a lot of service in their lifetime. They invited us to their place for dinner last night.

Yesterday, we made a visit to a woman in a local nursing home. Her brother visited our branch last Sunday and asked us to pay her a visit. She is not a member of our church. We had a wonderful visit with her and see a wonderful spirit in her. It also happened to be her birthday (which we did not know) and she appreciated our visit. We will return.

Today, we had a nice visit with a family who had been visited by missionaries in the past. They have two beautiful young boys and seek answers. We had a nice visit with them and left with a prayer and came away with some fresh Swiss chard from their yard.

Following this, we took a trip to Bayly's Beach and our first view of the Tasman Sea and ocean. Below are pictures from that trip. We only live 15 minutes away and this is our first time there.

This is a view towards Dargaville from the west.

Along the road there are often hills, woods and cows.

This shows Sister Buchanan and our car from the beach, looking inland.

They tell us that this is the longest driveable beach in all of New Zealand, above is the view north, below the view south. From here to the Puoto Point at the bottom of the peninsula (south) is about 50 miles, all beach like this. It also extends north quite a ways, just like this.

... a jelly creature in the sand

Sister Buchanan looking out at the sea, taking a picture.

And to close, a funny little story about our learning how to be "Kiwis."  We struggled to get the stove/oven to work. The hotplates work fine on the top, but no matter how we tried, we could not get the oven to turn on. 

We called the office and they finally said they would contact the landlord to get someone to service the oven. When the Wilsons visited, she said that the timer had to be set to "manual," and it should show a little hand. We tried the timer and turned the clock a lot and could make no progress. Then this morning, I tried again and pulled the little clock time knob a bit while turning and it changed to show times and a bell and finally a little red hand.

The little red area on the left side is now showing a little hand (sorry you cannot see the detail - take my word for it). The oven is now available for us to use. It only took us a week to get that solved.

The Lord is good! We love being in His service here. We pray for our family back home. They have their challenges and know they are in the Lord's hands. Here we know we can be led by Him to bless the lives of the good people here!

Starting again

 

We are enjoying the MTC experience. It is more up-to-date that previous training sessions at the Mission Training Center. We mainly love getting to know the other missionaries serving and learning their stories. It was a big group that started with us last week. These are only the senior missionaries who started this past week.

Next week we head to New Zealand.

A blessing was the opportunity to have our granddaughter come by for a short time. We shared some BYU Creamery ice cream and talked about the blessings of the temple.

The love of the Lord is real!

Status of Things in our Life

 I suppose, if anyone is really reading these, that a little of what is happening on our lives might be useful to share. Most of what I have been posting has to do with my Danish family research. I do a fair amount of that, so that is what comes out here.

I actually started this blog about eleven years ago when we were preparing for our first mission, which took us to southern Germany.

Since then, Shauna and I have moved twice and served four additional missions.

Now we are awaiting our next mission which begins in October when we go to the MTC in Provo just prior to spending eighteen months in the Auckland New Zealand mission.

We moved from our long-time home in West Jordan between our second and third missions. We sold our place and bought a two bedroom townhouse in Daybreak. 

We then served two more missions and then had a whirl-wind experience that ended up with us packing up quickly (over just a few days) and moving to where we now live in southeast Ohio, about halfway between Athens, Ohio and Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Our missions have been the following:  Alpine German-Speaking mission (2013-2014) in Ravensburg, Germany; Salt Lake City South mission (2015-2016) in our West Jordan home and stake; Rochester, New York mission (2017-2018) in Hornell, New York; Southern California - started with the Carlsbad mission, then Newport Beach mission (2019-2021), living in Irvine; Nauvoo Temple mission (2022) living and working in the temple in Nauvoo, Illinois.

We live in the country now, surrounded by 21 acres of woods of our own — which comes with different life requirements. We experience many wild animals, especially white-tailed deer, rabbits, opossums, box turtles, wild turkeys, and of course, flies, ticks, bees, hornets, humming birds (and many varieties of birds), fire flies, mice and snakes.

Life can truly be interesting

The Power of Danish Military Records as a Research Tool

 I wanted to write a bit about the valuable resource found in the Danish military levying rolls records. I have several family groups which come from Denmark so I do extensive work with the Danish records. The Danish Royal Archives (Rigsarkivet) have scanned images of all their parish and military (and other) records and they are available directly from them through their web sites, beginning at the site:

https://www.sa.dk/

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has scanned copies of most of these records. Many of these records have been indexed over past decades. Because of the rich volume of indexed records, it is much easier to find people and their information than in the old days of microfilm readers. However, as far as I can tell, the Military Levying Rolls (Lægdsruller) have not been digitized. Even so, the indexing process for these records are more complicated for the main reason that also gives them their power as a Danish genealogical research tool.

These records began in about 1790 and the process was such that every male child born was registered at birth, listed in their location (usually the Lutheran church parish), referred to as the "lægd." Each record indicates the father's name (occasionally it is the mother's name), birth location, age as of the particular register, and other information pertaining to that young man. The first record entered usually contains the actual birth and/or christening date. These records are updated each year, but new entries are entered for each boy usually in three-year intervals. If the boy moves (usually with family, but even when not), then this is noted in the record, specifying the new location "lægd" number. Through this process, you can trace a young man from birth until he is no longer registered in the system, usually around age 40, or upon death. The father's name is always included regardless of whether the father is living or not or where the father really lives.

Generally, the records run until about 1860, depending on location.

It is also quite useful because Danish census records have a sizable gap between 1801 and 1834 where many a young man was born and/or died.

The point of this discussion is to wonder whether a process can be put into place to not only index these records, but use the data to actually string all of these records together by a computer process, creating timelines for each young man in Denmark. 

I have been doing this manually for many years. Often it brings to light connections not found in any other way.

Here is an example of one young man I just traced today:

The first record can be found at this URL:

https://www.sa.dk/ao-soegesider/da/billedviser?epid=16481031#17329,752471

Sorø 1809 F Hovedrulle 37 - Sorø 1809 F Hovedrulle 84 lægd 51 Hejninge image 111

Poul Olsen

F 84 59 Niels  b. Heininge  born 15 April 1809  chr. 12 May

Sorø 1812 J Hovedrulle 37 - Sorø 1812 J Hovedrulle 65 lægd 51 Hejninge image 118

Poul Olsen

59 45 Niels  b. Heininge  age 3

Sorø 1815 A Hovedrulle 37 - Sorø 1815 A Hovedrulle 65 lægd 51 Hejninge image 120

F. Poul Olsen

45 34 S. Niels  b. Heininge age 6

Sorø 1818 D Hovedrulle 23 - Sorø 1818 D Hovedrulle 65 lægd 51 Hejninge image 130

Poul Olsen

34 20 Niels  b. Heininge age 9

Sorø 1821 G Hovedrulle 37 - Sorø 1821 G Hovedrulle 65 lægd 51 Hejninge image 159

Poul Olsen

20 16 Niels  b. Heininge age 12

Sorø 1824 K Hovedrulle 35 - Sorø 1824 K Hovedrulle 63 lægd 51 Hejninge image 182

Poul Olsen

16 13 Niels  b. Heininge age 15  crossed out --> moved to 49 A 239

Sorø 1826 A Tilgangsrulle  lægd 49 Sankt Mikkels image 85

Poul Olsen

A 239 Niels  b. Heininge age 15  from 51-13  crossed out --> moved back to 51 B 126

Sorø 1827 B Hovedrulle 35 - Sorø 1827 B Hovedrulle 63 lægd 51 Hejninge image 214   

Poul Olsen

B126 74 Niels  b. Heininge age 18 from 49 239 crossed out --> moved to 53 C 144

Sorø 1828 C Tilgangsrulle  lægd 53 Gerlev image 102

Poul Olsen

C144  Niels  b. Heininge age 18  from 51-74  crossed out --> died 1829

This last record can be found at this URL:

https://www.sa.dk/ao-soegesider/da/billedviser?epid=16481031#491324,780543

It is interesting to note that there could have been no other way to find that Niels, son of Poul Olsen, did not survive past the age of 20. The death record found in Gerlev gives no information as to his origins (parents, birthplace, etc.). This was only found because of the Military Levying Rolls information. Another useful result is to determine where a young man ends up, possibly where he marries and starts his family. The main problem in Danish research, particularly in 1800s and before is that everyone has very similar names. By connecting father's name, birth location and age, it is much easier to determine  a particular young men, regardless of the common-ness of his name. This would have been remarkable also if if included young, women, but that is the way of the world in the past. 

I am amazed at the value of these records!  Many thanks to those who preserved and made them available.